Dr Ahmad Mokhtar is a postdoctoral research fellow at MACSYS, working on the analysis of chemical reaction networks. The goal of his research is to employ advanced tools in pure mathematics, especially techniques of algebraic geometry to understand the structure of cellular chemical reaction networks and ultimately biological processes.

Ahmad’s academic background is in mathematics with a focus on algebraic geometry which studies the interplay between the geometry and the algebra of systems of polynomial equations. Such equations naturally appear when studying chemical reaction networks. He is interested in toric geometry, computational techniques of algebraic geometry, and moduli spaces. His recent project involved analyzing certain families of polynomial equations coming from matrices by studying the symmetries of the geometric objects they define. One goal was to understand the geometry of these equations without relying on the computationally-expensive algorithms that are often used to study polynomial equations.