Benjamin McKenna

Photo of Benjamin McKenna

I am a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications, under the supervision of Horng-Tzer Yau. My work is in probability theory, specifically random matrices and the geometry of high-dimensional random functions.

Previously, I spent spring 2022 on a Fulbright-Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation grant doing research at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), under the supervision of László Erdős. In fall 2021, I was a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics at MSRI.

I received a Ph.D. in mathematics in 2021 from the Courant Institute, New York University, and an A.B. in mathematics in 2016 from The University of Chicago. My Ph.D. thesis, advised by Gérard Ben Arous and Paul Bourgade, is here.

I co-organize the CMSA Probability Seminar with Changji Xu.

My email is bmckenna (at) fas.harvard.edu. Here is my CV.

Research

Talks

Teaching

I am not currently teaching, but in fall 2021 I gave two 90-minute videotaped guest lectures in Gérard Ben Arous's graduate course Random Matrices and Random Landscapes at UC Berkeley, mostly talking about the third and fourth papers above. The first lecture is here and the second lecture is here.