News Archive

Past news announcements from the department homepage.

  • June 4, 2026

    2026 Gödel Prize Awarded to Ankur Moitra et al.

    Ankur Moitra

    The Gödel Prize is for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, and is awarded annually. The 2026 Gödel Prize has been awarded to Ilias Diakonikolas, Gautam Kamath, Daniel Kane, Jerry Li, Ankur Moitra, and Alistair Stewart, for their paper Robust Estimators in High Dimensions without the Computational Intractability.

    In addition to Ankur Moitra, several of them have an MIT connection. Daniel Kane was an undergrad at MIT about 20 years ago, and Gautam Kamath and Jerry Li were PhD students at MIT (Jerry's advisor was Ankur Moitra).

    Congratulations to all!

  • May 29, 2026

    2026 Spring Awards for Graduate Students and Instructors

    Several members of the community were recognized and awarded for their contributions at the department’s Spring social.

    Yiqi Huang and Zhiyang He were awarded the Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize, which is presented to a graduate student for an outstanding paper accepted for publication in a major journal. Huang’s paper “Volume Estimates for Singular Sets and Critical Sets of Elliptic Equations with Holder Coefficients”, and He’s paper “Extractors: QLDPC Architectures for Efficient Pauli-Based Computation”, were recognized in this award.

    The recipient of the David J. Benney Prize, presented to a graduate student who demonstrates excellence in applied mathematics, is Joel Been. This award honors David Benney, an applied math professor who died in 2015. Benney chaired the Applied Mathematics Committee from 1983-1985, and served as Department Head for two terms, 1989-1999.

    The Charles and Holly Housman Award for Excellence in Teaching is presented to a graduate student for skill and dedication in undergraduate teaching, and was awarded to Josh Messing and Mary Stelow. The Housman Award, a Department Teaching and Learning Award for skill and dedication to teaching, went to C.L.E. Moore instructor Karol Bacik.

    The Baddoo Community Builder Award, named in honor of the late department instructor Peter Baddoo, recognizes significant contributions to building and strengthening the MIT Math Community. This year, Kyle McKee and Robin Zhang, were presented with the award.

    Congratulations Yiqi, Zhiyang, Joel, Josh, Mary, Karol, Kyle, and Robin!

  • May 6, 2026

    MIT Math featured on Gohar's Guide (YouTube)

    Youtube Video Screenshot

    Gohar Khan, an MIT alum '21 and YouTuber with 7.5M subscribers, has prepared a video at MIT on the Putnam exam, our Putnam seminar (coached this year by Henry Cohn), and the numerous MIT students joyfully participating in the competition.

    Watch Gohar's video on YouTube.

    Thank you, Gohar Khan, Natalie Kwok, Henry Cohn, Katie, Zsófi, Tiger, Mira, Pitchayut, and all the MIT participants!

  • April 27, 2026

    Roman Bezrukavnikov and Dor Minzer Awarded National Academy of Sciences Prizes

    Roman Bezrukavnikov, Dor Minzer
    From left, Roman Bezrukavnikov, Dor Minzer

    National Academy of Sciences.

    Roman Bezrukavnikov received the 2026 Maryam Mirzakhani Prize in Mathematics for his varied and profound contributions to geometric representation theory. Previous award recipient includes Larry Guth in 2020.

    Dor Minzer (together with collaborators Irit Dinur, Subhash Khot, Guy Kindler, and Muli Safra) received the 2026 Michael and Sheila Held Prize. They have been recognized for their groundbreaking work on the 2-to-2 games theorem. Read more about their work in Quanta magazine.

    Congratulations, Roman and Dor!

  • April 21, 2026

    Jeremy Hahn Co-Awarded 2026 Clay Research Award

    Jeremy Hahn

    Jeremy Hahn shares one of the 2026 Clay Research Awards with Robert Burklund, Ishan Levy and Tomer Schlank for their disproof of Ravenel's Telescope conjecture. Pretty much an MIT quartet, with two BS, two PhD, one Visiting Professor, and one tenured associate professor from MIT among them!

    The other two 2026 Clay Research Awards have been awarded to Yu Deng (BS, MIT) and Zaher Hani (long-time derivation of Boltzmann equation from hard sphere dynamics), and to Tuomas Orponen, Pablo Shmerkin, Hong Wang (PhD, MIT), and Joshua Zahl (proofs of Furstenberg set conjecture in 2D and the Kakeya conjecture in 3D).

    Read more about Jeremy's award at the Clay Mathematics Institute.

    Congratulations to Jeremy and all the other recipients!

  • April 3, 2026

    Harvey Greenspan, Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics, dies at 93

    Harvey Greenspan
    Harvey Greenspan, Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics

    Harvey Philip Greenspan, Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at MIT, passed away on March 20, 2026 at the age of 93. Harvey served on the MIT faculty in our department for 42 years until his retirement in 2002, and was a preeminent applied mathematician. He is survived by his wife Miriam, their two daughters Elizabeth Greenspan and Judith Greenspan, their sons-in-law Jeffrey Hurwit and Thomas Berman, four grandchildren, other family members and several old friends.

    Please read more about Harvey's life and work here.

