2025 Rogers Prize and RSI Awards

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.

The research by sophomores Henrick Rabinovitz and Joseph Vulakh, “Langlands correspondence and Hitchin systems on nodal curves,” was mentored by graduate student Ivan Motorin and suggested by Pavel Etingof.

Senior Papon Lapate’s research “Toric actions on lens spaces and applications to Ricci Solitons” 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.

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.

Each year, out of 100 RSI students, five presentations and five written papers are selected for honors by a distinguished panel of experts. 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 for proving a tight bound of 2n/sqrt(3) on the maximum distance between eigenvalues of an n x n matrix with entries between 0 and 1.  

The 2025 SPUR/SPUR+ and RSI math programs are run by Roman, Jonathan, and program coordinator Yufei An. 

“The two programs hosted intensive research projects in both pure and applied mathematics, producing exciting results which in many cases will lead to publications and power students’ future work,” says Roman.

Added Jonathan, “We’re amazed by how fearlessly these students dive into what is often their first mathematical research experience to rapidly make substantive progress on advanced topics. Their growth and resilience are a testament to the maturity, creativity, and dedication of the mentors, who also develop as role models and teachers.”

– Sandi Miller