biography

Kyle Ormsby grew up near St. Louis, Missouri and always suspected the world was stranger than people were letting on. He earned a BA in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 2006 and a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 2010. After an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at MIT, he joined the Reed College faculty in 2014. He has also had visiting appointments at the University of Oslo, the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute, the University of Washington, and the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center, and he currently serves as the chair of Reed’s Department of Mathematics & Statistics. His work has been supported by a number of NSF and NIA grants.

Ormsby’s training is as an algebraic topologist, and his thesis work studied ways in which tools from stable homotopy theory can be applied in algebraic geometry via Morel and Voevodsky’s motivic homotopy theory. Ormsby’s work continues to use the perspective and tools of algebraic topology to explore other domains, including symmetry, combinatorics, category theory, and applied work in medical image analysis. His mathematics research appears in peer-reviewed journals including Advances in Mathematics, Geometry & Topology, Forum of Mathematics Sigma, Mathematische Zeitschrift, and Journal of the European Mathematical Society.

Ormsby is also a passionate leader of undergraduate research and research development, primarily through Reed’s Collaborative Mathematics Research Group, which he co-directs with Angélica Osorno. He has coauthored seven research papers with Reed undergraduates and has mentored an additional five papers authored solely by undergraduates. He also organized the 2021 Park City Mathematics Institute Undergraduate Faculty Program, co-organized a 2024 AMS Mathematics Research Community on homotopical combinatorics, and led Project Project, a Reed-based initiative dedicated to projecting mathematical ideas into the visual realm.

Extra-mathematically, Ormsby is an accomplished and joyful trail runner who has circumnavigated Mounts Saint Helens and Hood, completed the Teton Crest Trail and Joshua Tree Traverse, and took fourth place in the 100-mile Idaho Mountain Trail Ultra Festival. He also enjoys skiing with his family and reading expansively.

For further information, please see Ormsby’s CV (pdf, updated August 2024) or contact him at ormsbyk@reed.edu.