Alexandru I. Suciu	Mathematics Department
Professor and Chair	Northeastern University

Contact

Office: 505A Lake Hall
Phone: 1-617-373-5635
Fax: 1-617-373-5658
E-Mail: a.suciu@northeastern.edu

Mailing Address

Prof. Alexandru Suciu
567 Lake Hall
Dept. of Mathematics
Northeastern University
360 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115, USA

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Math Institutes

AIM San Jose
BIRS Banff
CIRM Luminy
CIRM Trento
CRM Pisa
Fields Toronto
ICMS Edinburgh
ICTP Trieste
IMAR Bucharest
IPAM Los Angeles
MFO Oberwolfach
MIMS Tunis
MPIM Bonn
MSRI Berkeley
PIMS Vancouver
UNAM Cuernavaca
VAST Hanoi

Math Software

Background

I hail from Bucharest, Romania. I did my undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Bucharest. Here is a picture from those days.

For my graduate studies, I went to Columbia University, receiving my Ph.D. degree in 1984. Here is a picture from around that time, taken in Cambridge, UK.

After a J.W. Gibbs Instructorship at Yale University, I came in 1986 to Northeastern University, where I've been ever since.

Research

My research interests are in Topology, and how it relates to Algebra, Geometry, and Combinatorics. I currently investigate cohomology jumping loci, and their applications to algebraic varieties, low-dimensional topology, and toric topology, such as the study of hyperplane arrangements, Milnor fibrations, moment angle complexes, configuration spaces, and various classes of knots, links, and manifolds, as well as the homology and lower central series of discrete groups. Below are some recent papers and preprints (click here and here for a complete list).

Flat connections and resonance varieties: from rank one to higher ranks (with A.D. Macinic, S. Papadima, C.R. Popescu), Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 369 (2017), no. 2, 1309-1343.
On the topology of the Milnor fibration of a hyperplane arrangement, Rev. Roumaine Math. Pures Appl. 62 (2017), no. 1, 191-215.
The Milnor fibration of a hyperplane arrangement: from modular resonance to algebraic monodromy (with S. Papadima), Proc. London Math. Soc. 114 (2017), no. 6, 961-1004.
Pure virtual braids, resonance, and formality (with H. Wang), Math. Zeit. 286 (2017), no. 3-4, 1495-1524.
Abelian duality and propagation of resonance (with G. Denham and S. Yuzvinsky), Selecta Math. 23 (2017), no. 4, 2331-2367.
The pure braid groups and their relatives (with H. Wang), in: Perspectives in Lie theory, 403-426, Springer INdAM series, vol. 19, Springer, Cham, 2017.
Functional classification of protein structures by local structure matching in graph representation (with C. Mills, R. Garg, J. S. Lee, L. Tian, G. Cooperman, P. J. Beuning, and M. J. Ondrechen), Protein Science 27 (2018), no. 6, 1125-1135.
Local systems on arrangements of smooth, complex algebraic hypersurfaces (with G. Denham), Forum Math. Sigma 6 (2018), e6, 20 pages, doi:10.1017/fms.2018.5.
Infinitesimal finiteness obstructions (with S. Papadima), J. London Math. Soc. 99 (2019), no. 1, 173-193.
Cup products, lower central series, and holonomy Lie algebras (with H. Wang), J. Pure Appl. Alg. 223 (2019), no. 8, 3359-3385.
Naturality properties and comparison results for topological and infinitesimal embedded jump loci (with S. Papadima), Adv. in Math. 350 (2019), 256-303.
Formality properties of finitely generated groups and Lie algebras (with H. Wang), Forum Math. 31 (2019), no. 4, 867-905.
Chen ranks and resonance varieties of the upper McCool groups (with H. Wang), Adv. in Appl. Math. 110 (2019), 197-234.
The topology of compact Lie group actions through the lens of finite models (with S. Papadima), Int. Math. Res. Notices IMRN 2019 (2019), no. 20, 6390-6436.
Rank two topological and infinitesimal embedded jump loci of quasi-projective manifolds (with S. Papadima), J. Inst. Math. Jussieu 19 (2020), no. 2, 451-485.
Residually finite rationally p groups (with T. Koberda), Commun. Contemp. Math. (2019).
Poincaré duality and resonance varieties, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh Sect. A. (2019).
Taylor expansions of groups and filtered-formality (with H. Wang), Eur. J. Math. (2019).
Homology, lower central series, and hyperplane arrangements (with R.D. Porter), Eur. J. Math. (2019).
Cohomology jump loci of 3-manifolds, preprint Jan. 2019.

