John Huerta

Mathematical Physicist

Canberra – Lisbon – Munich

john.huerta@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

Office: 2.08A, Pavilhão Matemática.

Department of Mathematics
Instituto Superior Técnico
Avenida Rovisco Pais 1
1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal

I AM ALWAYS ON THE JOB MARKET! Here is my CV, last updated in December 2025.

I am relocating! As of 1 December 2025, I am a senior researcher with the Faculty of Physics, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

I remain affiliated with CAMGSD at Instituto Superior Técnico, a part of the University of Lisbon, and with the Mathematical Sciences Institute at the Australian National University.

I will always be reachable at john.huerta@tecnico.ulisboa.pt.

Research interests

My research concerns quantum topology and mathematical physics. Current interests include:

Topological quantum field theories (TQFTs) with defects, with connections to the cobordism hypothesis, state sums and factorization homology.
Factorization algebras, with connections to conformal field theories in 2d.
Supergeometry, especially questions related to working in families, and to distributions on supermanifolds.

Education

PhD in Mathematics, University of California, Riverside, June 2011. Advisor: John Carlos Baez.

Papers

Poincaré duality for supermanifolds, higher Cartan geometry, and geometric supergravity (with Konstantin Eder and Simone Noja).
Bundle gerbes on supermanifolds.
How space-times emerge from the superpoint, which appeared in Fortschritte der Physik.
Real ADE-equivariant (co)homotopy and super M-branes (with Hisham Sati and Urs Schreiber), which appeared in Communications in Mathematical Physics.
M-theory from the superpoint (with Urs Schreiber), which appeared in Letters in Mathematical Physics.
Division algebras and supersymmetry IV, which appeared in Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics.
The magic square of Lie groups: the 2x2 case (with Tevian Dray and Josh Kincaid), which appeared in Letters in Mathematical Physics.
G2 and the rolling ball (with John Baez), which appeared in Transactions of the American Mathematical Society.
Division algebras and supersymmetry III, which appeared in Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics.
Division Algebras, Supersymmetry and Higher Gauge Theory, PhD thesis, UC Riverside.
Division algebras and supersymmetry II (with John Baez), which appeared in Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics.
An Invitation to Higher Gauge Theory (with John Baez, based on his lectures), which appeared in General Relativity and Gravitation.
Lie n-algebras, supersymmetry, and division algebras, which appeared in Geometry, Quantum Fields, and Strings: Categorial Aspects, edited by Bouwknegt, Freed, and Schweigert.
Division algebras and supersymmetry I (with John Baez), which appeared in Superstrings, Geometry, Topology, and C*-algebras, edited by Doran, Friedman and Rosenberg.
The Algebra of Grand Unified Theories (with John Baez) which appeared in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. Also available as its own webpage.

Popularizations

The Strangest Numbers in String Theory (with John Baez), an expository article about the octonions, which appeared in the May 2011 issue of Scientific American.
Lie theory and the eightfold way, which explains just enough Lie theory to see it appear in the classification of elementary particles. and appeared in the March 2025 issue of the CIM Bulletin.

Student supervision

I am currently advising the following graduate students:

Diogo Freire de Andrade, who will defend in early 2026, has been a PhD student since 2021 at Instituto Superior Técnico. His work constructs higher categories of stratified cobordisms, for applications to TQFTs with defects. He is supported by a fellowship from FCT, and co-advised by Pedro Boavida de Brito.

I previously supervised:

Nino Scalbi, PhD 2019-2024, Instituto Superior Técnico. Nino's thesis establishes a beautiful connection between differential cohomology and diffeological spaces, a generalization of smooth manifolds. He was supported by a fellowship from LisMath, and co-advised by Roger Picken. He is now a data scientist with Accenture.
You can find Nino's thesis on the arXiv.
Rui Peixoto, MSc 2021–2023, Instituto Superior Técnico. Rui's thesis generalized a construction of Costello and Gwilliam from algebras to superalgebras. Specifically, Rui showed how to construct a vertex superalgebra from a holomorphic factorization superalgebra on the complex plane. He defended in December 2023, and received the highest possible grade. He began a PhD in mathematics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, but is now looking for PhD positions closer to home in Europe.
Diogo Freire de Andrade, MSc 2019–2021, Instituto Superior Técnico. Diogo's thesis concerned a diagrammatic construction of the Drinfeld center of a spherical fusion category. He defended in January 2021, and decided to continue his work as a PhD student.

I am unable to take any new students at this time.

Seminars

I am one of the organizers of the TQFT Club, with Roger Picken and Marko Stošić. If you're interested in giving a talk in the TQFT Club, please email me!

From 20 August until 6 October 2025, Diogo Andrade, Roger Picken and I ran a reading seminar on TQFTs with defects.

In Spring and Summer 2024, Gonçalo Oliveira and I organized a learning seminar on the mathematics of quantum field theory.

In Spring 2023, Diogo Andrade and I organized a learning seminar on higher categories.

Teaching

I am not teaching a course this semester, but you can look at my teaching evalutations if you want to.

Recent and Upcoming Talks

TBA, 27 January 2026, Mathematical Physics Seminar, University of Vienna.
Poincaré duality in supergeometry, 3 December 2025, Australian Geometric Topology Webinar, joint between the Australian National University, Monash University, and the University of Sydney.
Lie theory and the eightfold way, 17 April 2025, MSI Colloquium, the Australian National University.
Poincaré duality for families of supermanifolds, 21 March 2025, Differential Geometry Seminar, University of Adelaide.
Factorization algebras: a visual introduction, 15 November 2024, Pure Mathematics Seminar, University of Melbourne.
Vertex superalgebras from prefactorization algebras, 18 October 2024, Algebra Seminar, University of Sydney.
What are the sections of a gerbe? 20 September 2024, Young Researchers Seminar, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon.
The prequantum 2-Hilbert space? 11 July 2024, Categorical Algebra and Geometry, ENSPM24, University of Minho, Braga.
Poincaré duality for families of supermanifolds, 11 April 2024, Geometry Seminar, ICMAT, Madrid.
Poincaré duality for families of supermanifolds, 9 April 2024, Higher Structure Research Group Seminar, the Feza Gursey Center for Physics and Mathematics, Istanbul.
Octonions and spinors, 29 May 2023, Spinorial and octonionic aspects of G2 and Spin(7) geometry, Banff International Research Station.
The algebra of grand unified theories, 3 April 2023, Algebra, Particles, and Quantum Theory.
Body and soul decompositions in supergeometry, 29 March 2023, SuperGeometry and SuperModuli, Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, Stony Brook.
An invitation to higher supergeometry, 25 August 2022, Geometric Structures and Supersymmetry 2022, University of Tromsø.
Splitting supermanifolds, 19 April 2022, Geometry and Topology Seminar, Texas Tech University.