Research: I study algebra, that is, the study of operations such as addition but in an abstract setting. My training, however, was originally in geometry, in particular in the area of knots (but of things like spheres knotted in 4 dimensions). It turns out that one can associate to these knots a group that tells you a lot about the knot. So I started looking at the group and pretty much forgot about the knot. In recent years a happy marriage between geometry and algebra has taken place and one can look at these abstract groups as genuinely geometric objects, with things like geodesics and triangles. So far, I have written one paper on this new topic, I am writing a second and hope to complete a third (on automata groups) with a former colleague here at Tufts. I like the fact that I can join my two interests in one single topic. This is in fact, a very "hot" topic, meaning it is easy to get scooped (as we partially were on the automata group).