Marcus Michelen

Assistant Professor

I'm an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Northwestern University. Previously, I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC) from 2021-2025. From 2019 - 2021 I was a postdoc at UIC, where I was mentored by Will Perkins. I received my Ph.D. in mathematics in 2019 from the University of Pennsylvania where my advisor was Robin Pemantle. I completed my Bachelor of Science in Engineering at The Cooper Union in 2014, where I majored in General Engineering and minored in Mathematics.

My research is in probability and combinatorics. Some of my recent research has focused on random polynomials, random matrices, and sphere packing/Gibbs point processes. My work is supported in part by an NSF CAREER grant DMS-2336788 as well as grant and DMS-2246624 (and previously DMS-2137623).

I have been featured in the 2024 Lathisms Calendar for Hispanic heritage month. General audience descriptions of portions of my work have appeared in Quanta Magazine in both video form and text (by Kelsey Houston-Edwards). I also wrote a layman's description for La Recherche (with French translation by Philippe Pajot).