Candace Bethea is a mathematician studying enumerative geometry and homotopy theory. Dr. Bethea completed her PhD at the University of South Carolina under Dr. Jesse Kass, spearheading the study of equivariant enumerative geometry in her dissertation. She will join Brown in November 2024, after holding a position as a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University. She is returning to academia after working in industry for 4 years in strategy consulting and nonprofit industries. Her current research focuses on developing tools in equivariant homotopy theory that can be used to enrich classical enumerative results in algebraic geometry under the presence of a group action. This work includes applications to an enriched case of Gottsche’s conjecture, and recently the spearheading of the first enumerative formula for an equivariant Gromov-Witten invariant valued in the representation ring of a finite group. Dr. Bethea currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation to carry out this work. 

Outside of research, Dr. Bethea’s interests are in broadening diversity in mathematics, training and mentorship, active teaching strategies, and organizing collaborative research programs. She is particularly interested in increasing participation in advanced mathematics by underrepresented demographic groups through middle and high school outreach, as evidenced by her work serving on charter school boards and with Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM). 

Dr. Bethea’s work centers around studying symmetries in enumerative problems from algebraic geometry using tools in equivariant homotopy theory.