Theoretical physics with Professor Martin Rocek "I would be willing to work with a bright student who is willing to learn some new things. Some facility with Maple might be useful, but mostly the energy and interest. The work would be theoretical and pretty mathematical." Here is an example of a possible project on Ricci flow and Piecewise-Linear spaces: "Recent work on Ricci-flow, a particular way of deforming curved spaces to smooth them out, has been used to prove the famed Poincare conjecture. I want to study this in the context of triangulated spaces using ideas invented by Regge. In this approach, a curved space is approximated by flat blocks that are glued together at hinges like a geodesic dome. The project would involve working out the analog of the Ricci-flow equations, and a mix of numerical (computer) work and analytic calculations." Prof. Rocek is also available for a reading course (PHY447) on one of the following texts: (1) Howard Georgi: Lie Algebras in Particle Physics (Frontiers in Physics) (2) Landau and Lifshitz: Classical Mechanics (3) Hawking and Ellis: The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time       (For more advanced students.) To learn more about Prof. Rocek's research visit the "more info" link on his web page. October 2003