nathanchenmath [at] gmail.com
Nathan Chen is a
About
Current Position
Welcome to my website! I am an assistant professor at IMPA in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
I was a Benjamin Peirce fellow at Harvard from 2024-2025, a J. F. Ritt assistant professor at Columbia from 2022-2024, and an NSF postdoc from 2021-2025.
Events
I co-organize the Harvard-MIT algebraic geometry seminar.
This Spring 2026, I am co-organizing Boston AG Day, which will be held at Harvard on March 7, 2026.
In Fall 2026, I will be co-organizing ROB-AG, a conference on Recent Outcomes in Birational and complex Algebraic Geometry.
Research Focus
A large part of my research is devoted to studying rational maps between algebraic varieties. These appear in various guises, such as birational invariants called measures of irrationality, (birational) automorphisms and self-maps, and moduli spaces of curves on a given variety.
Teaching
This Spring 2026, I will be teaching Math 157 - Mathematics in the World.
Background
I received my Ph.D. from Stony Brook University in 2021 under Robert Lazarsfeld. I graduated from UC San Diego in 2016 with an undergraduate degree in math.
Statement
Being a mathematician is a privilege. I fully support underrepresented groups in mathematics, and I encourage all students to reach out if they have any questions or are interested in things like summer research.