nathanchen [at] math.harvard.edu
Nathan Chen is a
About
Current Position
Welcome to my website! I am a Benjamin Peirce fellow at Harvard. This Fall 2025, I am on the tenure-track job market.
I was a J. F. Ritt assistant professor at Columbia from 2022-2024 and an NSF postdoc at Columbia and Harvard from 2021-2025.
I co-organize the Harvard-MIT algebraic geometry seminar.
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.