Education
- PhD, University of Oklahoma (2019)
- MA, University of Oklahoma (2014)
- BA (Math/Computer Science), Bethel College (2011)
- Budapest Semesters in Mathematics (Fall 2010)
Courses Taught
- Discrete structures
- Intro to proofs
- Topology
- Real analysis
- Calculus I & II
- Linear algebra
- Preparation for industrial careers in mathematics
- Intro to artificial intelligence
Research Interests
Topology, geometric group theory, combinatorial group theory, theoretical computer science
Publications
Christopher-Lloyd Simon and Ben Stucky, The LooPindex Digital Catalog, 2024. Self-published electronically, GitHub.
Christopher-Lloyd Simon and Ben Stucky, The pinning ideal of a multiloop, 2024. Submitted for publication, arxiv version.
Ben Stucky, Cubulating one-relator products with torsion. Groups Geom. Dyn. 15 (2021), no. 2, pp. 691–754
Ben Stucky
Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science,
Co-Chair of Math and Computer Science
Pronouns: he/him/his
Email: stuckybw@joker47.net
Phone: 608-363-2193
Schedule an Appointment
Office: Room 218, Sanger Center for the Sciences
Hi there! My favorite part of teaching at Beloit is the close relationships I have with my students. I believe that everyone deserves to experience the joys of math and computer science, and I support Dr. Federico Ardila’s axioms. Students from marginalized groups (women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ individuals, folks with disabilities, and more) have been and continue to be excluded from these subjects and STEM in general. Additionally, many of my students’ future employers in government and industry do not encourage or welcome challenges to the status quo, frequently putting employees in positions of unknowingly or unwillingly furthering systemic injustices. I believe it is important to decolonize and demilitarize our subject, and I strive to equip my students with the habits of critical thinking necessary to interrogate the potential uses of the technical skills they acquire in my classroom.
I love to teach all kinds of courses. In intro-level courses like calculus, I get to meet students from many different majors, and we often learn together the ways that mathematics can serve their interests in other disciplines. In more advanced courses like topology, I get to help students deepen their creative problem-solving abilities and logical reasoning, skills which serve them well regardless of their career goals.
In my research, I am most interested in topics blending theoretical math (especially topology and geometric group theory) and computer science (computability and complexity theory as well as practical algorithms). I am currently thinking a lot about loops, flexible topological objects that you have seen if you have ever charted your path on an exercise routine, or even written the number eight. With Christopher-Lloyd Simon and others, we are studying games about pinning loops. Roughly speaking, we want to understand where and how many obstructions (“pins”) are needed to preserve the shape of a given loop. We have shown that a certain one-player version of “pin-the-loop” is interesting in the sense that there is no easy way to compute an optimal strategy. The game opens onto a whole world of unanswered questions with lots of opportunities for interested students to get involved!
Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my family and volunteering in my community. I like skateboarding, listening to and making music, and learning new things about math, computer science, and physics. I am fascinated by the hacking, reverse engineering, and glitch hunting carried out by communities dedicated to video game speedrunning. I love puzzles and games with a low floor and high ceiling; that is, ones with few and simple rules from which complex logic and deep strategy emerge, and my favorite multiplayer ones also tend to riff on some notion of information asymmetry. Some of them include Baba is You, Blokus, Hanabi, Poker, Mafia, and the Game of Life.
