Spencer Backman
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
- Ph.D., Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization - Georgia Institute of Technology
- B.A., Mathematics - Oberlin College
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
BIO
Spencer graduated from Oberlin College in 2007 with Honors in Mathematics. During his time as an undergraduate he studied mathematics abroad in both Budapest and Moscow. In 2014 he completed his Ph.D. in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization at the Georgia Institute of Technology having also spent three semesters as a visiting graduate student at UC Berkeley. While in graduate school he twice traveled to Dharamshala, India to teach mathematics to Tibetan monks as part of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. He then conducted postdoctoral research at mathematical institutes and departments in South Korea, Italy, Germany, and Israel. He is a seventh generation Vermonter who grew up on his family's farm in Calais, Vermont.
Spencer’s research is in algebraic and geometric combinatorics, e.g. algebraic aspects of graphs, matroids, and polytopes. A common thread running through his work has been tropical geometry, a combinatorial piecewise-linear version of classical algebraic geometry, and the new perspective it lends to classical combinatorial objects.
Courses
- Combinatorial Graph Theory 273
Publications
Area(s) of expertise
Algebraic and Geometric Combinatorics.
Bio
Spencer graduated from Oberlin College in 2007 with Honors in Mathematics. During his time as an undergraduate he studied mathematics abroad in both Budapest and Moscow. In 2014 he completed his Ph.D. in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization at the Georgia Institute of Technology having also spent three semesters as a visiting graduate student at UC Berkeley. While in graduate school he twice traveled to Dharamshala, India to teach mathematics to Tibetan monks as part of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. He then conducted postdoctoral research at mathematical institutes and departments in South Korea, Italy, Germany, and Israel. He is a seventh generation Vermonter who grew up on his family's farm in Calais, Vermont.
Spencer’s research is in algebraic and geometric combinatorics, e.g. algebraic aspects of graphs, matroids, and polytopes. A common thread running through his work has been tropical geometry, a combinatorial piecewise-linear version of classical algebraic geometry, and the new perspective it lends to classical combinatorial objects.
Courses
- Combinatorial Graph Theory 273
Publications
Areas of Expertise
Algebraic and Geometric Combinatorics.