Cynthia Lester

I joined the College of Wooster as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics in Fall 2023. Prior to coming to Wooster, I was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Mathematics at Florida State University. My research interests include category theory, homotopy theory, algebraic topology, and K-theory. At Florida State University I worked with Ettore Aldrovandi on an extension of the determinant. Specifically, the determinant of a matrix can be categorified, generalized and extended to give information about K-theory. We are working on better understanding the K-theory of tensor triangulated categories. At the University of Oregon, I worked on a generalization of topology. Similar to how every set can be equipped with a topology to make a topological space (e.g. the real numbers with the usual open and closed sets), every category can be equipped with a Grothendieck topology. I am looking at the canonical Grothendieck topology and its homotopy invariant counterpart.

• E. Aldrovandi and C. Lester. On Multi-Determinant Functors for Triangulated Categories. Theory and Applications of Categories, Vol. 39, 2023, No. 27, pp 769-803.
• C. Lester. Covers in the Canonical Grothendieck Topology. Will be published in Volume LXV (2024) of Cahiers de topologie et géométrie différentielle catégoriques.

Undergraduate Research:

• C. Lester. Tiling with T and skew tetrominoes. Querqus: Linfield Journal of Undergraduate Research (2012).
• C. Lester, X. Luo and R. Huang. On local regularization for an inverse problem of option pricing. Applied Mathematics Letters 24.9 (2011): 1481-1485.