Jennifer Taback

Isaac Henry Wing Professor of Mathematics
Chair, Department of Mathematics
Bowdoin College

Contact Information

Department of Mathematics
8600 College Station
Brunswick, ME 04011
jtaback@bowdoin.edu
(207) 725-3951

Curriculum Vitae

Service to the American Mathematical Society

• Co-chair of the AMS Next Generation Fundraising Committee, with Ken Ribet and Robert Lazarsfeld , September 2017-present.
• Member of the Executive Committee, February 2016--January 2018.
• Member of the Council, February 2014--January 2018.
• Member of the Rebranding Committee, with Ken Ribet and Robert Lazarsfeld, 2016-2017.
• Chair of the Eastern Sectional Program Committee of the American Mathematical Society, 2012-2014.

Research Interests. My research focuses on interesting metric and combinatorial properties of infinite finitely generated groups. Current projects include understanding the notion of medium-scale curvature for Cayley graphs, introduced by Duchin, Bar Natan and Kropholler, and exploring this curvature for standard groups in the literature, such as solvable Baumslag-Solitar groups and Thompson's group F. I am also working on a quasi-isometry classification for iterated solvable Baumslag-Solitar groups, and various projects on automatic and graph automatic groups.

Mathematical Endeavors

• The Bowdoin College Math Circle. I currently run (with my colleague Thomas Pietraho) a Math Circle for junior high school students. We run three sessions throughout the school year, with themes such as graph theory, cryptography, probability and random walks, and knot theory. The fall session is devoted to AMC8 preparation.

• Encouraging young women interested in mathematics.
• Currently I am the faculty advisor for the Bowdoin student chapter of the Association for Women in Mathematics. During the 2021-22 academic year we are sponsoring a series of panels showcasing the career paths of Bowdoin alumnae who were mathematics majors.
• I was the institutional director for Bowdoin College's Clare Boothe Luce Grant, which supported multi-year research projects for female students interested in the physical sciences. Overall, this program supported 17 female scholars, many of whom are now in graduate school in their field or have become STEM education professionals.
  

• Building a mathematical community in midcoast Maine. I have been active in building a mathematical community in midcoast Maine, bringing together colleagues from Bowdoin, Bates and Colby Colleges. In past years, we have used funding from the Mellon Foundation to run a joint seminar between the three schools, hosting speakers such as David Vogan (MIT), Jim Cannon (BYU), Ross Geoghegan (Binghamton), Jon McCammond (UC-Santa Barbara), John Meier (Lafayette College), David Fisher (Indiana Univ.) and Michael Hopkins (MIT). Currently we have a biannual seminar between the three departments in which I have given several lectures.

Research Papers

Link to papers on the ArXiV
Link to papers on MathSciNet, available with a Mathscinet subsription
Link to papers on ResearchGate

Quasi-isometric rigidity

• Quasi-isometric rigidity of PSL(2,Z[1/p]), Duke Math. Journal, Vol. 101, No. 2 (2000), 335-357.
• The large scale geometry of some metabelian groups (joint with Kevin Whyte), Michigan Math. Journal, Vol. 52 No. 1 (2004), 205-218.
• A quasi-isometry classification of iterated Baumslag-Solitar groups (joint with Tullia Dymarz and Kevin Whyte), in preparation.

Twisted Conjugacy Classes

• Twisted conjugacy and quasi-isomety invariance for generalized solvable Baumslag-Solitar groups (joint with Peter Wong), J. Lond. Math. Soc. (2) 75 (2007), no. 3, 705--717.
• A note on twisted conjugacy and generalized Baumslag-Solitar groups (joint with Peter Wong), 2006.
• The geometry of twisted conjugacy classes in wreath products (joint with Peter Wong), Geometry, Rigidity and Group Actions, Chicago Lectures in Math., Univ. Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2011, 561-587.

Dehn Functions of groups

• Equivalence of geometric and combinatorial Dehn functions (joint with Jose Burillo), New York Journal of Mathematics, Vol. 8 (2002), 169-179.
• The Dehn function of PSL(2,Z[1/p]), Geom. Dedicata, Vol. 102 No. 1 (2003), 179-195.