  • March 27, 2026

    Ankur Moitra Awarded 2026 W. Wallace McDowell Award

    Ankur Moitra

    Ankur Moitra has been awarded the 2026 W. Wallace McDowell Award from the IEEE Computer Society.

    The McDowell Award is given yearly to individuals for outstanding recent theoretical, design, educational, practical, or other similar innovative contribution that falls within the scope of IEEE Computer Society interest. His citation reads “For groundbreaking contributions to high-dimensional learning —spanning mixture models, robust statistics, and quantum systems.”

    Read more about Ankur’s award at the IEEE Computer Society.

    Congratulations, Ankur!

  • March 25, 2026

    Adit Radhakrishnan Awarded Edmund F. Kelly Research Award

    Adityanarayanan “Adit” Radhakrishnan

    Adityanarayanan “Adit” Radhakrishnan has been awarded the Edmund F. Kelly Research Award.

    Periodically, our department gives this award to one or several junior faculty members "in recognition of work that applies mathematical methods in a new area or that offers a fundamentally new perspective on a classical problem."

    This award was established in honor of former Liberty Mutual CEO and President Edmund "Ted" Kelly, who received his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Sigurdur Helgason in 1970.

    Congratulations, Adit!

  • March 2, 2026

    Gigliola Staffilani Named 2027 AWM-AMS Emmy Noether Lecturer

    Gigliola Staffilani

    Gigliola Staffilani has been named as the 2027 AWM-AMS Emmy Noether Lecturer. The Noether Lecture will be delivered at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in January 2027.

    The Emmy Noether Lectures were launched by the AWM in 1980 to "honor women who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to the mathematical sciences”.

    Read more about the announcement at AWM.

    Congratulations, Gigliola!

  • February 20, 2026

    Jacopo Borga Named as 2026 Sloan Research Fellow

    Jacopo Borga

    Jacopo Borga has been named as a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    The Sloan Research Fellows are selected from early-career scholars, and honors "exceptional researchers at U.S. and Canadian educational institutions, whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders”.

    Read more about Jacopo's award at MIT News.

    Congratulazioni, Jacopo!

  • January 20, 2026

    Tobias Holck Colding Awarded Rolf Schock Prize

    Tobias Holck Colding

    The Rolf Schock Prize in Mathematics has been awarded to Tobias Holck Colding “for profound contributions to the theory of minimal surfaces and geometric flows”.

    The Rolf Schock Prizes are awarded every two years and the selection of laureates is done in collaboration between three Swedish academies: the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. This year’s Schock Prizes reward innovative jazz and research on geometric flows.

    Read more about Toby's award at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

    Congratulations, Toby!

  • December 17, 2025
  • December 5, 2025

    Zhiwei Yun To Be Awarded AMS Chevalley Prize

    Zhiwei Yun

    The AMS Chevalley Prize will be awarded to Zhiwei Yun (and shared with Tasho Kaletha from U. of Bonn) at the Joint Math Meeting in 2026. Zhiwei Yun is being recognized for his influential contributions to geometric representation theory and its applications to number theory.

    The Chevalley Prize in Lie Theory is given biennially for notable work in Lie theory published during the preceding six years. The prize was established in 2014 by George Lusztig to honor Claude Chevalley (1909-1984), a founding member of the Bourbaki group.

    Read more about the award at the American Mathematical Society.

    Congratulations, Zhiwei!

  • December 5, 2025

    Four Receive 2026 Lusztig and Bershadsky PRIMES Mentorships

    Ryan Maguire, Son Nguyen, George Lusztig, and Alain Kangabire
    From left: Ryan Maguire, Son Nguyen, George Lusztig, Alain Kangabire.Not pictured: Frank Wang

    Four members of the MIT Math community were celebrated as the recipients of the 2026 named PRIMES mentorships at our Winter Social on Dec 3.

    Three received the Lusztig Mentorship, which is supported by the generosity of George Lusztig through his 2014 Shaw Prize:

    Ryan Maguire, a Digital Learning Postdoctoral Associate and Instructor. In 2025, he mentored seven students working on three research groups on Saturn's Rings, Cassini Radio Science, and Jones Polynomial.

    Son Nguyen, a graduate student whose main research interest is algebraic combinatorics, specifically Schur positivity and Schubert calculus. He has mentored for UROP, PRIMES, and GUMMI.

    Frank Wang, a graduate student whose research interests lie in representation theory, specifically in quantum groups and rational Cherednik algebras. He is a co-organizer of the PuMaGraSS seminar, and has been a mentor for PRIMES, RSI, and GUMMI.

    The 2026 Bershadsky Mentor Award, kindly supported by Michael and Victoria Bershadsky, was awarded to Alain Kangabire. Alain is a PhD student, and his research interests are in micro local analysis and dynamical systems. He mentored for various programs including PRIMES, UROP, and RSI. In 2025, he supervised a PRIMES reading group of three students, studying curvature on Riemannian manifolds.

    Read more about the mentorship awards on our website.

    Congratulations, Ryan, Son, Frank and Alain! Thank you, as well, to George Lusztig, and Michael and Victoria Bershadsky!

