Joaquín Moraga was born in Concepción, Chile in 1994. He received a B.S. in Mathematics from
Universidad de Concepción in 2013 and a M.S. in Mathematics from the same institution in 2015. He
received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Utah in 2019 under the supervision of Christopher
Hacon. From 2019 to 2022, he was an instructor at Princeton University under the mentorship of János
Kollár. In Fall 2022, Moraga joined UCLA as a tenure-track assistant professor. He has delivered several
lectures series about his research: at Higher Dimensional Algebraic Geometry (NCTS, Taiwan, 2023), as
a senior speaker at Géométrie Algébrique en Liberté XXX (University of Warwick, UK, 2023) and at
Birational Geometry Lecture Series (PUC, Chile, 2023). In August 2024, Moraga imparted a mini-course
on the geometry of Fano varieties at the fifth edition of "Latin American School of Algebraic Geometry" in
Cabo Frio, Brazil.
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Moraga carries out research in Algebraic Geometry. This is the branch of mathematics that studies the
shapes that can be described using polynomial equations: the so-called algebraic varieties. Within
Algebraic Geometry, he specializes in Birational Geometry and Singularity Theory. The former aims to
understand algebraic varieties after performing some simplifying surgeries known as birational
transformations. The latter tries to understand the infinitesimal behavior of varieties at points where their
shape changes drastically (singular points). Although both endeavors seem unrelated, their recent
developments have been intertwined. Moraga, together with several co-authors, has made some
fundamental contributions to the birational geometry of 4-folds, the local topology of singularities, and the
geometry of Fano varieties. Many questions in both Birational Geometry and Singularity Theory remain
open and he hopes to contribute further to these fields.

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“I am honored to be part of this celebration. I intend to continue contributing to mathematical research
and I hope to inspire the next generation of Latin-American mathematicians."