Rate My Professor Dhruv Ranganathan

Dhruv Ranganathan is a Professor of Pure Mathematics in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, affiliated with the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics. He specializes in algebraic geometry. He grew up in South India and South Africa before moving to the United States in 2008. Ranganathan holds a B.Sc. from Harvey Mudd College, California, and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 2016. He completed postdoctoral positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Institute for Advanced Study prior to joining Cambridge in 2019, where he was subsequently promoted to Professor. At St John's College, he is a Fellow, College Lecturer in Pure Mathematics, Director of Studies, and provides pastoral support for ethnic diversity.

Professor Ranganathan's research interests lie in algebraic geometry, particularly enumerative geometry and Gromov-Witten theory, moduli spaces, tropical geometry, logarithmic structures, and the study of degenerations and classical geometry of curves. He delivers lectures in algebra, algebraic geometry, and related areas within the Faculty of Mathematics and supervises Pure Mathematics courses across all three years of the Tripos at St John's College. As Director of the Faculty's Summer Research in Mathematics (SRIM) and Cambridge Mathematics Placements (CMP) programmes, he has led their expansion to engage up to 90 undergraduate students annually, fostering research experiences, public presentations, collaborative projects, and applications to real-world problems. His key publications include "Moduli of stable maps in genus one and logarithmic geometry, I" with Keli Santos-Parker and Jonathan Wise (Geometry & Topology, 2019), "Brill-Noether theory for curves of a fixed gonality" with David Jensen (Forum of Mathematics, Pi, 2021), "Logarithmic Gromov–Witten theory and double ramification cycles" with Ajith Urundolil Kumaran (Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik, 2024), and "Logarithmic Donaldson–Thomas theory" with Davesh Maulik (Forum of Mathematics, Pi, 2024). Ranganathan has been awarded the Faculty Lecturing Prize in 2025 and the Pilkington Prize in 2026 for his outstanding teaching contributions.