[Interview] Dr. Drummond-Cole, Research Fellow

Focusing on Algebraic Topology… Extending research in areas like String Topology 

"I am pretty satisfied with living and working environment. I live near campus so I can walk or bike to work very quickly. My research is going well and I’ve started a number of new collaborations since I came here. "

"Frank and free" would be a fitting phrase to describe Dr. Gabriel C. Drummond-Cole, a talented mathematician who loves spicy, Korean noodles called 쫄면 (jolmyeon) and who is a big fan of board games. In keeping with his casual choice of clothing (a t-shirt and a jacket, his tattooed arms slightly showing) he appeared comfortable and quite at ease during the interview, but spoke candidly about his work at IBS and life in Korea.

Dr. Drummond-Cole, a research fellow in a tenure track position at IBS, came to Korea in 2013 and is passionate about his research at the IBS Center for Geometry and Physics (CGP). While attending the University of California at Berkeley, he participated in a VIGRE (Vertical InteGration of Research and Education) program by the NSF (National Science Foundation). It was a program to facilitate vertically integrated collaboration among all different levels in mathematics. Through this program, professors and postdocs, as well as graduate, undergraduate and high school students gathered together to communicate with one another. Through this program, he became interested in majoring in mathematics and so it was essentially VIGRE that made him what he is today.

He earned his BA at the University of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. at the City University of New York. Upon graduating, he worked as an NSF postdoctoral research fellow and Ralph P. Boas assistant professor at Northwestern University for three years. During this time, Professor Jae-Suk Park, an IBS group leader invited him to visit Korea, where CGP had just begun operations.

"Professor Park and my doctoral advisor were long-time friends and collaborators, and they have known each other maybe 20 years or longer." he said. When Dr. Drummond-Cole was nearing the end of his postdoc at Northwestern University, Professor Park encouraged him to apply to IBS. 

Though he had never seriously considered working outside of the US, the year he finished his postdoc was not a good year for the mathematics job market. "The offer from IBS was clearly the best option. I was a little nervous, but I decided to come here and give it a try."

Getting used to Korean life - jolmyeon is my favorite food

Dr. Drummond-Cole also shared things about his work and life in Korea.

"My schedule is not really fixed because I have many collaborators in Europe and the United States. They normally have teaching requirements and administrative duties that I don’t have. Sometimes I have a Skype meeting at my apartment very early in the morning or very late at night with collaborators. Other than that I work in my office."

One of his favorite pastimes is playing board games. He owns about 300 games, including the traditional Korean board game 윷놀이 (yutnori), which he bought in Korea. He is also interested in other Korean games including 화투 (hwa-too) and 주령구(juryeong-gu).

Though a strict vegetarian, he is trying to familiarize himself with Korean foods. Since many Korean foods include fish sauce or anchovy broth, he regrets not being able to enjoy Korean food as much as he would like to. "What makes it a little hard for me is that some food labels do not have specific enough information about the ingredients, but I think I have adapted pretty well and am happy with my options. My favorites are probably jolmyeon and 콩국수 (konggooksu)."



Main research is in algebraic topology - focused on Riemann surfaces

Dr. Drummond-Cole’s research field is Algebraic topology. Topology is the study of abstract shapes that can be deformed without changing their essential characteristics so that shapes can be stretched and twisted. Algebraic topology is a subfield that focuses on algebraic operations like multiplication that can be defined using shapes.

Particularly, the shapes he is interested in are usually related in some way to Riemann surfaces, which are two dimensional shapes, like the surface of a sphere or a torus, possibly with holes cut in them.

"You can think of the holes as inputs or outputs and the shape itself as some sort of machine. For example, a multiplication might be a sphere with two holes at the top, for the two things that you are multiplying together and one hole at the bottom for the thing you get after you do the multiplication," he said.

These structures are related to certain kinds of field theories in theoretical physics. Other than that, Riemann surfaces are a topic of wide interest and applicability throughout mathematics so his interests interface with those of other mathematicians.

To become a world-class institution, Improving the living environment is important

Dr. Drummond-Cole speaks honestly from an overseas researcher’s point of view. He suggests IBS should give more budgetary independence to Centers. "I think the more budgetary independence the individual research centers have, the better our chances are to accomplish the goals set out for us. As theoretical scientists, we don’t need expensive lab equipment at CGP. On the other hand, we often need to invite visitors from around the world to work intensively together on collaborative projects. Some of these visits should be for several weeks or longer. This is too long for some visitors to be comfortable at a hotel. For this reason, it is important for us to have a guest apartment for long-term visitors. But there are many budgetary restrictions that make finding and maintaining a guest apartment much harder than it needs to be."

The living and work environments are also important factors for international researchers when deciding on whether to come to or stay with IBS. Therefore, he believes that there must be an improvement in the both environments to attract and retain highly qualified overseas scientists.

Since having joined IBS, Dr. Drummond-Cole has a number of research projects that he has been focusing on. He wrote in the IBS journal about his work on homotopy probability theory. He is also working on projects related to string topology, configuration spaces of surfaces, and homotopy algebra.

"At this point I don’t have one single overriding research goal. As I said, I am working on many things here and I feel really great. I've been working on and done a couple of other projects that I didn't even mention. I feel that this is the most productive period that I've had in my career so far. My hope is that I can find and contribute to many interesting problems, as well as learn new tools and new techniques so that others may find that my constructions and my insights are useful in their own research."

As an international scientist, he advised young Korean researchers to obtain more opportunities to go abroad. "I wish that the young Korean graduate students and postdoctoral researchers got more opportunities to interact with international scholars and present their work, because mathematics is extremely global. It would be great if they got more support for travel."

He concluded the interview by expressing appreciation to the Korean people.