Maria Monks Gillespie
Colorado State University
“If we have no idea why a statement is true, we can still prove it by induction.” –Gian-Carlo Rota
About Me
I am an Associate Professor in Mathematics at Colorado State University, having received tenure in 2025. I received my Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, advised by Mark Haiman, who in turn studied with Rota (quoted above). I also previously studied as an NSF and Krener Postdoctoral Fellow with Anne Schilling at UC Davis.
My current research mission is to build a combinatorics-geometry dictionary between moduli spaces and the combinatorial objects that can help compute in them. This includes the interplay between Schubert type objects such as flag varieties and the combinatorics of symmetric function theory and Young tableaux, as well as the newer developments in the area of moduli of curves, using labeled trees, graphs, matchings, and algorithms to compute in their cohomology rings.
Put more succinctly: stuck on a geometry problem because you need a bijection between two sets of combinatorial objects, or need to simplify a combinatorial looking sum? Look no further and send me (or any one of my grad students) an email!
As an illustration of my area of research, as well as a directory for this website, the menu at the upper left is a Young tableau. Feel free to conjugate it any time you wish. Included in the Young tableau menu is the CSU Putnam club website, my math blog, and the home page for the Open Educational Resources project on combinatorics materials that I am involved in.
Mathematical family
Students:
- Kyle Salois - Ph.D., 2025
- Jacob McCann - Masters, 2024
- Andrew Reimer-Berg - Ph.D., expected 2026
- Kelsey Brown - Ph.D., expected 2026
Postdocs:
- Joseph Pappe - 2023--2026
Contact Info
Maria Gillespie
Maria [dot] Gillespie [at] colostate [dot] edu