Robert Lipshitz

I am a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oregon. My research focuses on low-dimensional topology and symplectic geometry. Like all tenure-line faculty in mathematics, I teach courses at all levels, depending on departmental need.

I am on leave for the 2025-2026 academic year, as the Minerva Visitor in the Mathematics Department at Princeton.

Research

Teaching

Service

Editorial work

If you would like me to handle your paper, consider submitting it to Quantum Topology, where I am an editor, or Geometry & Topology, where I am a managing editor. If you have a leadership role at a journal, allow me to recommend MSP’s EditFlow, which is less annoying than other editorial management software I have used.

K3

I was an editor for chapter 3 of the K3 List, a successor to Kirby’s problem lists in low-dimensional topology. We expect that the K3 list will be published by the AMS in 2026; a preliminary version is available from the webpage.

Topology seminar webpage

I often help organize the University of Oregon topology seminar, whose webpage is here (on hiatus). A full calendar of math seminars at the University of Oregon is here. If you are not a mathematician, you might be particularly interested in the public-facing Niven Lecture, Distinguished Lectures for Undergraduates (currently on hiatus), and AWM Speaker Series.

New perspectives in low-dimensional topology

We expect to hold a conference “New perspectives in low-dimensional topology” at Princeton on June 14 - 18, 2027, in rough coincidence with Peter Ozsváth’s 60th birthday. More information will be added to the conference webpage soon.

Other Professional Projects

I wrote several tutorials on using the open source 3D graphics software Blender to create line drawings for mathematics papers. (For instance, these explain how to make this site’s logo using Python in Blender.)

I wrote documentation for Bohua Zhan’s package bfh_python (for computing Heegaard Floer homology using bordered Heegaard Floer homology). The bfh_python documentation is here; the package itself is on github. (After doing beautiful work on Floer theory, Zhan transitioned to a career in computer science.)

Contact

E-mail
lipshitz@uoregon.edu
Phone
(541) 346-5625
Fax
(541) 346-0987
Address
Fenton Hall, Room 303
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1222
USA