Welcome to Hailong Dao's webpage
(UPDATE: the below summary was written when I was a postdoc. I am very happy to report that many of the old homological conjectures have now been resolved , and that fortunately for me, I have spent most of my time since graduation making my own conjectures. Some recent progress on them can be found here and here .)
My research interests are focused on commutative algebra and its connections to neighbor fields such as algebraic K-theory or algebraic geometry. One of the motivations for my research is a group of questions informally known as "the homological conjectures". Surprisingly, there is an
wiki entry for them, in case you are curious. For a very readable history of these questions, see this book review by Craig Huneke.
The main reason I started working on these questions was my thesis advisor,
Mel Hochster. He has been obsessed with these problems for over 30 years and some of his best work were motivated
by them. Needless to say, the remaining questions are pretty hard, but it does not prevent him from trying
them on his students! Three years into the program, I seriously considered switching to Economics, since compared
to Serre's Positivity Conjecture, the global poverty problem seemed at least doable! Fortunately,
Mel's constant encouragement and kindness (plus his enormous grant) helped me through, and now I enjoy thinking about them a whole lot more. In fact, these are beautiful problems, and it is quite easy to fall in love with them. Trouble is, your love
is almost never returned (just like high school). As often with doomed love affairs, this one did bring out some
unintended consequenses, a summary of which you can find here.
NEW!!! If you are a graduate student, you might be interested in the Kansas Extension Seminar.
Sometimes I put questions related to my research on Mathoverflow. It has been great fun!
Some recent and upcoming events.
Events I have been involved in organizing.
My students.
My collaborators.
My CV.
Commutative Algebra at KU
There is a very active Commutative Algebra/Algebraic Geometry group at KU. The
group page has a lot more information
on the people in the group. There is also an Algebra seminar .
Teaching
This semester, I am not teaching.
The 32nd KU Mathematics Prize Competition will take place on Monday,
April 7, 2014, from 6-9 PM in Snow 306. Please register online
if you are interested.
More general information can be found here .
The courses I have taught at KU:
Math 791 (Spring 2014).
Math 243
Math 558
Math 290 ,
Math 790 , Math 915.
Math 791 (Spring 2012).
Math 830 (Fall 2011).
Math 365 (Fall 2010)
Math 661 (Spring 2010)
Math 142 (Fall 2009)
Math 121 (Fall 2008)
Personal
I was born and raised in Hanoi, Vietnam. I came to
the University of Sydney in 1997 and got my Bachelor of Science there
in 2000. I came to the US in Jan 2001, and spent a semester at the University
of Maine. Finally, I settled down at the Mathematics Department at University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
for my PhD and finished in April 2006. Between August 2006 and June 2008 I was a pretty happy
post-doc at the University of Utah. In 2008 I accepted a tenure-track position at University of Kansas. Below is a picture of me
in front of the Daily Show headquater in NY. (I started watching it in 2001, before most people in my house, which holds 30 American undergrads, noticed me laughing histerically every night around 11pm ! So I think I did contribute to its popularity. You're welcome, Jon! ).
