Laura Wakelin

Dr Laura Wakelin is a Heilbronn Research Fellow at King’s College London’s Department of Mathematics, part of the Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences. She holds affiliations with the Geometry Group and has held previous positions at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics (MPIM, Bonn) and will join the University of Texas at Austin in 2025. Her research focuses on low-dimensional topology, particularly Dehn surgery and 4-dimensional problems.

• PhD: Completed in 2023 via the London School of Geometry and Number Theory (LSGNT) at Imperial College London, advised by Dr Steven Sivek.
• Mentors: Currently Dr Mehdi Yazdi (KCL); future mentor Prof. Lisa Piccirillo (UT Austin).

Research interests include characterising/non-characterising slopes, cosmetic surgeries, hyperbolic 3-manifolds, and multisections of 4-manifolds. Her work employs geometric, algebraic, and combinatorial techniques across topology and geometry.

Awardees of the Yael Naim Dowker Prize (2023) for her PhD thesis. Active in the Geometry Group at King’s, collaborating on topics like algebraic geometry, cohomology, and symplectic structures.

Future plans include extending her research into 4-manifold embeddings and geometric analysis, supported by the Heilbronn Fellowship and upcoming UT Austin collaboration.