About me
I am a third year graduate student in the mathematics department at UC Berkeley advised by Bernd Sturmfels. I graduated with honors with a B.S. degree in mathematics from the University of Iceland in spring 2022. I passed my Qualifying Exams on Combinatorics, Metric Algebraic Geometry and Commutative Algebra in November 2023. I plan to graduate from Berkeley in spring 2026 and I will spend my last year of PhD abroad at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig Germany.
My mathematical interests lie in computational algebraic geometry, commutative algebra and combinatorics. I especially like looking problems from other fields such as quantum chemistry and physics from the lense of nonlinear algebra.
You can reach me by my email at svala@math.berkeley.edu and in my office in 869 Evans Hall.
Here is my CV [current as of April 15th 2025].

Research
-
Truncation Varieties in Second Quantization,
in progress.
-
Gram Matrices for Isotropic Vectors
(with Yassine El Maazouz and Bernd Sturmfels),
23pp,
submitted toJournal of the European Mathematical Society.
-
Kinematic Varieties for Massless Particles
(with Smita Rajan and Bernd Sturmfels),
19pp,
to appear inLe Matematiche.
-
Exploring Ground and Excited States via Single Reference Coupled-Cluster Theory and Algebraic Geometry
(with Fabian Faulstich),
39pp,
Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation
20
(2024)
8517-8528.
-
Coupled Cluster Degree of the Grassmannian
(with Viktoriia Borovik and Bernd Sturmfels),
13pp,
Journal of Symbolic Computation
128
(2025).
-
Algebraic Varieties in Quantum Chemistry
(with Fabian Faulstich and Bernd Sturmfels),
25pp,
Foundations of Computational Mathematics
(2024)
1-32.
-
Four-Dimensional Lie Algebras Revisited
(with Laurent Manivel and Bernd Sturmfels),
Journal of Lie Theory
33
(2023)
703-712.
Activities
2025
-
April 30th
:Giving a talk at the Information, Geometry and Physics seminar in CalTech
(Los Angeles, California)
-
April 9th
:Giving a talk at the Algebra, Geometry, and Combinatorics seminar at SFSU
(San Francisco, California)
-
March 31st - April 4th
:Visting the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and giving a talk at the Math Fronier Seminar
(Troy, New York)
-
February 25th
:Giving a talk at the Algebra and Discrete Mathematics seminar at UC Davis
(Davis, California)
-
February 12th
:Speaking in the the Quantum Lunch at the Centre for the Mathematics of Quantum Theory
(Copenhagen, Denmark)
-
February 7th
:Attending and giving a talk at the Nonlinear Algebra meets Quantum Chemistry workshop at MPI Leipzig
(Leipzig, Germany).
-
February 3rd-6th
:Attending the Numerical (Nonlinear) Algebra in the Real World workshop in CSBD Dresden
(Dresden, Germany).
-
January 21st
:Speaking at a subgroup meeting in the theoretical chemistry department at Stanford University
(Stanford, California).
-
January 8th-11th
:Attending JMM and giving a talk at the AMS Special Session on Applications of Algebraic Geometry
(Seattle, Washington).
2024
-
December 12th
:Giving a talk at the UC Berkeley Nonlinear algebra seminar
(Berkeley, California).
-
August - December
:Organizing a reading seminar on the book Tensors: Geometry and Applications by J.M. Landsberg
Schedule(Berkeley, California).
-
June 10th - June 13th
:Visiting and giving a talk at the University of Osnabrück
(Osnabrück, Germany).
-
June 3rd - June 7th
:Giving a talk at the Optimization Techniques in Quantum Chemistry summer school in RWTH
(Aachen, Germany).
-
May - July
:Visit to Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences
(Leipzig, Germany).
-
May 4th
:Talking in Research in Combinatorics by Early Career Mathematicians session at the AMS sectional meeting in SFSU
(San Francisco, California).
-
February 25th - March 1st
:Presenting a poster at the 63rd Sanibel Symposium
(St. Augustine, Florida).
2023
-
September - November
:Studying for my Qualifying Exams on November 29th Syllabus
(Berkeley, California).
-
July 4th - July 6th
:Visiting and giving a talk at the University of Osnabrück
(Osnabrück, Germany).
-
June - July
:Visit to Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences
(Leipzig, Germany).
-
May 28th - June 2nd
:Attending Oberwolfach Seminar: Metric Algebraic Geometry
(Oberwolfach, Germany).
2022
-
June - August
:Visit to Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences
(Leipzig, Germany).
Teaching
-
Fall 2024
:MATH1A
-Calculus.
Teaching assistant,
Instructor: Alexander Paulin.
-
Spring 2024
:MATH113
-Introduction to Abstract Algebra.
Teaching assistant,
Various instructors.
-
Fall 2023
:MATH54
-Linear Algebra & Differential Equations.
Teaching assistant,
Instructor: Zvezdelina Stankova.
-
Spring 2023
:MATH54
-Linear Algebra & Differential Equations.
Teaching assistant,
Instructor: Norman Sheu.
-
Fall 2021
:Honors Linear Algebra.
Teaching assistant,
Instructor: Rögnvaldur Möller.
-
Spring 2021
:Probability and Statistics.
Teaching assistant,
Instructor: Hermann Þórisson.
-
Fall 2020
:Mathematical Analysis I.
Teaching assistant,
Instructor: Benedikt Steinar Magnússon.