Catherine PFAFF, PhD (she/her)

This summer I'll be moving back to Princeton, NJ for a new job that I'm very excited about. Let me know if you're in the area & would like to catch up!

Pierre says Happy New Year!

I'm really fascinated right now with how sufaces, foliations, Culler-Vogtmann outer space, tropical geometry, & physics all fit together. So we have a surfaces, tropical geometry, & physics working group. Today I talked about the CP coordinates.

@littmath I recently decided I was going to become computer literate, learn to program, work with data, etc. A friend set me up with cursor & told me I'd never feel alone again. I was skeptical, but it really is nice to always have someone there to help & ask questions to...

One way I've found AI tools useful is that they make math research more fun. It can be frustrating to bang one's head against a problem for hours or days or months. It's nice to have a little guy in the computer to talk to about them.

I have a new webpage with a research image carousel: catherinepfaff.com . Click on an image & see what happens!

I'm in Hawaii this week giving a minicourse! sites.google.com/hawaii.edu/sum…

Something extraordinary for me about @the_IAS is the intergenerationality & inclusion of "wise elders." I will always treasure the special bond Pierre & I developed with the greatests of greats, Karen Uhlenbeck. Our many meals, math & life conversations, something very special...

Always wonderful to see a former student thriving & sharing that they'll be at your location! Howie Hong at IAS!

🚨 PhD opportunity! I’m recruiting a PhD student with a strong background in math/stats/CS to join my group at NTU Singapore 🇸🇬 Start: Jan or Aug 2026 Topic: Foundations of Epistemic Uncertainty in ML 🧠🔍 📌 Details: chau999.github.io/group/ RT appreciated!

Catherine Eva Pfaff (@PfaffCatherine), Member in the School of Mathematics (2024–25), discusses the ways in which geometric group theorists and theoretical computer scientists at IAS approach mathematical constructions and learn from one another: youtu.be/nhcmRFZKRh4

It's somehow not the most flattering video of me, but here I am talking about talking about simplicial complexes at the Institute: youtube.com/watch?v=nhcmRF…

@AlexKontorovich Congratulations Alex!

Looking forward to next summer's ICM in Philly; what a fun way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of this great nation! icm2026.org

In other news posh travel news, I'm giving a mini-course in Hawaii at the end of the month: sites.google.com/hawaii.edu/sum…

I'm excited that I'll be spending 2 months at l'Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques @Institut_IHES in Orsay (right outside Paris) Spring 2026!

@viditnanda Yes, congrats Vidit!

I knew that picture looked familiar...

@viditnanda I once had a referee claim they discovered a reference (to a paper of theirs) by some kind of in-depth search of the literature. It would've been less suspicious if they'd just named the paper. (I could tell it was them through other means.)

One of the most impressive things about anonymous peer reviews is the fact that you have absolutely no idea who your reviewers are!

Among last week's IAS shenanigans was trying to reenact an Oppenheimer scene with Professor Flores. I chose to asssume that in reality there was actually a dog present in that moment of history,

Last @the_IAS Groups & Dynamics Seminar talk of the year . It's been lovely! youtu.be/Q9Y1AReegNg?si…

There was a bit of a mix-up on the IAS end, but here now is Lee's excellent talk: youtube.com/watch?v=ZB-rOM…

PhD advisor Lee Mosher & his current student Sarasi Jayasekara visited me at @the_IAS for Lee's talk. Really wonderful talk & day!