Dmitri Pavlov

Dmitri Pavlov is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Texas Tech University, where he has been since 2017 (promoted to tenured Associate Professor in 2024). His research focuses on homotopy theory, algebraic topology, and their applications to quantum field theory. He earned his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley (2011) and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Regensburg, Max Planck Institute, and University of Münster. Pavlov has supervised multiple Ph.D. students and actively engages in teaching advanced courses like Lie Groups, Homological Algebra, and Functorial Field Theory. His awards include the Herb Alexander Prize (2011) and a Simons Fellowship (2007–2008). Pavlov’s work bridges pure mathematics with theoretical physics, particularly through geometric cobordism hypothesis and extended field theories. He collaborates widely, co-authoring papers on topics like classifying spaces of infinity-sheaves and symmetric operads in spectra. His recent research emphasizes locality principles in quantum field theories and their classification via homotopy-theoretic methods.

Education: B.S./M.S. (2006/2007) from ITMO University, Ph.D. (2011) from UC Berkeley. Academic lineages trace back to prominent mathematicians like Peter Teichner and Friedrich Hirzebruch. Current research includes geometric field theory, differential cohomology, and higher categorical structures. Pavlov organizes the Quantum Homotopy Seminar and Topology & Geometry Seminar at Texas Tech, and has delivered invited talks globally at institutions like the Erwin Schrödinger Institute and University of Nottingham.