  • December 1, 2025

    Semyon Dyatlov Awarded 2026 AMS Bôcher Memorial Prize

    Semyon Dyatlov

    Semyon Dyatlov has been awarded another major prize, this time the 2026 AMS Bôcher Memorial Prize (along with Mihalis Dafermos and Jonathan Luk). The Bôcher prize was established more than 100 years ago, and is given every 3 years for outstanding work in analysis. Dyatlov is being recognized for his pioneering work connecting the dynamics of geodesic flows and the behavior of waves (including Laplace eigenfunctions and solutions to the wave equation); this work is developed in a series of 4 papers (co-authored with subsets of Joshua Zahl, Jean Bourgain and Long Jin).

    Previous Bôcher prize recipients include several MIT analysts over the last century: Larry Guth (2020), Richard Melrose (1984), Is Singer (1969), Norman Levinson (1953), and Norbert Wiener (1933).

    Read more at the American Mathematical Society.

    Congratulations, Semyon!

  • November 18, 2025

    Semyon Dyatlov Awarded 2026 Joseph L. Doob Prize

    Semyon Dyatlov

    The 2026 Joseph L. Doob Prize will be awarded to Semyon Dyatlov and Maciej Zworski (UC Berkeley) for their 2019 AMS book, Mathematical Theory of Scattering Resonances. The book has "established itself as the key text on contemporary spectral and scattering theory, magisterially unifying decades of advances into a cohesive, rigorous framework”.

    Read more about the award at the American Mathematical Society.

    Congratulations, Semyon!

  • October 28, 2025

    Edgar Costa Awarded 2025 MIT Prize for Open Data

    Edgar Costa

    Edgar Costa has been awarded the 2025 MIT Prize for Open Data from the MIT School of Science and MIT Libraries for his involvement in LMFDB, the L-Functions and modular forms database. The prize is selected from nominees representing 30 different departments, labs, centers and institutes across MIT.

    Read more at MIT Libraries.

    Congratulations, Edgar!

  • October 28, 2025

    Wei Zhang Receives 2025 Alexanderson Award

    Wei Zhang

    Wei Zhang, alongside his team members from AIM SQuaRE "geometry of Shimura varieties and arithmetic application to L-functions" are recipients of the 2025 Alexanderson Award by the American Institute of Mathematics. The team is recognized for two papers, published in Annals in 2021 and Inventiones in 2022. The award will be given at the Joint Mathematics Meetings Awards Celebration in January 2026.

    Read more about their work and the award at the American Institute of Mathematics.

    Congratulations, Wei!

  • October 9, 2025
  • August 14, 2025

    2025 RSI Awards

    2025 RSI participants
    2025 RSI participants

    This summer’s RSI (Research Science Institute) Symposium featured 11 exceptional high school students from around the world presenting their math research projects, as mentored by five graduate students and three senior undergrads, faculty advisors Roman Bezrukavnikov and Jonathan Bloom, and head mentor Tanya Khovanova.

    Judy Li (Mentor: Frank Wang) and Dimana Pramatarova (mentor: Ryota Inagaki) each received a distinguished presentation award. Susie Lu (mentor: Genaro Laymuns under the guidance of Prof. John Urschel) received a distinguished paper award.

    A big thank you to all involved, and congratulations to Dimana, Judy, and Susie, and mentors Frank, Genaro, and Ryota!

  • August 14, 2025

    2025 Rogers Prize

    Rogers Prize Winners
    From left, Ivan Motorin, Joseph Vulakh, Henrick Rabinovitz, Jonathan Bloom, Roman Bezrukavnikov, and Papon Lapate.

    SPUR/SPUR+ (Summer Program in Undergraduate Research) culminated with two teams sharing the 2025 Hartley Rogers Jr. Family Prize for the best SPUR paper.

    Research by sophomores Henrick Rabinovitz and Joseph Vulakh was mentored by graduate student Ivan Motorin and suggested by Pavel Etingof. Senior Papon Lapate’s research was mentored by graduate student Michael Law and suggested by Tristan Ozuch-Meersseman.

    They were among 14 MIT undergraduates who presented individual and joint research projects at the summer 2025 SPUR Conference to judges Aleksandr Logunov, Ju-Lee Kim, and Ankur Moitra.

    A big thank you to all involved, and congratulations to Henrick, Joseph, and Papon and mentors Ivan and Michael!

  • August 6, 2025

    2025 Frontiers of Science Award Recipients

    Several members of the MIT Math community received 2025 Frontiers of Science awards for top research papers at July's International Congress for Basic Science (ICBS) in Beijing, China.

    This year's recipients include:

    Congratulations to all the recipients!

  • July 28, 2025

    Five MIT Math Professors Invited to Speak at ICM 2026

    Jeremy Hahn, Dor Minzer, Philippe Rigollet, Gigliola Staffilani, Nike Sun
    Top from left, Jeremy Hahn, Dor Minzer, Philippe Rigollet; Bottom from left, Gigliola Staffilani, Nike Sun

    Five MIT math faculty members and one from EECS have been invited to give lectures at the upcoming International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Philadelphia from July 23 to 30, 2026.

    Invited speakers from MIT at ICM 2026 are Jeremy Hahn in the Topology section, Dor Minzer in the Mathematics of Computer Science section, Philippe Rigollet and Caroline Uhler (EECS) in the Statistics and Machine Learning section, and Gigliola Staffilani and Nike Sun in the Mathematical Physics section.

