Jonathan Michala’s Personal Website

Education

University of Southern California, Ph.D. Mathematics, Provost Fellow (Expected May 2025)
Advisor: Kyler Siegel

Duke University, B.S. Mathematics, Magna Cum Laude (May 2020), Minor in Computer Science
U.S. Presidential Scholar

Research

My math research is in the field of symplectic geometry, where I study flexibility/rigidity phenomena via symplectic capacities. I’m considering a transition from pure math academia to AI safety research, and my interests within the field are wide-ranging but include agent foundations, mechanistic interpretability, singular learning theory, scalable oversight and capabilities in abstraction & planning. I’m also open to AI safety work in domains research, such as policy and field building work.

Activities

SPAR - Supervised Program for Alignment Research, participant - Spring 2025
Optimal Collective Intelligence Control
Mentors: Jonas Hallgren and Aaron Halpern with Equilibria Network
Geometry of Spacial World Models
Mentor: Matthieu Moullec
UC Riverside Geometry-Topology Seminar, speaker - February 2025
Title: Obstructions to Symplectic Embeddings in Dimension at least 6
AI Safety Fundamentals Alignment Course, participant - Fall 2024
Instructor: Chris Ackerman
Project: Introduction to the Learning Theoretic Agenda (Agent Foundations)
Math Department Coding Group, project lead - Fall 2024, USC
Lecture transcription tool, joint with Tianle Liu
AI Safety Club Collaboration, contributor - Fall 2024 to Spring 2025, USC
Using Microsoft Trace for autoformalization in Lean, joint with Oliver Liu and AJ Mannan
Qualifying Exam Boot Camp, Instructor - Summer 2024, USC
Taught Algebra, Real Analysis, and Topology
Kylerec Workshop, speaker - Summer 2024, Easton, WA
Title: The Cluster Formalism
Reference: Ionel-Parker 2018. The Gopakumar-Vafa formula for symplectic manifolds
SFT Zoom Reading Group, Organizer - Fall 2023 to Spring 2024
Text: Wendl, Lectures on Symplectic Field Theory
joint with Johannes Hauber, Filip Strakos, Matthew Buck, and Adrian Dawid
Graduate Colloquium Speaker - Fall 2023, USC
Title: Introduction to Symplectic Geometry and Floer Homology
Permutation Patterns Conference, Poster Presenter, - Summer 2023, Dijon, France
Poster: Characterizing Rothe Diagrams, joint with Ben Gillen
Persistence Homology Conference, attendee - Summer 2023, Albi, France
Topic: persistence homology in symplectic and contact topology
Floer Homology and Symplectic Homology Reading Group, organizer - Spring 2023
Texts: Audin-Damian, Wendl, Oancea, Floer-Hofer-Wysocki
Combinatorics Seminar, speaker - Spring 2023, USC Title: Characterizing Rothe Diagrams, joint with Ben Gillen
Morse Theory Reading Group, organizer - Fall 2021, USC
Text: Audin-Damian
Duke University Union Freewater Productions, chair - Fall 2019 to Spring 2020
Led Duke’s student film production house
U.S. Senate, intern - Summer 2017, Washington D.C.
Office of Senator Tim Scott
South Carolina Youth in Government, Youth Governor - Fall 2015
Elected to lead mock government for high school students across South Carolina
Eastside High School, Student Body President - 2015 to 2016, Greenville, SC
Raised $125,000 for the With Purpose Foundation

Publications

Jonathan Michala. Filtered Rational SFT Capacities for Stabilized Embeddings of Convex Toric Domains. In progress.
Ben Gillen and Jonathan Michala. Characterizing Rothe Diagrams, 2023. Preprint. arXiv:2303.11392.
Jonathan Michala, Alexander Pierson, Terry A. Loring, and Alexander B. Watson. Wave-packet propagation in a finite topological insulator and the spectral localizer index, Involve, 2021. arXiv:2001.05008
Jonathan Michala. The ranked pairs voting method and its properties: Findings and a conjecture, 2020. Undergraduate honors thesis.

Teaching

Graduate Algebraic Combinatorics, Grader - Fall 2024
Calculus III, Teaching Assistant, - Spring 2022
Calculus II, Teaching Assistant, - Fall 2021
Business Calculus, Teaching Assistant, - Spring 2021

Service