Matthew Pressland

Contact Details

E-mail address:
matthew dot pressland at unicaen dot fr
(or: mdpressland at bath dot edu)

Office: Room 221, Sciences 3, Campus 2
 Postal address:
Dr. Matthew D. Pressland,
Laboratoire de Mathématiques Nicolas Oresme,
Université de Caen Normandie,
Boulevard Maréchal Juin, 14032 Caen Cedex 5,
France

About Me

I am a maître de conférences ( ≈ lecturer / associate professor) in the Laboratoire de Mathématiques Nicolas Oresme at the Université de Caen Normandie. Together with Yassine Guerch and Arthur Soulié, I am one of the organisers of our algebra and geometry seminar. My research deals mainly with connections between representation theory and geometry, often motivated by combinatorial phenomena appearing in cluster theory and related areas.

I previously held an EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Universities of Glasgow and Leeds, a position at the Institut für Algebra und Zahlentheorie at Universität Stuttgart, and a fellowship at the Max‐Planck‐Institut für Mathematik in Bonn. I obtained my PhD in 2015 from the University of Bath, where I was advised by Alastair King.

I am one of the administrators of the FDLIST, a mailing list and community for representation theorists with an interest in finite‐dimensional algebras.

More information about my research and teaching can be found by following the links in the header. Some of this information is summarised in my CV (although this is often less up‐to‐date than my webpage).

I have grave concerns about a rush to adopt LLMs in mathematical research, without any serious discussion of how to ensure this usage is aligned with the goals of the mathematical community (see also this declaration). At present, I do not use such tools in my research. This decision is motivated primarily (but not exclusively) by

  1. concern over the environmental impact of this technology;
  2. a wish to avoid directly or indirectly supporting the corporations involved in developing the most popular models: my view is that these companies lack proper democratic oversight or accountability, and are not behaving ethically;
  3. the goal of acting, alongside other like-minded mathematicians, to slow the rate of adoption of this technology in the community, thus allowing more time for considered discussion of how / whether it should be used, and how to mitigate the serious risks.
Further reading: David Bessis, Tasmin Chu, Jonny Evans, Max Weinreich.

See also