Alberto Cattaneo


Alberto Sergio Cattaneo is an Italian mathematician and mathematical physicist, specializing in geometry related to quantum field theory and string theory.

Biography

After attending Liceo scientifico ''A. Volta in Milan, Cattaneo studied physics at University of Milan, graduating in 1991. In 1995, he obtained a PhD in theoretical physics at the same university; his thesis, entitled Teorie topologiche di tipo BF ed invarianti dei nodi, was supervised by Maurizio Martellini.
Cattaneo worked as a postdoc in 1995-1997 at Harvard University and in 1997-1998 at the University of Milan. In 1998, he moved to University of Zurich's mathematics department as an assistant professor, and he became a full professor in 2003.
In 2006 he was an invited speaker, with the talk From topological field theory to deformation quantization and reduction'', at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid. Cattaneo was elected a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2013.

Research

Cattaneo's research interests include deformation quantization, symplectic and Poisson geometry, topological quantum field theories, and the mathematical aspects of perturbative quantization of gauge theories.
With Giovanni Felder he developed a path integral interpretation of the deformation quantization of Poisson manifolds, as well as a description of the symplectic groupoid integrating a Poisson manifold as an infinite-dimensional symplectic quotient.
He supervised 14 PhD students as of 2022.

Selected publications

Articles

  • Books

  • with Alain Bruguières, Bernhard Keller, Charles Torossian:

    as editor

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