Nick Switala's Home Page

About me

I am a senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Here is my CV.

I got my start in mathematics in the UMTYMP program at the University of Minnesota. I stayed at Minnesota, earning my B.S. in mathematics in 2008, and my Ph.D. in 2015. My adviser was Gennady Lyubeznik. I spent a year (2015-2016) as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where my mentor was Tom Marley, and then received an NSF postdoctoral fellowship here at UIC (2016-2019), where my sponsoring scientist was Wenliang Zhang. Since the fall semester of 2019 I have been a full-time lecturer at UIC (promoted to senior lecturer in 2024).

I have taught several courses at different levels at UIC, but most of my work has been as coordinator for Math 310 (Applied Linear Algebra), our matrix-based linear algebra course. Each semester, around 600-700 students take this course, primarily computer science and engineering majors.

Contact information

Address: UIC MSCS Department, 322 SEO (M/C 249), 851 S. Morgan St., Chicago, IL 60607
Email: nswitala [at] uic [dot] edu
Office: SEO 1217

Teaching

Spring 2025: Math 310 (Applied Linear Algebra), coordinator and three sections.
Fall 2024: Math 310 (Applied Linear Algebra), coordinator and two sections; Math 125 (Elementary Linear Algebra), one section.
Spring 2024: Math 310 (Applied Linear Algebra), coordinator and three sections.
Fall 2023: Math 310 (Applied Linear Algebra), coordinator and one section; Math 180 (Calculus I), two sections.
Spring 2023: Math 310 (Applied Linear Algebra), coordinator and three sections.
Fall 2022: I was on parental leave for most of this semester, though I did assist with Math 310 for the first month.
Spring 2022: Math 310 (Applied Linear Algebra), coordinator and two sections; Math 215 (Introduction to Advanced Mathematics), two sections. (For this and all later semesters, instruction was in person.)
Fall 2021: Math 310 (Applied Linear Algebra), coordinator and three sections, online synchronous.
Spring 2021: Math 310 (Applied Linear Algebra), coordinator and three sections, online asynchronous.
Fall 2020: Math 310 (Applied Linear Algebra), one section, online asynchronous; Math 215 (Introduction to Advanced Mathematics), two sections, online asynchronous.
Spring 2020: Math 215 (Introduction to Advanced Mathematics), two sections; Math 313 (Analysis I), one section. All classes began in person and switched to online asynchronous in March.
Fall 2019: Math 181 (Calculus II), one section; Math 210 (Calculus III), two sections.
Spring 2019: none.
Fall 2018: Math 520 (Commutative and Homological Algebra), graduate course, one section.
Spring 2018: Math 310 (Applied Linear Algebra), one section.
Fall 2017: none.
Spring 2017: none.
Fall 2016: "RTG mini-course" (weekly lecture series) on algebraic D-modules.

All necessary information and course content is accessible only through UIC's Blackboard page.

Research

My mathematical research has been in algebraic geometry and commutative algebra, with a specialty in local cohomology. The arXiv versions of my research papers are available here.