Subhadip Chowdhury

Biography

I am an Assistant Instructional Professor in the Department of Mathematics at The University of Chicago and in the Neubauer Phoenix STEM Scholars program in the Dean of Students Office.

Teaching and Pedagogy

My pedagogical interests center on designing active, discovery-based, and inclusive learning environments that engage a diverse student body. My courses emphasize constructivist, project-based learning, and collaborative problem solving. A central focus of my recent work has been revising courses so that curriculum and assessment align with mastery-based and other alternate grading approaches, built around clear learning targets, carefully structured feedback loops, and meaningful opportunities for students to revise and improve their work.

Some ongoing teaching-related work includes:

• Coordinating our department’s Collaborative Learning tutorial program. This includes training and mentoring graduate TAs and undergraduate Lead Junior Tutors.
• Designing and facilitating professional development workshops for first-time Graduate Student Lecturers in mathematics.
• Using backward design to revise curricula in calculus and proof-based courses to align with alternate grading schemes.
• Designing materials and establishing norms for the responsible and transparent use of generative AI in mathematics courses.

Pedagogy fellowships and grants. During the 2025–2026 academic year, I will be an Associate Pedagogy Fellow at the Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning. Previously, I served as a Pedagogy Fellow and co-led an Exploratory Teaching Group titled “Discussion on Implementing Alternate Grading and Redesigning Assessment in Math.”

Materials from my current and past courses are accessible through the teaching page. Write-ups, slides, and resources related to collaborative learning, mastery-based grading, and AI-aware pedagogy will be posted on the pedagogy page.

Research Interests

My research background is in low-dimensional topological dynamics. I am especially interested in rigidity phenomena and self-similar structures that arise from nonabelian group actions on the circle. I have also contributed to the theory of formal languages, aiming to solve combinatorial group theory problems using topological methods.

More broadly, I am interested in topics related to geometric group theory, complex dynamics, and big mapping class groups.

I received my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago under the direction of Prof. Danny Calegari. My papers and preprints are linked on my research page.