Teaching

I teach a variety of math courses, both at the undergraduate and graduate level. If you are interested in taking a directed study course or a reading course with me (in addition to those courses regularly offered), please contact me.

In Spring 2016, I taught MATH 4565, an undergraduate course in Topology.
In Fall 2016, I taught MATH 3150, an undergraduate course in Real Analysis, and MATH 7221, a graduate Topology 2 course.
In Spring 2017, I taught MATH 7321, a graduate Topology 3 course.
In Spring 2018, I taught MATH 4565, an undergraduate course in Topology.
In Fall 2018, I taught MATH 7221, a graduate Topology 2 course.

Activities

In March 2017 I participated in the Singularities in the Midwest workshop, held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, while in early May I attended a special session on Representation Spaces and Toric Topology at the AMS Meeting in New York, NY. In late May I participated in a workshop on Braids in Algebra, Geometry, and Topology, held at the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences, in Edinburgh, UK. I then went to Sicily, where I attended the Summer School and Workshop ET'nA 2017: Encounter in Topology and Algebra held at the Scuola Superiore di Catania, after which I participated in the Salvetti Fest and a workshop on Arrangements and Beyond at the Centro di Ricerca Matematica Ennio De Giorgi, in Pisa, Italy, and then visited the University of Bremen, in Germany, where I gave a colloquium talk. Later in the summer, I attended a workshop on Nilpotent Fundamental Groups at BIRS, in Banff, Canada, and gave talks in special sessions on Advances in Arrangement Theory and Geometry and Combinatorics of Cell Complexes at the Mathematical Congress of the Americas in Montréal. In early October, I visited MSRI, in Berkeley, CA for the Geometric and Topological Combinatorics program, while later that month I went back to Oberwolfach, where I co-organized a mini-workshop on Interactions between low-dimensional topology and complex algebraic geometry.
In January 2018 I co-organized at Oberwolfach a workshop on Topology of arrangements and representation stability, while in April I organized together with Graham Denham a workshop and special session on Arrangements of Hypersurfaces at the A.M.S. Spring Eastern Sectional Meeting, held at Northeastern. In late May I co-organized a conference at IMAR, in Bucharest, Romania in memory of my friend and long-time collaborator, Stefan Papadima, where I gave a lecture surveying his work. In July I gave a series of lectures at the Summer School on New Trends in Topology and Geometry, held at the Mediterranean Institute for the Mathematical Sciences in Tunis, Tunisia.
In February 2019 I participated in a workshop on Braids, Resolvent Degree and Hilbert's 13th Problem, held at IPAM on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, CA, after which I visited and gave a colloquium talk at the University of Nevada at Reno. In March I was at the Institute of Mathematics in Hanoi, Vietnam, where I helped organize a CIMPA School and a workshop on Hyperplane Arrangements, while in May I co-organized a workshop on Arrangements at Western University, in London, ON. In mid-summer I participated in a conference on Non-Isolated Singularities and Derived Geometry, held at UNAM-Cuernavaca, Mexico, while in September I gave talks at Donu Arapura's 60th birthday conference and in an AMS special session on Geometry and Topology of Singularities, both held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In December I was at a conference on Hyperplane Arrangements and Singularities, held at the University of Tokyo, Japan.
At the start of 2020 I participated in a workshop on Polyhedral Products in Homotopy Theory, held at the Fields Institute in Toronto, ON and a workshop on Configuration Spaces of Graphs, held at the American Institute of Mathematics in San Jose, CA.