    Meeting every four years, ICM is the largest and most recognized meeting for the mathematical community, showcasing the most important, recent advances across all subfields of mathematics. Being invited at ICM is a tremendous honor.

  • July 28, 2025

    Bezrukavnikov, Etingof, Ozuch-Meersseman, and Urschel Receive Named Professorships

    Roman Bezrukavnikov, Pavel Etingof, Tristan Ozuch-Meersseman, John Urschel
    From left, Roman Bezrukavnikov, Pavel Etingof, Tristan Ozuch-Meersseman, John Urschel

    Four faculty members have been selected to hold named professorships as of July 1, 2025: Roman Bezrukavnikov holds a Norbert Wiener Professorship; Pavel Etingof, the David W. Skinner Professorship; Tristan Ozuch-Meersseman, the Rockwell International Career Development Assistant Professorship; and John Urschel, the Class of 1956 Career Development Assistant Professorship.

    These named professorships are funded from endowed gifts to the Institute or the Department, and constitute a significant honor for their holders. Career Development Professorships are for three years, while Full Professorships are for an initial term of 5 years and renewable.

    Congratulations, John, Pavel, Roman, and Tristan!

  • July 28, 2025

    Jeremy Hahn and Dor Minzer Awarded Tenure

    Jeremy Hahn
    From left, Jeremy Hahn, Dor Minzer

    The MIT Corporation Executive Committee has approved the following faculty promotions, effective July 1, 2025: Jeremy Hahn and Dor Minzer have been promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure (from Assistant Professor).

    Congratulations to Dor and Jeremy!

  • July 7, 2025

    Department Welcomes to Faculty Shafi Goldwasser, Henry Cohn, and Adit Radhakrishnan

    Shafi Goldwasser, Henry Cohn, and Adit Radhakrishnan
    From left: Shafi Goldwasser, Henry Cohn, and Adit Radhakrishnan

    On July 1, the Department welcomed to our faculty Leighton Family Professor of Mathematics Shafi Goldwasser, Professor Henry Cohn ‘95, and Assistant Professor Adityanarayanan Radhakrishnan ’16, MNG ’17, PhD ’23.

    Shafi is an Israeli-American computer scientist specializing in cryptography, number theory, and complexity theory. She received a BS in applied mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University in 1979, and her MS and PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley in 1984, with advisor Manuel Blum. She joined MIT in 1983 as a member of CSAIL’s Theory of Computation group, and in 1997 became the first holder of the RSA Professorship. She also joined the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1993 where she is now an emeritus professor. She joined UC Berkeley in 2013, where she served as the director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing until 2024, and is currently a co-director of the Resilience research pod. In 2016, she cofounded Duality Technologies, which offers secure data analytics using advanced cryptographic techniques. She is also a scientific advisor for several technology startups in the security areas. Among her recognitions is the 2012 Turing Award for "revolutionizing the science of cryptography."

    Henry is a 1995 MIT math alum who received his PhD from Harvard in 2000 with advisor Noam Elkies. He joined the theory group at Microsoft Research as a postdoc before transitioning to a long-term position in the group, later managed the cryptography group, and was a senior principal researcher and founding member of Microsoft Research New England. He joined MIT Math as adjunct professor in 2010. Cohn’s research is in discrete mathematics, with a particular interest in the intersection of pure and applied mathematics: pure mathematics inspired by applications, and opportunities to apply mathematics in unexpected ways. Cohn received the 2018 Levi L. Conant Prize for his article “A Conceptual Breakthrough in Sphere Packing," Notices of the AMS, February 2017.

    Adit received his SB in Math and EECS, and completed his M.Eng and his PhD with EECS, as advised by Caroline Uhler. He previously was an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and the George F. Carrier Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard. His research focuses on advancing theoretical foundations of machine learning and developing new methods for tackling biomedical problems. He is also joining the Broad Institute as an associate member, where he is working to assemble a comprehensive catalog of cellular programs and advance our understanding of cellular biology and identify mechanisms of disease. He also goes by the name Adit Radha.

    Welcome, Shafi, Henry, and Adit!

  • June 11, 2025

    Alan Edelman Receives TCPP Award

    Alan Edelman

    Alan Edelman received the IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Community on Parallel Processing (TCPP) Award for Excellence in Parallel and Distributed Computing Education, at the International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing (IPDPS), which was held in Milan this month.

    He was recognized “for innovative programming language design for HPC (high-performance computing) with Julia used in influential courses impacting academia and industry.”

    This award recognizes an individual (or a group of individuals) in the broader community who have made major professional service contributions to the parallel, distributed, and high-performance computing community.

    The IEEE Technical Community on Parallel Processing (TCPP) is a technical community within the IEEE Computer Society, acting as an international forum to promote parallel processing research and education. The community solicits nominations for an award on Excellence in Parallel and Distributed Computing Education.

    Congratulations, Alan!

  • June 5, 2025

    Four with MIT Math ties win 2025 Hertz Foundation Fellowships

     Matthew Caren, April Qiu Cheng, Arav Karighattam, and Benjamin Lou
    From left to right: Matthew Caren, Arav Karighattam, Benjamin Lou, and Albert Qin.

