I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. I am broadly interested in smooth dynamical systems, symplectic topology, smooth topology and symplectic field theory (SFT).

I was previously an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton and IAS (2021-2023) and a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA (2021). I received my PhD at UC Berkeley in 2021 under the supervision of Michael Hutchings .

In Fall 2024, I am teaching Math 540 (Algebraic Topology) 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 open to supervising undergraduate research. If you are interested, please email with a self-introduction, a summary of your coursework and your math interests.

• USC teaching: 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. 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 LMS. 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 EMS (2024). Accepted. [arxiv].
• 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]
• 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.