Hiro Lee Tanaka

2033 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL, 60208
htanaka(at)math.northwestern.edu

About Me

I'm a fourth-year graduate student studying math at Northwestern. My advisor is Kevin Costello. I also collaborate with David Ayala, John Francis, and David Nadler.

My research is in algebraic topology with an emphasis on mathematical physics. I spend a lot of time thinking about the cobordism theory of Lagrangian submanifolds, with an eye toward applications to the study of the Fukaya category (and mirror symmetry more generally). I also think a lot about factorization algebras, especially as they relate to topological field theories and invariants of embedding spaces. Other buzz-words that pop up a lot in my research conversations are: Geometric Langlands, (topological) chiral homology, configuration spaces, E_n algebras and n-fold loop spaces, Khovanov homology, Chern-Simons theory, deformation theory, quantum field theories, and infinity-categories.

If you are interested in a more detailed discussion of my research projects, please feel free to follow the link.

Other interests

In my free time I tutor for the Chicago HOPES homeless education program, I play ultimate, and I coach Northwestern University's undergraduate Mock Trial team.

I am also one of organizers of the Talbot Workshop. This year the topic is the Calculus of Functors, with mentors Gregory Arone and Michael Ching. I organize this workshop with Sheel Ganatra (MIT), Saul Glasman (MIT), and Owen Gwilliam (Northwestern). I will be a co-organizer next year as well, so if you have any suggestions on a topic, you should let me know via e-mail.

Along with Sam Gunningham and Owen Gwilliam, I also help organize the pre-Talbot seminar at Northwestern University.