    The Hertz Foundation announced that it has awarded fellowships to four students with MIT Math ties:

    Matthew Caren ’25 studied math, electrical engineering and computer science, and music at MIT. He researches computational models of how people use their voices to communicate sound at CSAIL, and interpretable real-time machine listening systems at the MIT Music Technology Lab.

    Arav Karighattam is a 2024 Harvard alum who is coming to MIT to pursue a doctorate in mathematics. Karighattam is fascinated by algebraic number theory and arithmetic geometry and seeks to understand the mysteries underlying the structure of solutions to Diophantine equations.

    Benjamin Lou ’25 received his MIT SB in mathematics and physics, and will pursue his doctorate at MIT to to work on unifying quantum mechanics and gravity, with an eye toward uncovering experimentally testable predictions. One of his research projects applies symplectic techniques to understand the nature of precision measurements using quantum states of light.

    Albert Qin ‘24 majored in mathematics and physics at MIT, and is also interested in biology, researching single-molecule approaches to study transcription factor diffusion in living cells and studying the cell circuits that control animal development. Qin is currently pursuing a PhD at Princeton University, addressing questions about the behavior of neural networks.

    They are among eight total recipients at MIT, and a total of 19 selected from across the United States. The prestigious award provides each recipient with five years of doctoral-level research funding (up to a total of $250,000).

    Read more at MIT News.

  • June 2, 2025

    Congratulations to All of Our Graduates!

    MIT Mathematics Graduating students
    Top: MIT Mathematics Undergrad; Bottom: MIT Mathematics PhDs

    Congratulations to our 24 2024-2025 academic-year PhDs, and our math majors - 193 math majors received their SBs this spring, and 14 received theirs in February!

    September 2024 PhDs:

    • Deeparaj Bhat
    • Gonzalo Cao Labora
    • Nicolas Liu

    February 2025 PhDs:

    • Evan Chen
    • Davis Evans
    • Andrey Khesin

    May 2025 PhDs:

    • Niven Achenjang
    • Mo Chen
    • Ryan Chen
    • Zihong (Peter) Chen
    • Anlong Chua
    • Alex Cohen
    • Marisa Gaetz
    • Sarah Greer
    • Mitchell Harris
    • Cameron Krulewski
    • Jongwon (David) Lee
    • Tang-Kai Lee
    • Matthew Lerner-Brecher
    • Weixiao Lu
    • Nitya Mani
    • Elia Portnoy
    • Zhi (Robert) Ren
    • Xinrui Zhao

    Read their 2025 Graduate Thesis Defenses.

    Where our PhDs are headed:

    • Academic postings include Cambridge University, Clay Math Institute, Columbia University, Northwestern, NYU, and the University of Toronto.
    • Industry postings include Chevron, The Gates Foundation, Headlands Technologies, Jane Street, Voleon, and various research development and quantitative research institutions

    Congratulations!

  • May 13, 2025

    2025 Housman Teaching and Learning Awards

    Prof. Bill Minicozzi with Keita Allen;  Jonathan Bloom, Bill, and Miguel Moreira
    Top from left: Jonathan Bloom, Prof. Bill Minicozzi, and Miguel Moreira; Bottom from left: Bill with Keita Allen

    The 2025 Charles and Holly Housman Award for Excellence in Teaching was presented to three MIT Math community members for their skills and dedication in undergraduate teaching.

    Graduate student Keita Allen was recognized for his “true passion for education” and for helping other students, including as a UROP mentor.

    Housman awards for instructors were given to Jonathan Bloom, for his ability to teach complex math concepts in a dynamic and engaging way, and to Miguel Moreira, for his supportive teaching style, including as a UROP mentor.

    Congratulations, Jonathan, Keita, and Miguel!

  • May 12, 2025

    Johnson and Benney Prizes

    Prof. Bill Minicozzi, Kyle McKee, Prof. John, and Ilya Dumanski
    From left, Prof. Bill Minicozzi, Kyle McKee, and Prof. John Bush; Ilya Dumanski.

    The 2025 Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize, for a research paper accepted for publication in a major journal, has been awarded to graduate students Ilya Dumanski for his paper “A Geometric Approach to Feigin-Loktev Fusion Product and Cluster Relations in Coherent Satake Category,” International Mathematics Research Notices, Volume 2024, Issue 22, November 2024, and to Kyle McKee for his paper “Magnetohydrodynamic flow control in Hele-Shaw cells,” Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Cambridge University Press, Sept. 13, 2024.

    Kyle is also the recipient of the David J. Benney Prize, which recognizes excellence in applied mathematics, with preference given to students in physical applied math, computational science, numerical analysis, computational biology, or theoretical physics. He was recognized for a mathematical style “which is directed toward elucidating the physics of complex continuum systems via mathematical modeling.”

    This award honors David Benney, an applied math professor who died in 2015. Benney chaired the Applied Mathematics Committee from 1983-1985, and served as Department Head for two terms, 1989-1999.

    Congratulations, Ilya and Kyle!

