Biography
Connor Mooney is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Irvine. He completed his Ph.D. in Mathematics at Columbia University in 2015, following his B.S. in Mathematics from Stanford University in 2011. Before joining UC Irvine as an Assistant Professor in 2018, Mooney worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at ETH Zürich from 2016 to 2018 and held an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin from 2015 to 2016.
Mooney's research is centered on partial differential equations (PDEs), with a focus on geometric analysis and the calculus of variations. He has published numerous peer-reviewed papers in prominent mathematical journals, contributing to the field's understanding of nonlinear PDEs and related topics. His work is supported by several grants, including the NSF CAREER Grant and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. Mooney's notable recognitions include being named a Simons Fellow in Mathematics and a Chancellor’s Fellow at UC Irvine.
At UC Irvine, Mooney is responsible for teaching graduate and undergraduate courses, including topics in partial differential equations and linear algebra. He advises and mentors doctoral students, with a focus on developing their research capabilities. Mooney actively participates in the academic community by serving on various departmental committees and contributing to university governance. He is involved in outreach activities and has served on the editorial boards of notable mathematical journals.
Return to topEducation
- Ph.D. in Mathematics, Columbia University, 2015
- B.S. in Mathematics, Stanford University, 2011
Distinctions
- ICBS Frontiers of Science Award, 2026
- Invited Address, AMS Western Sectional Meeting, 2025
- Simons Fellow in Mathematics, 2024
- Chancellor’s Fellow, UC Irvine, 2022
- Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, 2022
- NSF CAREER Grant DMS-2143668, 2022
- NSF Grant DMS-1854788, 2019
- NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, 2015
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, 2012
- Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research, Stanford University, 2011
Areas of Expertise
- Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations
- Geometric Analysis
- Calculus of Variations
- Singularities in PDEs
- Optimal Transport
- Bernstein Problems
- Sobolev Regularity
- Anisotropic Minimal Graphs
- Complex Analysis
- Elliptic and Parabolic Systems
Recent Publications
- Mooney, C., Yang, Y., “The anisotropic Bernstein problem” (opens in new tab), Invent. Math., vol. 235, pp. 211-232, 2024.
- Mooney, C., “Homogeneous functions with nowhere vanishing Hessian determinant” (opens in new tab), Ann. Inst. H. Poincaré C Anal. Non Linéaire, vol. 41, pp. 555-564, 2024.
- Bechtel, S., Mooney, C., Veraar, M., “Counterexamples to maximal regularity for operators in divergence form” (opens in new tab), Arch. Math., vol. 123, pp. 199-209, 2024.
- Mitake, H., Mooney, C., Tran, H., Xin, J., Yu, Y., “Bifurcation of homogenization and nonhomogenization of the curvature G-equation with shear flows” (opens in new tab), Math. Ann., no. to appear, 2024.
- Mooney, C., “Bernstein theorems for nonlinear geometric PDEs” (opens in new tab), Comm. Pure Appl. Anal., no. to appear, 2024.
- Mooney, C., Rakshit A., “Sobolev regularity for optimal transport maps of non-convex planar domains” (opens in new tab), SIAM J. Math. Anal., vol. 56, pp. 4742-4758, 2024.
- Mooney, C., Savin, O., “Non C 1 solutions to the special Lagrangian equation” (opens in new tab), Duke Math. J., no. to appear, 2024.
- Bhattacharya, A., Mooney, C., Shankar, R., “Gradient estimates for the Lagrangian mean curvature equation with critical and supercritical phase”, Amer. J. Math., no. to appear, 2024.
- Mooney, C., Rakshit, A., “Singular structures in solutions to the Monge-Ampère equation with point masses” (opens in new tab), Math. Eng., vol. 5, pp. Paper No. 083, 11 pp, 2023.
- Mooney, C., “Entire solutions to equations of minimal surface type in six dimensions” (opens in new tab), J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS), vol. 24, pp. 4353-4361, 2022.
- Mooney, C., “Hilbert’s 19th problem revisited” (opens in new tab), Boll. Unione Mat. Ital., vol. 15, pp. 483-501, 2022.
- Mooney, C., Yang, Y., “A proof by foliation that Lawson’s cones are A Φ -minimizing” (opens in new tab), Discrete Contin. Dyn. Syst., vol. 41, pp. 5291-5302, 2021.
- Mooney, C., “Solutions to the Monge-Ampère equation with polyhedral and Y-shaped singularities” (opens in new tab), J. Geom. Anal., vol. 31, pp. 9509-9526, 2021.
- Mooney, C., “Strict 2-convexity of convex solutions to the quadratic Hessian equation” (opens in new tab), Proc. Amer. Math. Soc., vol. 149, pp. 2473-2477, 2021.
- Mooney, C., “Singularities of complex-valued solutions to linear parabolic equations” (opens in new tab), Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN, vol. 21, pp. 4413-4426, 2021.
Most Cited Publications
- Mooney, C., Savin, O., “Some singular minimizers in low dimensions in the calculus of variations” (opens in new tab), Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal., vol. 221, pp. 1-22, 2016.
- Mooney, C., “Partial regularity for singular solutions to the Monge-Ampère equation” (opens in new tab), Comm. Pure Appl. Math., vol. 68, pp. 1066-1084, 2015.
- Mooney, C., “Harnack inequality for degenerate and singular elliptic equations with unbounded drift” (opens in new tab), J. Differential Equations, vol. 258, pp. 1577-1591, 2015.
- Mooney, C., “A proof of the Krylov-Safonov theorem without localization” (opens in new tab), Comm. Partial Differential Equations, vol. 44, pp. 681-690, 2019.
- Mooney, C., “Finite time blowup for parabolic systems in two dimensions” (opens in new tab), Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal., vol. 223, pp. 1039-1055, 2017.
- Mooney, C., “Some counterexamples to Sobolev regularity for degenerate Monge-Ampère equations” (opens in new tab), Anal. PDE, vol. 9, pp. 881-891, 2016.
- Figalli, A., Jhaveri, Y., Mooney, C., “Nonlinear bounds in Hölder spaces for the Monge-Ampère equation” (opens in new tab), J. Funct. Anal., vol. 270, pp. 3808-3827, 2016.
- Mooney, C., “Minimizers of convex functionals with small degeneracy set” (opens in new tab), Calc. Var. Partial Differential Equations, vol. 59, pp. Paper No. 74, 1-19, 2020.
- Collins, Tristan C., Mooney, C., “Dimension of the minimum set for the real and complex Monge-Ampère equations in critical Sobolev spaces” (opens in new tab), Anal. PDE, vol. 10, pp. 2031-2041, 2017.
- Mooney, C., “The Monge-Ampère equation”, Rend. Semin. Mat. Univ. Politec. Torino, vol. 76, pp. 93-113, 2018.
Contact Information
Website: https://www.math.uci.edu/~mooneycr/
Email: mooneycr@uci.edu
Address: Rowland Hall 410C UC Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-3875
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Last updated on 6/26/2026.