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Samir Canning

Email: samir.canning at math.ethz.ch
Office: HG J 16.1


My name is Samir (Sam) Canning. I am a Hermann-Weyl-Instructor at ETH Zürich in Rahul Pandharipande's group. I received my Ph.D from the Department of Mathematics at the University of California San Diego in June 2022, advised by Elham Izadi. Before that, I got my B.A. in mathematics at Columbia University. Here is my CV.

I work in algebraic geometry. I am interested in the intersection theory of moduli spaces, especially those related to the moduli spaces of curves, abelian varieties, and K3 surfaces.

Papers and Preprints

  1. Holomorphic forms and non-tautological cycles on moduli spaces of curves, joint with Veronica Arena, Emily Clader, Richard Haburcak, Amy Li, Siao Chi Mok, and Carolina Tamborini. (arxiv)
  2. Tautological projection for cycles on the moduli space of abelian varieties, joint with Dragos Oprea, Sam Molcho, and Rahul Pandharipande. (arxiv)
  3. The Chow ring of the moduli space of degree 2 quasi-polarized K3 surfaces, joint with Dragos Oprea and Rahul Pandharipande. (arxiv)
  4. Extensions of tautological rings and motivic structures in the cohomology of ¯ g , n , joint with Hannah Larson and Sam Payne. (arxiv)
  5. The bielliptic locus in genus 11, joint with Hannah Larson, accepted to Michigan Mathematical Journal. (arxiv)
  6. The eleventh cohomology group of ¯ g , n , joint with Hannah Larson and Sam Payne, Forum of Mathematics, Sigma. (journal)(arxiv)
  7. On the Chow and cohomology rings of moduli spaces of stable curves, joint with Hannah Larson. (arxiv)
  8. The rational Chow rings of moduli spaces of hyperelliptic curves with marked points, joint with Hannah Larson, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Classe di Scienze. (journal) (arxiv)
  9. The integral Chow rings of moduli of Weierstrass fibrations, joint with Andrea Di Lorenzo and Giovanni Inchiostro, To appear in Transactions of the AMS. (arxiv)
  10. The integral Picard groups of low-degree Hurwitz spaces, joint with Hannah Larson, Mathematische Zeitschrift. (journal) (arxiv)
  11. The Chow rings of moduli spaces of elliptic surfaces over P1, joint with Bochao Kong, Algebraic Geometry. (journal) (arxiv)
  12. The Chow rings of the moduli spaces of curves of genus 7, 8, and 9, joint with Hannah Larson, Journal of Algebraic Geometry. (journal) (arxiv)
  13. Chow rings of low-degree Hurwitz spaces, joint with Hannah Larson, J. Reine Angew. Math (Crelle's Journal). (journal) (arxiv)
  14. Tautological classes on low-degree Hurwitz spaces, joint with Hannah Larson, IMRN. (journal) (arxiv)
  15. On a conjecture on the variety of lines on a Fano complete intersection, Ann. Mat. Pura Appl. (journal) (arxiv)

Talks/Slides

Seminars

In 2020-2021, I co-organized the American Graduate Student Algebraic Geometry Seminar (AGSAGS) with Roberto Albesiano, Lena Ji, Jennifer Li and Aline Zanardini.

Some quarters, I organized a student learning algebraic geometry seminar at UCSD:

Teaching

I have been lead instructor for the following courses.

  1. Fall 2023, Commutative Algebra (ETH).
  2. Summer 2021, 18 Linear Algebra (UCSD) (Reviews).

In 2021, I was accepted into the Summer Graduate Teaching Scholar Program at UCSD.

In 2020-2021, I was one of the two Senior Teaching Assistants, and in 2019-2020 I was one of the Junior Teaching Assistants at UCSD. This means that I coordinated and taught the course MATH 500, which is an introduction to teaching for graduate students, and helped handle TA related matters for the department. I was a teaching assistant for the following courses.

  1. Academic Year 2020-2021, Senior Teaching Assistant (UCSD)
  2. Academic Year 2019-2020, Junior Teaching Assistant (UCSD)
  3. Fall 2018, 109 Mathematical Reasoning (UCSD)
  4. Spring 2018, 20E Vector Calculus (UCSD)
  5. Winter 2018, 103B Abstract Algebra II (UCSD)
  6. Fall 2017, 18 Linear Algebra (UCSD)
  7. Spring 2017, Representation Theory of Finite Groups (Columbia)
  8. Fall 2016, Introduction to Modern Analysis I (Columbia)
  9. Summer 2016, Calculus II (Columbia)
  10. Summer 2016, Calculus III (Columbia)
  11. Spring 2016, Introduction to Higher Mathematics (Columbia)
  12. Fall 2015, Introduction to Modern Analysis I (Columbia)
  13. Summer 2015, Introduction to Modern Analysis I (Columbia)

Outreach and other activities

From 2020-2022 I volunteered as a tutor with East Palo Alto Tennis and Tutoring.

I served on the graduate affairs committee in the UCSD mathematics department from 2018-2021.

I was the president of the Mathematics Graduate Student Council at UCSD from the beginning of the 2018-2019 academic year until the end of the 2019-2020 academic year.

In fall 2018, I volunteered to tutor refugee students at a local school with San Diego Refugee Tutoring.

In spring 2018, I led five undergraduates through a course on algebraic curves as a part of UCSD's RTG in Algebra, Algebraic Geometry, and Number Theory.