Rate My Professor Ting Xue

Ting Xue is an Associate Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne, where she serves as a member of the Representation Theory Group within the Pure Mathematics group. She earned her PhD in 2010 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under the supervision of George Lusztig, with a dissertation entitled "Nilpotent Orbits in Bad Characteristic and the Springer Correspondence." Her career trajectory includes appointments as Boas Assistant Professor at Northwestern University from 2010 to 2013 and Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki from 2013 to 2015. Xue's research centers on representation theory, algebraic groups, geometry of nilpotent orbits, Springer theory, and combinatorics emerging from representation theory. She has pioneered developments in Springer theory for graded Lie algebras and symmetric pairs, including classifications of character sheaves and geometric constructions of nearby cycle sheaves for stable polar representations and symmetric pairs. Her contributions extend to strategies for computing cohomology of certain Hessenberg varieties and moduli spaces on hyperelliptic curves, as well as descriptions of full support character sheaves for graded classical Lie algebras.

Xue maintains a prolific publication record in top-tier mathematical journals. Key publications include "Cuspidal character sheaves on graded Lie algebras II" (2025, with W. Liu and K. Vilonen), "Character sheaves for graded Lie algebras: stable gradings" (2023, Advances in Mathematics, with K. Vilonen), "Nearby cycle sheaves for symmetric pairs" (2023, American Journal of Mathematics, with M. Grinberg and K. Vilonen), "Character sheaves for symmetric pairs: special linear groups" (2023, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, with K. Vilonen), "Character sheaves for classical symmetric spaces" (2022, Representation Theory, with K. Vilonen), "Springer correspondence, hyperelliptic curves, and cohomology of Fano varieties" (2020, Mathematical Research Letters, with T.H. Chen and K. Vilonen), and "Springer correspondence for the split symmetric pair in type A" (2018, Compositio Mathematica, with T.H. Chen and K. Vilonen). Her work has received funding from the Australian Research Council, including the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE160100975) and Discovery Project grant (DP150103525). Xue teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in group theory and linear algebra, representation theory, vector calculus, calculus, and algebraic geometry. She organizes the Pure Mathematics Seminar series and was a visiting professor at Stanford University's Mathematics Research Center during the 2022-2023 academic year.