Robert Tang

Robert Tang

Associate Professor (Jan 2025 - ); Assistant Professor (Sep 2020 - Dec 2024) in pure mathematics at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.

PhD Mathematics 2013, University of Warwick
BSc (Honours) 2008, University of Sydney

Research interests: Low-dimensional topology, geometric group theory, hyperbolic geometry, Teichmueller theory, dynamical systems

Email: robert (dot) tang (at) xjtlu (dot) edu (dot) cn

ORCID iD iconorcid.org/0000-0001-7021-4117

Previous positions

  • Postdoctoral Scholar, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, 2017 - 2020
  • Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Oklahoma, 2014 - 2017
  • Research Member, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley, California, Fall 2016
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, ICERM, Brown University, Fall 2013

Papers and Publications

My papers on the arXiv can be found here.

  1. Coarse medians and universal quasigeodesic cones.
    Preprint, 12 pages, March 2026, arXiv:2603.15264.
     
  2. Epimorphism classes and relatively maximal metrics in large-scale geometry.
    Preprint, 17 pages, December 2025, arXiv:2512.13378.
     
  3. The metric Rips filtration, universal quasigeodesic cones, and hierarchically hyperbolic spaces.
    Preprint, 49 pages, November 2025, arXiv:2511.16463.
     
  4. Categorical characterisations of quasi-isometric embeddings.
    Preprint, 19 pages, November 2024, arXiv:2411.08501.
     
  5. Detecting danger in gridworlds using Gromov's Link Condition (with Thomas F Burns).
    Transactions on Machine Learning Research, December 2023, OpenReview.
     
  6. Large-scale geometry of the saddle connection graph (with Valentina Disarlo, Huiping Pan, and Anja Randecker).
    Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, Volume 374, Number 11, November 2021, pp 8101–8129. DOI: 10.1090/tran/8448.
     
  7. Affine diffeomorphism groups are undistorted.
    Journal of the London Mathematical Society, February 2021, Volume 104, Issue 2, pp 747-769, DOI: 10.1112/jlms.12445.
     
  8. Rigidity of the saddle connection complex (with Valentina Disarlo and Anja Randecker).
    Journal of Topology, September 2022, Volume 15, Issue 3, pp 1248-1310, DOI: 10.1112/topo.12242.
     
  9. Cubical geometry in the polygonalisation complex (with Mark Bell and Valentina Disarlo).
    Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, July 2019, Volume 167, Issue 1, pp. 1-22, DOI: 10.1017/S0305004118000130.
     
  10. Veech surfaces and simple closed curves (with Max Forester and Jing Tao).
    Israel Journal of Mathematics, February 2018, Volume 223, Issue 1, pp 323-342, DOI: 10.1007/s11856-017-1617-5.
     
  11. Shadows of Teichmüller discs in the curve graph (with Richard Webb).
    International Mathematics Research Notices, June 2018, Volume 2018, Issue 11, pp 3301–3341, DOI: 10.1093/imrn/rnw318.
     
  12. Projections in the curve complex arising from covering maps.
    Pacific Journal of Mathematics, August 2017, Vol. 291, No. 1, 213-239, DOI: 10.2140/pjm.2017.291.213.
     
  13. The curve complex and covers via hyperbolic 3-manifolds.
    Geometriae Dedicata, December 2012, Volume 161, Issue 1, pp 233-237, DOI: 10.1007/s10711-012-9703-7.

Seminar

I was an organiser of the Geometric Group Theory in East Asia (GGTea) seminar which ran during 2020 - 2021.

Grants

  • Suzhou Science and Technology Programme: Gusu Young Innovative Talent Fund, 2022 - 2025
  • NSFC Young Scientists Fund, 2022 - 2024
  • JSPS KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists, 2019 - 2020