  • May 5, 2025

    2025 Baddoo Community Awards

    Top, from left, Prof. Steven Johnson with Pitchayut (Mark) Saengrungkongka; George Shaker; bottom, from left, Matija Delic; Max Daniels with Prof. Bill Minicozzi.
    Top, from left, Prof. Steven Johnson with Pitchayut (Mark) Saengrungkongka; George Shaker; bottom, from left, Matija Delic; Max Daniels with Prof. Bill Minicozzi.

    Three undergraduates and a graduate student received the 2025 Peter Baddoo Community Building Award, for individuals who have made significant contributions to building and strengthening our MIT Math community.

    Matija Delic, Pitchayut (Mark) Saengrungkongka, and George Shaker were recognized for their enthusiasm and outreach.

    Mark was awarded for his involvement in organizations such as HMMT and for helping out the community by typing up lecture notes, coordinating psets collaboration, reaching out to prospective math majors, and setting up Discord servers for advanced graduate courses.

    Matija was recognized for organizing collaborative problem-solving sessions, mentoring fellow students, and initiating events.

    George was acknowledged as “the GOAT” for his ability to introduce many to the “beauty of math” and to department resources. He also often leaves math problems on random boards across campus that draw interest from students, faculty, and even visitors.

    Graduate student Max Daniels was called “a cornerstone of our community” for his work with the Pumagrass Seminar, the annual department retreat, and the graduate student open house.

    This award is named in honor of the late Department instructor Peter Baddoo, who received the Community Building Award in 2022 for organizing tea and coffee hours for the postdoc community.

    Congratulations, George, Mark, Matija, and Max!

  • May 1, 2025

    Scott Sheffield Receives Teaching with Digital Technology Award

    Scott Sheffield

    Leighton Family Professor of Mathematics Scott Sheffield is among seven winners of the 2025 Teaching with Digital Technology Awards for using digital technology to improve teaching and learning at MIT.

    The student-nominated Teaching with Digital Technology Awards, for instructors who have effectively used digital technology to improve teaching and learning at MIT, are co-sponsored by Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor. This year, students submitted 88 nominations. The winners will be honored at a celebratory luncheon in May.

    Past Department recipients are professors Steven Johnson ’95, PhD ’01 in 2022, Semyon Dyatlov and Jonathan Kelner SM ’05, PhD ’06 in 2020, and former lecturer Jerry Orloff PhD ’85 in 2021.

    Congratulations, Scott!

  • May 1, 2025

    Henry Cohn Receives 2024 School of Science Undergraduate Teaching Prize

    Henry Cohn

    Henry Cohn ’95 will receive the 2024 School of Science Undergraduate Teaching Prize for his dedication to teaching.

    Henry was recognized for teaching 18.510 and 18.701. Nominators highlighted “his engaging instruction and his ability to make a difficult class rewarding and fun.”

    The School of Science awards Teaching Prizes for Graduate and Undergraduate Education to faculty members who are nominated by students and colleagues for their demonstrated excellence in teaching.

    Past recipients include Michael Artin, Denis Auroux, Jonathan Kelner '05, PhD '06, Arthur Mattuck, William Minicozzi, James Munkres, Bjorn Poonen, Hartley Rogers, and Alar Toomre ‘57.

    Congratulations, Henry!

  • May 1, 2025

    Sanjana Das Receives Bucsela Prize

    Sanjana Das

    The 2025 Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics has been awarded to senior math major Sanjana Das for distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise, and enthusiasm for mathematics.

    Congratulations, Sanjana!

  • May 1, 2025

    Phi Beta Kappa Inducts 34 Mathematics Seniors

    Phi Beta Kappa Logo

    MIT’s Xi Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa will induct 34 mathematics majors, among a total of 101 chosen from the Class of 2025. The induction ceremony is May 28.

    Founded in 1776, Phi Beta Kappa is the nation’s oldest academic honor society. Membership is awarded to students in recognition of excellent academic records and commitment to the objectives of a liberal education.

    Full list of Mathematics Inductees

    Congratulations to our newest members of Phi Beta Kappa!

  • April 30, 2025
  • April 18, 2025

    Lior Alon Selected for School of Science Infinite Expansion Award

    Lior Alon

    Instructor Lior Alon is one of nine postdocs and research scientists to receive the School of Science’s 2025 Infinite Expansion Award, which highlights extraordinary members of the MIT community.

    Lior was nominated by John Urschel, who wrote, “I find that Lior revels in learning about different areas of mathematics, in particular, how his expertise can help others, and vice versa.”

    Lior was previously a postdoctoral researcher hosted by David Jerison, as part of the Simons collaboration on localization of waves. His research lies within mathematical physics, and intersects with various mathematical disciplines, including Fourier Analysis, Spectral Geometry, Graph Theory, Morse Theory, Real Algebraic Geometry, Dynamics, and Number Theory.

    Congratulations, Lior!

  • April 2, 2025

    Lusztig Receives Basic Science Lifetime Award

    George Lusztig

    George Lusztig has received a 2025 Basic Science Lifetime Award at the 2025 International Congress of Basic Science (ICBS 2025).

    He was recognized for "his unparalleled contributions to representation theory, and the profound influence of the theory of Deligne–Lusztig varieties, and Kazhdan–Lusztig theory."

