I am on sabbatical in Spring 2025.  If you have questions related to transfer credit or study abroad, please contact Prof. Yangyang Wang ([email protected]), who will be handling these matters until I return.

​About Me: I am an Assistant Professor at Brandeis University and the Landsman Career Development Chair in the Sciences.

Previously, I was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University (2019-2021), an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley (2018-2019), and a Morrey Visiting Assistant Professor, also at UC Berkeley (2017-2018). I received my Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2017, where I studied geometric group theory under the supervision of Tullia Dymarz.  

Here is a copy of my CV (updated March 2025): abbott_cv_2025.pdf.

I co-organize the Brandeis Topology Seminar.  The current schedule of talks can be found here.

I am the Undergraduate Advising Head II.  If you have questions about transfer credit or study abroad, feel free to email me!

Research interests: I study geometric group theory, the study of groups through their actions on metric spaces. I am particularly interested in groups that act by isometries on hyperbolic metric spaces.  My research focuses on the following main areas:
  • acylindrically hyperbolic groups and their various acylindrical actions on hyperbolic spaces 
  • hierarchically hyperbolic groups and spaces, which include mapping class groups, fundamental groups of 3-manifolds, and CAT(0) cubical groups 
  • (not necessarily acylindrical) actions of groups on hyperbolic spaces, including solvable Baumslag-Solitar groups, fundamental groups of mapping tori, and more generally 3-manifold groups.
  • big mapping class groups (these are mapping class groups of surfaces with infinitely generated fundamental group)

Students: I currently have 4 graduate students: