My name is Alex Black (he/him). The images are one photo of me and two caricatures by a caricature artist. I am currently a fourth year math PhD student at UC Davis lucky to be advised by Jesús De Loera. I am interested in the interplay between geometry, combinatorics, and optimization. In particular, I study hard questions about the performance of algorithms in optimization such as the run-time of the simplex method across all choices of pivot rules. To gain intuition for how to approach these problems, I try to see how these algorithms apply to highly structured circumstances that appear in algebraic geometry and geometric combinatorics such as regular polytopes and matroids. Beyond intuition, understanding the behavior of the algorithms in those special contexts furthermore yields results of independent interest in algebraic combinatorics and various other related areas of math, physics, and computer science.
Outside of research, my main hobby is writing and performing comedy. Although, that will most likely not impact the content of this website.