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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!

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!

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.

Congratulations, Alan!

Read more in the MIT News.

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 $25,000 award, and each team member receives $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.

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

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

Read more in the MIT News.