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 Prof. Horng-Tzer Yau. My work is in probability theory, especially 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 Prof. László Erdős. In fall 2021, I was a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics at MSRI (now SLMath).

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 Prof. Gérard Ben Arous and Prof. Paul Bourgade, is here.

I co-organize the CMSA Probability Seminar with Kevin Yang.

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

Research

Talks

Teaching

In fall 2023, I am teaching Introduction to Calculus (Math 1a), an undergraduate course, at Harvard. Enrolled students can access the Canvas page here.

On the graduate side, 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 fourth and fifth papers above. The first lecture is here and the second lecture is here.