Meet the Speaker – Radha Kessar

We talk to Professor Radha Kessar from City, University of London about the next challenge she hopes to tackle in her field and the best piece of advice she has ever received.

 

1. What are then next interesting “big questions” or challenges you hope to tackle?

Over the last few years there has been remarkable progress towards proving some of the famous local-global conjectures of modular representation theory such as the Brauer height zero conjecture and the Alperin-McKay conjecture. But we are still missing adequate structural explanations and it would be great to be able to shed some light on this.

2. If not mathematics research, what would you have been?

Crime writer or (even better) private detective.

3. Best piece of advice you’ve received?

The only thing to consider when thinking of which career to take up is whether you enjoy doing what that career entails -the rest will sort itself out.

4. Deepening field knowledge and providing a networking platform, why are opportunities such as AMSI Winter School so valuable? What do you hope attendees take from your lectures?

I hope that those attending my lectures will feel that they got a glimpse into an area of mathematics with infinite possibilities, and that whatever area of research they choose to pursue they will keep some of the stuff from these lectures in the back of their minds and perhaps one day make a marvellous connection.

Professor Radha Kessar will be presenting the topic Introduction to the block theory of finite groups algebras at the 2020 Winter School at The University of Queensland from 29 June – 10 July