About

I am an assistant professor of mathemtatics in the Department of Science and Mathematics at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. I received my PhD in mathematics from the University of South Carolina under the supervision of Dr. Matthew Ballard. I received my undergraduate and masters degree in mathematics from the College of Charleston. My master's thesis was completed under the supervision of Dr. Oleg Smirnov. Also at the College of Charleston I was funded by the NSF under the supervision of Dr. Amy Langville dealing with applications to demographic searches with clique partionting and operations research.

Teaching

Click for More Details about past and present classes

This semester (Fall 2020) I am teaching:

MA 121 Calculus 1 Click for the syllabus

MA 210 Discrete Mathematics Click for the syllabus

MA 253 Statistics Click for the syllabus

MA 322 Calculus 3 Click for the syllabus

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
9:00 am MA 253-01 In Office MA 253-01 In Office MA 253-01
9:30 am Statistics Hulman Hall Statistics Hulman Hall Statistics
10:00 am MA 322-01 306 MA 322-01 306 MA 322-01
10:30 am Calculus III MA 121-01 Calculus III MA 121-01 Calculus III
11:00 am Virtual/In Office Calculus I Virtual/In Office Calculus I Virtual/In Office
11:30 am Zoom Link Zoom Link Zoom Link
12:00 pm LUNCH LUNCH LUNCH LUNCH LUNCH
12:30 pm
1:00 pm MA 253-03 MA 253-03
1:30 pm Outdoor Statistics Outdoor Statistics Outdoor
2:00 pm (weather permitting) (weather permitting) (weather permitting)
2:30 pm
3:00 pm In Office MA 210-01 In Office MA 210-01 In Office
3:30 pm Hulman Hall Discrete Math Hulman Hall Discrete Math Hulman Hall
4:00 pm 306 306 306
4:30 pm

*Office Hours (for any format) can be made by appointment using the above email address*

Research Interests

Less Technical: I study a branch of mathematics known as Algebraic Geometry. This branch of mathematics studies the properties of geometric objects which can be described by a polynomial equation. The geometric objects that I am most interested in are named after my academic great-grand father Shing-Tung Yau, known as a Calabi–Yau manifold. These objects have become most popular in theoretical physics, particularly in superstring theory, in which the extra dimensions of spacetime are conjectured to take the form of a 6-dimensional Calabi–Yau manifold, which led to the idea of mirror symmetry. For a more detailed and beginner friendly description of my research interests Click Here.

More Technical: My research interests include algebra and algebraic geometry. In particular, I am interested in algebraic groups, Lie algebras, hom-Lie algebras, geometric invariant theory, reductive groups, toric varieties, derived geometry, and graded algebras.

Papers/Preprints

Click for More Details on my research

Kernels for Grassmannian Flops (pre-print)

Universal Embedding of Hom-Lie Triple Systems (pre-print)

Bounded Operators on a Hilbert Space with finite $\mathbb{Z}$-grading (Master Thesis)

Contact

Email: Robert.Vandermolen(at)smwc(dot)edu

Office: Hulman Hall #306

Collected works of mine from #Noethember celebrating the life and career of Emmy Noether.