Michelle Chu

Michelle Chu is an Assistant Professor and McKnight Land-Grant Professor at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. She previously held NSF Postdoctoral Fellowships at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of California Santa Barbara, following her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin supervised by Alan W. Reid.

• PhD Thesis: Quantifying virtual properties of Bianchi groups (2018)
• Undergraduate Thesis: Hyperbolic 3-Manifolds as Discretized Configuration Spaces of Simple Graphs (2011)

Her research focuses on geometric topology and low-dimensional geometry, particularly in arithmetic hyperbolic manifolds, knot theory, and geometric group theory. Key areas include commensurability classes, virtual homological torsion, and interactions between character varieties and essential surfaces.

Her recent publications (2012–2022) highlight expertise in hyperbolic 3- and 4-manifolds, trisection genus, and arithmetic structures. Trends show a strong emphasis on geometric invariants, manifold embeddings, and algebraic-topological interactions.

• McKnight Land-Grant Professor
• NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship
• NSF Grant DMS-2243188

Chu advises PhD student Tori Braun. Her work intersects with teams at Young Geometric Group Theory XIII and the Mathematics Project at Minnesota. Office located at Vincent Hall 253.