Sam Kim Miller

Sam Kim Miller is a Limited Term Assistant Professor (postdoctoral position) at the University of Georgia's Mathematics Department, working with Dan Nakano and Nate Harman. He completed his Ph.D. in 2025 at the University of California, Santa Cruz under the supervision of Robert Boltje, where he focused on representation theory and tensor-triangular geometry.

His educational background includes a Bachelor's degree from Harvey Mudd College in 2017, where he majored in mathematics with a concentration in political studies focusing on environmental and ethnic politics. Prior to his Ph.D., he worked as a platform engineer at SupplyFrame with experience in NLP and AI.

Miller's research primarily focuses on representation theory, particularly modular representation theory, tensor-triangular geometry, and their interactions. He has made significant contributions to the study of endotrivial complexes, permutation modules, and Galois descent in representation theory. His work often bridges abstract algebra with categorical and geometric perspectives.

His research output shows a strong trend toward understanding the connections between representation theory and tensor-triangular geometry, with particular emphasis on endotrivial complexes and their applications to longstanding conjectures in the field like Broue's abelian defect group conjecture. His recent work has expanded into noncommutative tensor-triangular geometry and functorial properties.

• UCSC Department of Mathematics (Inaugural) Outstanding Research Award (2025)
• Sigma Xi Full Membership (2025-)
• AMS-Simons Travel Grant (2025-2027)
• UC Santa Cruz Chancellor's Dissertation Full-Year Fellowship (2024-2025)
• Putnam top 500 finishers (2014, 2015)
• ICTM State Math Contest individual winner (2013)

Miller has been active in mathematics education and outreach, serving as an instructor for various mathematics courses at both the University of Georgia and UC Santa Cruz. He has taught courses ranging from Precalculus to advanced topics in Combinatorics and Number Theory. He has also mentored undergraduate students through the Directed Reading Program and served as a peer mentor for first-year graduate students.

He maintains an active research presence, regularly presenting his work at national and international conferences, including multiple AMS sectional meetings and specialized workshops in representation theory and algebraic groups across the United States and Europe.