    Congratulations, George!

  • March 27, 2025

    Alan Edelman Is Named 2024 AAAS Fellow

    Alan Edelman

    Alan Edelman is recognized as a 2024 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow for distinguished contributions and outstanding breakthroughs in high-performance computing, linear algebra, random matrix theory, computational science, and in particular for the development of the Julia programming language.

    The 2024 Fellows class of 471 includes scientists, engineers, and innovators recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.

    Read more in the MIT News.

    Congratulations, Alan!

  • March 18, 2025

    Daniel Stroock, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, dies at 84

    Daniel Stroock

    Daniel Wyler Stroock, MIT professor emeritus of mathematics, passed away on March 13, 2025, in hospice at his home in Cambridge, surrounded by his wife Lucy and his sons, Benjamin (Ben) and Abraham (Abe). He served on the MIT faculty for 26 years until he retired in 2010, but continued teaching as professor post-tenure through spring 2024.

    Please read more about Dan’s life and work here.

  • February 20, 2025

    MIT Students Continue Putnam Math Winning Streak

    Photo of Putnam winners
    Top finishers of the 85th Putnam Math Competition (left to right): Elizabeth Lowell Putnam winner Jessica Wan and Putnam Fellows Brian Liu, Luke Robitaille, Qiao Sun, Jiangqi Dai, and Papon Lapate.

    For the fifth time in the history of the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, and for the fifth year in a row, MIT swept all five of the contest’s top spots.

    The highest scorers are named Putnam Fellows: Senior Brian Liu and juniors Papon Lapate and Luke Robitaille are now three-time Putnam Fellows, sophomore Jiangqi Dai earned his second win, and first-year Qiao Sun earned his first. Each receives a $2,500 award. This is also the fifth time that any school has had the top 5 students being named Putnam Fellows.

    Also coming in first was MIT’s team, made up of Lapate, Robitaille and Sun; Lapate and Robitaille were also on last year’s winning team. This is MIT’s ninth first-place win in the past 11 competitions. Teams consist of the three top scorers from each institution. The institution with the first-place team receives a 1,000.

    First-year Jessica Wan was the top-scoring woman, finishing in the top 25, which earned her the $1,000 Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize. She is the eighth MIT student to receive this honor since the award was created in 1992. This is the sixth year in a row that an MIT woman has won the prize.

    A full list of the winners can be found on the Putnam website.

    Read more in the MIT News.

    Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's exam!

  • January 28, 2025

    Six Math Majors Named 2025 Burchard Scholars

    Math majors Serena An, Luke Fitzgerald, Yongao Hu, June Kayath, Jiwoo Park, and Leqi (Alexis) Zhou are among 36 MIT students named 2025 Burchard Scholars by the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS).

    The Burchard Scholars program recognizes sophomores and juniors who have demonstrated have demonstrated excellence and engagement in the humanistic fields, but can major in science, design, and engineering fields as well as the humanities, arts, and social sciences.

    Congratulations, Alexis, Jiwoo, June, Luke, Serena, and Yongao!

  • January 22, 2025

    Grad Students Ryan Chen and Alex Cohen Receive Clay Research Fellowships

    Ryan Chen and Alex Cohen
    Ryan Chen (Left) and Alex Cohen (Right)

    Graduate students Ryan Chen and Alex Cohen have been awarded 2025 Clay Research Fellowships, for a term of five years.

    Ryan Chen is an arithmetic geometer whose research focuses on themes surrounding Gross–Zagier-type formulas for high-dimensional Shimura varieties. He is advised by Wei Zhang.

    Alex Cohen researches harmonic analysis, combinatorics, and microlocal analysis. He is advised by Larry Guth.

    Other current Fellows with MIT Math connections include former postdocs Maggie Miller and Alexander Smith, in 2021; postdoc Alexander Petrov in 2022; and 2024 PhDs Ishan Levy and Mehtaab Sawhney, who received it last year.

    Congratulations, Alex and Ryan!

  • January 6, 2025

    Yiming Chen ’24 named Rhodes Scholar

    Yiming Chen

    The Rhodes Trust has selected recent MIT graduate Yiming Chen as one of four Rhodes China Scholars. This scholarship will support her study next year at Oxford University. Chen graduated from MIT in 2024 with an SB in math and computer science and an MEng in computer science.

    Please read more about her award on the WIM website.

    Congratulations, Yiming!

  • November 20, 2024

    Peter Shor, Michael Sipser, Dan Spielman PhD ’92, Elchanan Mossel, and Virginia Vassilevska Williams Earn Test of Time Awards

    Portrait photos of Peter Shor, Michael Sipser, Dan Spielman, Elchanan Mossel, and Virginia Vassilevska Williams
    Top From Left: Peter Shor, Michael Sipser, Dan SpielmanBottom From Left: Elchanan Mossel, Virginia Vassilevska Williams

    The FOCS 2024 (Foundations of Computer Science) conference awarded several MIT Math community members with Test of Time awards for the most impactful papers from 30, 20, and 10 years ago.

