Teaching

DRP Projects

Directed Reading Program

Below is a list of the directed reading program (DRP) projects I have mentored at UT Austin. The goal of the program is to expose advanced/talented undergraduate math majors to more exotic and involved topics not typically covered in undergraduate coursework, under the tutelage of a graduate student mentor. Each project ends with a symposium presentation, covering some component of the project; a secondary goal of the program is to coach the students on presenting technical math.

In addition to serving as a mentor on the projects below, I also served as a program organizer for 3 semesters (Spring 2025 - Spring 2026).

Projects Mentored

Summer 2026 (UT REU)

Dhruv Ajmera

Stochastic Calculus & Finance: The Heath-Jarrow-Morton Model (GitHub).

Spring 2026

Anna Iskra

The Role of Architecture in the Convergence of Stochastic Gradient Descent

Fall 2025

Krithi Prasad

Topology and Geometry of Surfaces

Summer 2025 (UT REU)

Arnav Lahoti

Mathematical Foundations of Machine Learning

Spring 2025

Luke Hospenthal

The Birkhoff Ergodic Theorem

Spring 2025

Sanay Salvi, William Hao, and Arnav Lahoti

Group project on recurrence and randomness in dynamical systems

Fall 2024

Joseph Hummel

Geometry on Manifolds

Fall 2024

Yanrong Yu

Bifurcation Theories and Chaos

Summer 2024 (UT REU)

Giancarlo Villatoro

Essence of Analytic and Probabilistic Number Theory

Spring 2024

Allison Podanoffsky

Finite fields and Algebraic Number Theory

Fall 2023

Ryan Charrette

Harmonic Analysis on Locally Compact Groups: p-Adics and Applications

Summer 2023 (UT REU)

Brandon Paez (UTEP)

Introduction to Riemannian Geometry and Ricci Flow

Spring 2023

Ryan Charrette

$L$-functions and Modern Problems in Number Theory

Spring 2023

Amanda Yin

Chaotic Dynamical Systems: Hyperbolic Toral Automorphisms

Fall 2022

Thor Preimesberger

Benamou-Brenier and Metric Geometry

Summer 2022 (UT REU)

Amy Somers (UCSB)

An Introduction to Dynamical Systems

Spring 2022

Abhinav Rachakonda

Complex Analysis and the Prime Number Theorem

Email: abenda [at] utexas [dot] edu © 2026 Aaron Benda · Austin, TX