About

Me, June 2022.
Headshot by Michelle Tong.
cgonzales [at] carleton [dot] edu

Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Center for Mathematics and Computing
CMC 225
509 Goodsell Circle
Northfield, MN 55057

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Carleton College.

If you are requesting a letter of recommendation, click here.

Before Carleton, I was a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California at Irvine working with Jesse Wolfson and Nathan Kaplan. Check out this list of problems that Jesse and I put together based on material posed at the 2019 PIMS Arithmetic Topology workshop. Also, have fun browsing some of my favorite math visualizations!

I did my Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in algebraic topology, advised by Benson Farb and partially funded by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship. Before that I also studied Physics and Computer Science at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. I’m interested in spaces of algebraic maps between varieties, braids and configurations, the topology of algorithms, and the interplays of topology with number theory. Here is my CV.

I’m also a labor organizer, starting with my old union Graduate Students United back in 2016. In the time since I’ve worked with National Nurses United, the Chicago Teachers Union, and United Academics of the University of New Mexico. I was also a co-founding member of the UChicago Labor Council and have trained and organized with various academic unions and mutual aid groups over the last four years. I organize around the belief that institutions of higher education—as political, economic, and social engines—should be remade to serve working people, not just promote a handful of marginalized faces while expanding the systems of stratified exploitation that they exist to perpetuate.

I’m new to Northfield, though pieces of my heart will always belong in Albuquerque and Chicago. In my spare time, I like to write liberatory fiction*, play Dungeons & Dragons and Pokémon Go, practice martial arts, and watch TV with my partner and our kitty, Catulus.

*If this sounds cool, check Walidah Imarisha‘s introduction to Octavia’s Brood, which is what inspired me. An excerpt that makes me tear up: “Because all organizing is science fiction, we are dreaming new worlds every time we think about the changes we want to make in the world. The writers… just need a little space, and perhaps permission to immerse themselves fully in their visionary selves.” Thanks to Mathilde for getting me the book!