Sarfraz Ahmad
Professor - CUI Lahore
Dr. Ahmad did his PhD from ASSMS, Government College University, Pakistan in 2008 under the supervision of Prof. Dorin Popescu in the area of Commutative Algebra.
During 2010-11 he worked as a Post Doctorate at Philipps Universitat Marburg Germany in Combinatorial Commutative Algebra with a research group of Prof. Volkmar Welker.
Dr. Ahmad has visited ICTP, Italy and UAEU, U. A. E. as a visiting scientist in 2009 and 2017-18, respectively. He has academic visits in more than 20 countries including U. S. A, Canada, U.K., Japan, Spain, France, Australia, Switzerland, South Korea, Hong Kong, etc.
He is working as Head of the Mathematics Department and Associate Professor at COMSATS University Islamabad(Lahore-Campus), Pakistan.
During the last few years, He has organized many scientific events including conferences on pure and applied mathematics, CIMPA school, international Mathematics Olympiad training camps and seminars.
He won research grants including two NRPU projects from HEC, Pakistan, GRAID project from IMU, Germany and travel grants. So far he has supervised 20 masters, 3 Phd students and has 35+ research publications.
How would you define your field of study? What is your vision about it? Which are the topics you're most passionate about?
Combinatorial Commutative Algebra deals with an interaction between Combinatorics, Discrete Geometry and Commutative Algebra. It is driven by the study of simplicial complexes, partially ordered sets and integer polytopes (i.e., polytopes whose vertices have integer coordinates).
The combinatorics of these objects is known to encode algebraic invariants of the Stanley-Reisner rings associated to simplicial complex and toric rings associated to integer polytopes. The combinatorial nature of the invariants makes them more easily accessible to beginning graduate students. It allows them to capture the more complicated algebraic invariants through concrete combinatorial examples.
I find this area of research very interesting because it turn questions raised in algebra inspire combinatorial problems that are appealing on their own right.
How do you expect your IMM experience to be?
International Master of Mathematics is indeed an interesting and innovative concept. Prof. Stefano (ICTP, Italy) thought about it. I along with him worked for the last couple of years to make it happen.
I am teaching the course of Commutative Algebra since last ten years. But this will be a wonderful idea to teach it along with Prof. Volkmar Welker, from Philipps Universitat Marburg, Germany. I am very excited to have this amazing experience.
Which is your teaching philosophy? What would you like to transmit to your students? How do you motivate them?
I teach main ideas of the course and make my students to think about how to apply these techniques of algebra in other fields of sciences.
For me class atmosphere is very important where students must be encouraged to ask questions. During the class, involvement of the students are very important.
The applications, tutorials and use of computer algebra systems like CoCoA and Singular are an essential part of my teaching.