Alex Creiner
Education
PhD in Mathematics, 2022
University of North Texas
BSc in Mathematics, 2014
Northern Arizona University
About me
I'm mathematician currently working as a visiting assistant professor of Computer Science at Boston College. I believe that teaching and learning go hand-in-hand and believe that continuing to pursue knowledge and research myself is key to bringing the right energy to a classroom.
I consider myself antidisciplinary in that I believe that all academics need to make efforts to break out of their niche specializations and look in places they don't belong in order to collaborate and actually progress the development of human knowledge. Nonetheless, I am a mathematician, and I think like one. I intend to bring that viewpoint wherever my interests take me, which has been economics, sociology, cybernetics, philosophy or history. I intend to pursue a holistic view of human knowledge and to provide a mathematical perspective to topics that normally might not receive such a thing. It is my hope that through this perspective I can bring something valuable wherever my inquiries take me.
An archive of my personal notes and presentations can be found here. Select samples of my work for prospective employers and collaborators can be found here.
Research Interests
Logic and computability theory
Computational complexity theory
Quantum complexity theory
Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence
Political economy
Value theory
Cybernetics and systems theory
Descriptive set theory
Publications
Borel Complexity and Ramsey Largeness of Sets of Oracles Separating Complexity Classes
Alex Creiner and Stephen Jackson - Published in Mathematical Logic Quarterly August 2023. Available for free here
PhD Dissertation: On the Descriptive Complexity and Ramsey Measure of Sets of Oracles Separating Common Complexity Classes
Alex Creiner Access on the UNT archive by clicking here.
Talks I've given:
The Lightface Hierarchy and Computability on Arbitrary Polish Spaces (Graduate Logic Group, Spring 2022)
The Church-Turing Thesis and Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem (Graduate Logic Group, Fall 2021)
The Church-Turing Thesis and the Halting Problem (Graduate Logic Group, Fall 2021)
Philosophical Motivations for the Turing Model (Graduate Logic Group, Spring 2019)
The Recursive Functions Part 2: Equivalence to the Turing Model (Graduate Logic Group, Spring 2019)
The Recursive Functions Part 1: Basic Definitions (Graduate Logic Group, Spring 2019)
The Polynomial Hierarchy by Way of the Travelling Salesman Problem (Graduate Logic Group Fall 2019)
An Introduction to Complexity Theory (Graduate Logic Group Fall 2019)
Seminars I've hosted
Seminar on Marx's Political Economy and Value Theory (Spring 2022)
A weekly seminar in which I presented various mathematical formalizations of Marx's various arguments from volumes I, II, and III of Capital, and invited others to present their own research on similar material. It fell through due to repeated ice storms, but the momentum carried into a series of youtube videos which are some of by best work (check the 'samples of work' page linked above for more on that).
Seminar on Computational Complexity Theory (Fall 2019)
We presented material to one another with the intent of eventually pursuing mutual research. Topics included material leading up to the Cook-Levin theorem and an exploration of alternative complexity measures.
Awards and Honors
Academic Excellence Award (UNT Mathematics Department Spring 2022)
Best Technological/Analytical Approach, 2nd Place (UNT 2017 Big Data Challenge)