    • In the 30-year category, awards were given to Peter Shor PhD ’85 for his algorithms for quantum computation, and for discrete logarithms and factoring; and to Michael Sipser and his then-advisee Dan Spielman PhD ’95, a former Department professor, who were recognized for their expander codes.
    • Elchanan Mossel and his coauthors received the 20-year Test of Time award for optimal inapproximability results for Max-Cut and other two-variable constraint satisfaction problems.
    • In the 10-year category, EECS Professor and Math doctoral candidate adviser Virginia Vassilevska Williams was recognized for her work on the relationship between popular conjectures in dynamic algorithms.

    The annual FOCS Test of Time Awards recognize papers published in the Proceedings of the Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science.

    Congrats to Dan, Elchanan, Mike, Peter, and Virgi for these recognitions!

  • October 29, 2024

    Kenta Suzuki ’25 Honored with Morgan Prize

    Kenta Suzuki

    Senior Kenta Suzuki will receive the 2025 AMS-MAA-SIAM 2025 Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student, for “extraordinary research in the representation theory of p-adic groups.”

    According to the AMS, Kenta’s papers, including two solo works, represented “significant progress in different areas of the field.” Kenta worked on deep problems in representation theory, and he has authored and coauthored six research papers. His results include asymptotics for the dimension of spaces fixed by a congruence subgroup in an admissible representation of GL(n).

    Kenta has made important contributions to the representation theory of p-adic groups and is also studying geometric representation theory. Suzuki is particularly interested in applying geometric methods to solve problems of representation theory. From Tokyo, Japan, and Plymouth, Michigan, Suzuki spends his free time running, reading, and learning how to cook.

    Among others, Kenta thanked his mentors, and professors Zhiwei Yun, Wei Zhang, whose “unwavering support has motivated me to explore many areas of mathematics,” and Roman Bezrukavnikov, whose “every conversation left Kenta “with new ideas.”

    Kenta will be receiving his award at January’s 2025 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle.

    Congratulations, Kenta!

  • September 6, 2024

    Borodin, Maulik, Rigollet, and Minzer Named to Professorships

    Alexei Borodin, Philippe Rigollet, Dor Minzer
    From Left: Alexei Borodin, Philippe Rigollet, Dor Minzer

    The provost has selected three senior faculty members to the following five-year named professorships as of July 1, 2024: Alexei Borodin, Barton L. Weller (1940) Professorship; Davesh Maulik, Norman Levinson Professorship; and Philippe Rigollet, Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professorship.

    Assistant Professor Dor Minzer has been appointed to the Cecil and Ida B. Green Career Development Professorship, for a three-year term.

    These named professorships are funded from endowed gifts to the Institute or the Department, and constitute a significant honor for their holders.

    Congratulations Alexei, Davesh, Philippe and Dor!

  • August 14, 2024

    SPUR Teams Share 2024 Rogers Prize

    Jonathan Bloom, Benjamin Li, Haoshuo Fu, Benjamin Li, Luis Modes, and David Jerison
    Top From left, Jonathan Bloom, Benjamin Li, Haoshuo Fu, Luis Modes, and David Jerison; Bottom, Alek Westover is flanked by, from left, award presenters Jonathan Bloom and David Jerison.

    SPUR/SPUR+ (Summer Program in Undergraduate Research) culminated with two teams sharing the 2024 Hartley Rogers Jr. Family Prize for the best SPUR paper.

    MIT undergraduates presented individual and joint research projects at the summer 2024 SPUR Conference to judges Semyon Dyatlov, Julee Kim, and Michael Sipser.

    Senior Luis Modes and junior Benjamin Li’s paper “Isomorphism between Hall algebra and shuffle algebra” was mentored by Haoshuo Fu and suggested by Zhiwei Yun.

    Sophomore Edward Yu and junior Alek Westover’s paper “The Diamond test: A novel affinity tester for boolean functions,” was mentored by Kai Zhe Zeng, and suggested by Dor Minzer.

    This summer’s RSI (Research Science Institute) Symposium also saw 10 exceptional high school students from around the world present their math research projects, as mentored by our graduate students and led by head mentor Tanya Khovanova.

    The SPUR/SPUR+ and RSI math programs are run by lead faculty advisor David Jerison, faculty advisor Jonathan Bloom, and program coordinator André Lee Dixon.

    A big thank you to all involved, and congratulations to Alek, Benjamin, Edward, and Luis, and mentors Haoshuo and Kai Zhe.

    A big thank you to all involved, and congratulations to Alek, Benjamin, Edward, and Luis, and mentors Haoshuo and Kai Zhe.

  • August 9, 2024

    Five Receive Fulkerson Prize

    Fulkerson Prize Winners
    Top From Left: Zilin Jiang, Jonathan Tidor, and Yuan Yao Bottom From Left: Shengtong Zhang and Yufei Zhao

    Former instructor Zilin Jiang, Jonathan Tidor '17 PhD '22, graduate student Yuan Yao, Shengtong Zhang ’22, and Professor Yufei Zhao '10, PhD '15 received the 2024 Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize from the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Optimization Society. They were recognized for their paper "Equiangular lines with a fixed angle," published in 2021 by Annals of Mathematics.

    The Fulkerson Prize is awarded every three years for outstanding papers in the area of discrete mathematics.

    Congratulations, Jonathan, Shengtong, Yuan, Yufei, and Zilin!