“Thinking about three and four-manifolds is the most fun thing I can do with my time.”

By Sofia Voltin

“I’m from a tiny town in western Maine, which is very beautiful and in which there is very little math,” Lisa Piccirillo, 29, says on her website. She’s not kidding—her hometown, Greenwood, has a population below 900. She attended Telstar Regional High School, where her mother taught middle school math. She describes her childhood self as an overachiever, riding dressage, participating in drama and band, and a member at her church youth group. “I did my undergraduate at Boston College, where I learned that thinking about three and four-manifolds is the most fun thing I can do with my time.”

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