David Lieberman
David Lieberman (he/they), PhD, joins the Fall 2024 HMC faculty as an Adjunct Assistant Professor. His research is generally in the realm of commutative algebra. More specifically, he studies rings of differential operators and their modules (called D-modules). The construction of a ring of differential operators is a purely algebraic construction that produces the partial derivative without using the notion of limits. For example, the ring of differential operators of a polynomial ring is the ring of polynomial expressions in the variables and the partial derivatives. In a broad sense, this realm of research is concerned with finding singularities (the pointy parts of surfaces). In his most recent work, David found some new settings where Bernstein’s inequality is true (which put a lower bound on the dimension of a D-module).
David earned his Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder. This was followed by a Masters degree in Mathematics from California State University Channel Islands. Most recently he attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, earning a Masters degree and a PhD in Mathematics while being advised by Dr. Jack Jeffries.
David is passionate about teaching mathematics at the collegiate level. He is a believer in active learning, and believes that learning math is best done by doing it! He subscribes to the pedagogical theory of social-constructivism, and thinks that knowledge is best constructed with others as a team. He is excited to bring this style of teaching to HMC this Fall.
Outside of mathematics, David enjoys watching silly YouTube videos, skiing, reading random Wikipedia pages (check out the Wikipedia page for Doors. It’s his favorite one!) and playing video games (he is currently hooked on the game Balatro). If my office door is open, feel free to pop in to chat about anything!