Shawn McDougal

PhD candidate in Mathematics at UC Berkeley.

Shawn's Picture

Email:
Office: Evans 1049.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
—Confucius

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
—Anais Nin

If you are coming to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you are coming because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
—Lilla Watson, Aboriginal educator and activist

About Me

My research interests are in geometric topology. I'm especially intrigued by four-manifolds, objects which locally look like 4-dimensional Euclidean space. In many ways the fourth dimension stands out as uniquely challenging among all the dimensions. Four-manifolds are, in some sense, too big to be fully grasped with the classification approaches that work in lower dimensions, yet too small for the manouevres that aid classification in higher dimensions. And when it comes to smooth structures the distinction between the fourth dimension and others becomes even wilder. For example, for almost all Euclidean spaces there is a unique smooth structure (up to diffeomorphism): In almost all dimensions, if two Eucilidean spaces are homeomorphic then they are diffoemorphic. All except for dimension four. In dimension four, not only is there more than one diffeomorphism type, but there are uncountably many!
My dissertation work connects link invariants with four-manifold topology.
My adviser is Peter Teichner.
I am a member of Unbounded Representation, a math department grad student group committed to diversity in mathematics.
I am also a member of BGESS, a group for Black grad students in science and engineering at Berkeley.

My Teaching at Cal

Learning Math Links

B-Space at Berkeley
Student Learning Center
Great resource. They offer "drop-in hours" for most of the core lower-division classes in the Math department. They even have midterm review sesions.

Other Cool Links

Common Dreams
Great place for news and perspectives the mainstream media tends to ignore.
Wikipedia
Where I go to get many of my questions answered.



Site last updated: 01.28.10