Jeffrey Brock


Jeffrey Farlowe Brock is an American mathematician, working in low-dimensional geometry and topology. He is known for his contributions to the understanding of hyperbolic 3-manifolds and the geometry of Teichmüller spaces.
Since July 2018, Brock is a Professor of Mathematics at Yale University, and from January 2019 he will become the first FAS dean of science at Yale University.
Before joining Yale, he was a professor at Brown University, and also founding director of the Data Science Initiative at Brown University.

Biography

Brock obtained a BA from Yale University in 1992. He completed a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1997, under the supervision of Curtis T. McMullen.
Brock then held positions as Szego Assistant Professor at Stanford University, assistant professor at the University of Chicago, and Donald D. Harrington Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He became associate professor at Brown University in 2004, where he has been full professor since 2007. He was chair of the Mathematics Department from 2013 to 2017.
Brock has been Associate Director of ICERM since 2013. Previously, he had been Deputy Director between 2010 and 2013.
Starting in July 2018 he will take up a position as Professor of Mathematics at Yale University, and from January 2019 he will become the first FAS dean of science at Yale University.
Brock is also an accomplished jazz musician. He was the founding bassist of the Vijay Iyer Trio, lead by the acclaimed jazz pianist Vijay Iyer.
He is married and has three children.

Research

Jeffrey Brock's research focuses on low-dimensional topology and geometry, particularly on spaces with hyperbolic geometry or negative curvature. His joint work with Richard Canary and Yair Minsky resulted in a solution to the "Ending Lamination Conjecture" of William Thurston, culminating in the geometric classification theorem for hyperbolic 3-manifolds in terms of their fundamental group and the structure of their ends.
More recently, he has worked to understand applications of geometry and topology to the structure of massive and complex data sets and the risks and implications of the increasing use of 'black box' algorithms in science and society.

Honors and awards