Tamas Kalman

Biography

Dr. Tamas Kalman , is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is a researcher and instructor of mathematics. He is fortunate to have spent time at the following great institutions: 1- The Institute of Mathematics at Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest, Hungary), where he received my undergraduate degree in 1999; 2- The Department of Mathematics of the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a graduate student (advisors: Michael Hutchings and Rob Kirby) until he received my Ph. D. degree in 2004; 3- The University of Southern California's Department of Mathematics, where he spent three years as a non-tenure track assistant professor (2004-2007); 4- The Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Tokyo, where he was a JSPS research fellow (2007-2008) and a GCOE (Global Center of Excellence) visiting assistant professor (2008-2010); 5- The Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics. (Before getting tenure, he belonged to the Global Edge Institute.)

Research Interest

His main research interests are in low-dimensional geometric topology, in particular in contact 3-manifolds and Legendrian knots (and their Floer homologies), as well as in classical knot invariants such as the Homfly polynomial. Recently he started doing work on graphs and hypergraphs, too. He introduced two new polynomial invariants of integer polymatroids that generalize one-variable valuations of the Tutte polynomial. Through combinatorics, he found interesting new connections between knot polynomials and Floer homology.