Bhama Srinivasan

Professor of Mathematics

Here are a few quick facts about me. I obtained my Ph.D at the University of Manchester, England under the direction of J.A. (Sandy) Green. I have been at UIC since 1980. My research is in the area of Group theory, specifically in the theory of Representations of finite groups. Like many of my colleagues I have taught courses at all levels in our Department, ranging from Calculus to Representation Theory. (Contrary to what my picture says, I don't teach Shakespeare. However, Shakespeare was PreCalculus, wasn't he?)

ADDRESS

Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science (M/C 249)
University of Illinois at Chicago
851 S. Morgan Street
Chicago, IL 60607-7045
e-mail: srinivas@uic.edu
Office Phone: (312) 413-2160
Fax: (312) 996-1491
Look up my entry on the university phonebook: phonebook data

RESEARCH

My research is in the area of Representation Theory of Finite Groups. Since the structure of an abstract finite group is often difficult to understand, one tries to represent it by a group of matrices over some field. The theory of finite group representations has had a rich history over the last 100 years (see e.g. an article by Charles Curtis in the Math. Intelligencer 14 (1992)). In this century a central figure was Richard Brauer who founded the theory of modular representations of finite groups.
In particular I work with finite reductive groups, which are analogues of Lie groups over finite fields. A big breakthrough in the representation theory of finite reductive groups occurred with the work of George Lusztig in the late 1970's and the 1980's. He introduced tools such as l-adic cohomology and intersection cohomology into the theory, which was then changed for ever. My work since the early 1980's, some of it with my colleague Paul Fong, has been the study of l-modular representations of finite classical groups. Our work has led to further work in this direction in Aachen, Kassel and Paris. An exposition of our work appears in a recent research monograph, "Representations of finite reductive groups" by M.Cabanes and M.Enguehard, Cambridge (2004).
The representation theory of finite classical groups also has rich connections with Combinatorics. Combinatorial objects such as Young tableaux and symmetric functions such as Hall-Littlewood functions arise in a natural way. I am also interested in these symmetric funtions.

TEACHING

In Spring 2009 I am teaching

Math 300 (Writing for Mathematics )

Math 215 (Introduction to Advanced Mathematics)

In Spring 2008 I was a co-organizer of a semester-long program "Representations of Finite Groups" at MSRI (Mathematical Sciences Research Institute), Berkeley. During my stay there I also co-organized two workshops: "Connections for Women" and "Lie Theory".
RECENT PREPRINTS

This paper has appeared in a special volume of the Journal of Algebra dedicated to the memory of Walter Feit: J.Agebra 319 (2008). Isolated Blocks, II

Link to a talk at AIM, Palo Alto:

Modular Representations

Link to a talk at Gainesville:

Combinatorics and Representations