Hi! My name is Robbie Lyman.
Currently I am working on long-overdue revisions to a research paper, learning professional techniques for pop music production, practicing for the JLPT N3 Japanese language proficiency test, and preparing to run a marathon with my brothers.
This semester I am teaching College Algebra.
I work as an assistant professor in the department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Rutgers University–Newark. Before becoming an assistant professor, I was at Rutgers on a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation working with Lee Mosher. I earned my PhD in mathematics from Tufts University, where my advisor was Kim Ruane.
My math research focuses on geometric group theory. I like symmetry, metric geometry, group actions, topology, automorphisms of groups, and many many more things, mathematically.
I have published papers on things like the following. The structure and dynamics of outer automorphism groups of free groups and related groups, CAT(0) or CAT(-1) geometries for free-by-cyclic groups and Coxeter groups, “Stallings folding” for CAT(0) cube complexes, mapping class groups of surfaces of infinite type, homeomorphism groups of Stone spaces (or automorphim groups of Boolean algebras), and Christian Rosendal’s program coarse geometry for topological groups.
In roughly chronological order, my research collaborators include Santana Afton, Danny Calegari, Lvzhou Chen, Robert Kropholler, Michael Ben-Zvi, Thomas Ng, Naomi Andrew, Paige Hillen, Catherine Eva Pfaff, Beth Branman, George Domat, Hannah Hoganson, Elizabeth Field, Radhika Gupta, Emily Stark, Francisco Fournier-Facio, Peter Kropholler, Matt Zaremsky, Kasia Jankiewicz, Michelle Chu, Jean Pierre Mutanguha, and Genevieve Walsh.
I organize the Zig NYC meetups around the Zig programming language. In 2024 I spent a summer at The Recurse Center, a programming community centered around a 12-week “writer’s retreat for programmers.”
I help maintain the Zig bindings for Lua project Ziglua. In 2023 I wrote a Lua environment for creative coding implemented Zig called Seamstress.
I’ve played piano since I was eight years old. In 2022 I wrote, recorded and released an album of music titled “Learning to Run” as Alanza, centered around some Max4Live devices I made called bitters.
I’m working on a more solidly pop artist project, which I’m calling Alonzo, but it’s very early days yet. I’m also upping my production skills, working with Terence Lam
If you’d like to get in touch, I’d love to hear from you. My email is me@robbielyman.com.
Bluesky ‧ Alonzo (artist project, work-in progress) ‧ Pinboard ‧ LinkedIn ‧ GitHub