I am an assistant professor at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. I am broadly interested in dynamical systems, symplectic topology and manifolds. I am generously supported by the NSF Award DMS-2446019 and USI Binational Science Foundation Award 2024157.

I was previously an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton-IAS supervised by Helmut Hofer. I received my PhD at UC Berkeley in 2021 supervised by Michael Hutchings .

In Fall 2025, I am teaching Math 535B (Differential Geometry) and coorganizing the USC Topology Seminar.

I am currently open to advising new PhD students. If you are interested, please take a look at this learning guide and email to set up a reading course on one of those topics.

I am also currently open to supervising research for advanced undergraduates interested in geometry. If you are interested, please send an introduction email with a transcript.

• USC teaching: Spring 2025 , Fall 2024 , Spring 2024
• Princeton teaching: Fall 2022, Spring 2023
• UC Berkeley seminars: Fall 2019, Spring 2019, Fall 2018, Summer 2018 , Fall 2018 . Fall 2017
• UC Berkeley teaching: Spring 2021, Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2016, Spring 2016
• MIT teaching/mentoring: MathRoots

• Solutions to Characteristic Classes by J. Milnor & J. Stasheff [pdf]
• Solutions to Introduction To Symplectic Topology (2nd Ed.) by D. McDuff & D. Salamon [pdf]
• Beware: Full of small mistakes and typos!

• J. Chaidez. M. Huang. Convex Hypersurfaces And Robust Heteroclinic Cycles.
• J. Chaidez. S. Tanny. Creased Contact Manifolds And Billiard Dynamics .
• J. Chaidez. Y. Pan. Reeb Pseudo-Anosov Flows And The Finiteness Conjecture.
• R. Cardona, J. Chaidez, F. Torres de Lizaur. On Dynamical Invariants Of Coadjoint Orbits Of 3D Volume-Preserving Diffeomorphisms. [arxiv]
• J. Chaidez, S. Tanny. On Zoll Contact 5-Spheres. [arxiv]
• J. Chaidez. Contact Homology And Linearization Without DGA Homotopies. [arxiv]. International Math Research Notices. Accepted.
• J. Chaidez. Robustly Non-Convex Hypersurfaces In Contact Manifolds. [arxiv]
• J. Chaidez, S. Tanny. Elementary SFT Spectral Gaps And The Strong Closing Property For Near Periodic Flows. [arxiv]
• J. Chaidez, J. Cotler, X. Cui. Combed Trisections Diagrams And Non-Semisimple 4-Manifold Invariants. [arxiv]
• J. Chaidez, O. Edtmair, L. Wang, Y. Yuan, Z. Zhao. Legendrian Embedded Contact Homology. [arxiv]
• J. Chaidez, B. Wormleighton. Newton-Okoukov Bodies And Symplectic Embeddings Into Non-Toric Rational Surfaces. Journal of the London Math Society. 109(1) (2024). [arxiv, journal]
• J. Chaidez, I. Datta, R. Prasad, S. Tanny. Contact Homology And Higher Dimensional Closing Lemmas. Journal of Modern Dynamics. 20 (2023) p. 67-153. [arxiv, journal]
• J. Chaidez, O. Edtmair. The Ruelle Invariant And Convexity In Higher Dimensions. Journal of the European Math Society (2025). [arxiv, journal].
• J. Chaidez, B. Wormleighton. Lattice Formulas For Rational SFT Capacites. [arxiv]
• J. Chaidez, O. Edtmair. 3D Convex Contact Forms And The Ruelle Invariant. Inventiones Mathematicae. 229 (2022) p. 243–301 [arxiv, journal]
• J. Chaidez, M. Hutchings. Computing Reeb Dynamics On 4d Convex Polytopes. Journal of Computational Dynamics. 8(4) (2021) p. 403-445 [arxiv, journal]
• J. Chaidez, B. Wormleighton. ECH Embedding Obstructions For Rational Surfaces. [arxiv]
• J. Chaidez, J. Cotler, X. Cui. 4-Manifold Invariants From Hopf Algebras. Algebraic and Geometric Topology 22 (2022) p. 3747-3807 [arxiv, journal]
• J. Chaidez, C. Munteanu. Essential Tori In Spaces Of Symplectic Embeddings. Algebraic and Geometric Topology 21 (2021) p. 2489–2522 [arxiv, journal]
• Note: Preprints marked with ■ are submitted, under revision or published.