Dr Nikita Nikolaev

ECDN Rep for the School of Mathematics

What is your academic background and your current research field?

I joined the Geometry and Mathematical Physics group in the School of Mathematics as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in September 2022. I've previously held postdoctoral positions at Geneva and at Sheffield where I also had a similar early career development rep role. I got my PhD in maths from Toronto and my research lies at the interface of algebraic geometry, differential geometry, algebraic analysis, and mathematical physics. The primary focus is on answering some deep fundamental questions about singular differential equations and the various abstract geometric spaces that naturally arise when studying such equations. Find out more on my website [https://sites.google.com/view/nikita-nikolaev/].

What is your role as a ECDN Rep and how can postdocs in your school contact you?

My role as an ECDN Rep for the School of Mathematics is to represent the more specific interests and needs of early career researchers in mathematics and closely related disciplines. Contact me at n.nikolaev@bham.ac.uk and please include "ECDN" in the subject line.

What do you feel are the benefits of the ECDN programme for postdocs and what do you feel have been the benefits to you from being a postdoc rep?

Over the years, I've come to realise that the issues and circumstances faced by researchers in mathematics are substantially different from those in other sciences, even including much of physics. In part, this is because mathematics is a formal science and not an empirical science. This distinction may be subtle, but it makes mathematics stand slightly apart from its sister sciences, which is ever more amplified in how the global mathematical community operates. My goal as an ECDN Rep for the School of Mathematics is to champion issues more specifically relevant to our discipline and promote an open discussion of the unique challenges faced by researchers in mathematics.