Thompson's group F and generalizations

• Bounding restricted rotation distance (joint with Sean Cleary), Information Proc. Letters, Vol. 88 No. 5 (2003), 251-256.
• Geometric quasi-isometric embeddings into Thompson's group F (joint with Sean Cleary), New York Journal of Mathematics, Vol. 9 (2003), 141-148.
• Thompson's group F is not almost convex (joint with Sean Cleary), J. Algebra, Vol. 270 No. 1 (2004), 133-149.
• Combinatorial properties of Thompson's group F (joint with Sean Cleary), Trans. AMS., Vol. 356 No. 7 (2004), 2825--2849.
• Seesaw words in Thompson's group F, (joint with Sean Cleary), in Jose Burillo, Sean Cleary, Murray Elder, Jennifer Taback and Enric Ventura, editors, Geometric Methods in Group Theory, Contemp. Math., Vol. 372, American Mathematical Society (2005), 147-160.
• Bounding right-arm rotation distances (joint with Sean Cleary), Internat. J. Algebra Comput.17 (2007), no. 2, 369--399.
• Combinatorial and metric properties of Thompson's group T (joint with Jose Burillo, Sean Cleary and Melanie Stein, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 361 (2009), no. 2, 631--652.
• Computing word length in alternate presentations of Thompson's group F (joint with Melanie Stein and Matthew Horak), Internat. J. Algebra Comput.19 (2009), no. 8, 963-997.
• Random subgroups of Thompson's group F (joint with Sean Cleary, Murray Elder and Andrew Reichnitzer), Groups Geom. Dyn. 4 (2010), no. 1, 91-126.
• A note on convexity properties of Thompson's group F (joint with Melanie Stein and Matthew Horak), Journal of Group Theory Vol. 15 No. 1 (2012), 37--46, electronic.
• Free Limits of Thompson's group F (joint with Azer Akhmedov and Melanie Stein) Geometriae Dedicata Vol. 155 No. 1 (2012), 163--176.

Lamplighter and Diestel-Leader groups

• Dead end words in lamplighter groups and wreath products, (joint with Sean Cleary), The Quarterly Journal of Mathematics, Vol. 56 No. 2 (2005), 165-178.
• Metric properties of the lamplighter group as an automata group, (joint with Sean Cleary), in Jose Burillo, Sean Cleary, Murray Elder, Jennifer Taback and Enric Ventura, editors, Geometric Methods in Group Theory, Contemp. Math., Vol. 372, American Mathematical Society (2005), 207-218.
• Cone types and geodesic languages for lamplighter groups and Thompson's group F (joint with Sean Cleary and Murray Elder), J. Algebra, Vol. 303 No. 2 (2006), 476-500.
• Metric properties of Diestel-Leader groups (joint with Melanie Stein), Michigan Math. J. Vol. 62 No. 2 (2013), 365--386.
• Automorphisms of Diestel-Leader groups (joint with Melanie Stein and Peter Wong), Internat. J. Algebra Comput. Vol. 25, no. 8, (2015), 1275-1299.
• Bilipschitz versus quasi-isometric equivalence for higher rank lamplighter groups (joint with Tullia Dymarz and Irine Peng), New York Journal of Mathematics Vol. 21 (2015), 129--150.
• Higher rank lamplighter groups are graph automatic (joint with Sophie Berube and Tara Palnitkar), J. Algebra Vol. 496, (2018), 315-343.

Automatic groups and generalizations

• Being Cayley automatic is closed under taking wreath produce with virtually cyclic groups (joint with Murray Elder and Dmitry Berkinsky), Bulletin of the Australian Math. Soc, Volume 104 , Issue 3 (2021), 464 -- 474.
• On the geometry of Cayley automatic groups (joint with Murray Elder and Dmitry Berkinsky), to appear in the International Journal of Algebra and Computation.
• C-graph automatic groups (joint with Murray Elder), J. Algebra 413 (2014), 289-319.
• Tree based language complexity of Thompson's group F (joint with Sharif Younes), Groups, Complexity, Cryptology, Vol. 7, no. 2, (2015), 135-152.
• Thompson's group F is 1-counter graph automatic (joint with Murray Elder), Groups, Complexity, Cryptology, Vol. 8, no. 1, (2016), 21-33.
• How close can a graph automatic group be to automatic? (joint with Murray Elder), in preparation.

Other papers

• Surface Symmetries and PSL_2(p), (joint with Murad Ozaydin and Charlotte Simmons), Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. Vol. 359 (2007), 2243--2268.
• Conjugation curvature in solvable Baumslag-Solitar groups (joint with Alden Walker), to appear in the Journal of Topology and Analysis.
• A new proof of the growth rate of the solvable Baumslag-Solitar groups (joint with Alden Walker), to appear in Geometriae Dedicata.

Books/Chapters

• Geometric Methods in Group Theory, Jose Burillo, Sean Cleary, Murray Elder, Jennifer Taback and Enric Ventura, editors, Contemp. Math., Vol. 371, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2005.
• An Introduction to Lamplighter Groups, in M. Clay and D. Margalit, Editors, Office Hours with a Geometric Group Theorist, Princeton University Press (2017).