Sam Miller ’17

Sam K Miller is (at the time of writing) finishing up his PhD in mathematics at UC Santa Cruz after being awarded a dissertation year fellowship, and in fall 2025, will begin a postdoctoral research position at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. His research areas include representation theory, the study of “representations,” vector spaces with additional symmetry, and more recently, tensor-triangular geometry, a metamathematical field involving understanding certain mathematical theories (tt-categories) by turning them into geometric objects. He writes: “I’m super excited to join the mathematics department at UGA, as it is one of the major departments in the US for my fields, and also super terrified of living somewhere that is not California for the first time since the pre-Mudd era. I’ve also loved teaching in graduate school – UCSC has let me be an instructor of record a number of times, and my pedagogy has come a long way since my days of grutoring (hopefully). I also joined an indie rock band (made entirely of UCSC math graduates) and a jazz combo, the first time I’ve really played music regularly since Mudd! Otherwise, I’m keeping myself mostly lucid by climbing, backpacking, snowboarding, playing chess at breweries, watching weird movies, and obsessively digging for music and DJing, though thankfully I’m long past the days of playing the stuff I’d play at Mudd parties.”