Established in 2017, this prize is awarded every three years to one post-PhD early-career researcher in the field of applicable linear algebra, for outstanding contributions within six years of receiving their PhD.
John was recognized for his work in linear algebra, using many different techniques from mathematics, such as random matrix theory, orthogonal polynomials, group theory, and optimization
Congratulations, John!
March 19:
PRIMES and RSI Students Awarded at Regeneron
PRIMES student Michelle Wei won 3rd Place ($150,000 scholarship) for her project “Solving Second-Order Cone Programs Deterministically in Matrix Multiplication Time,” mentored by EECS’ Guanghao Ye.
PRIMES and RSI student Alan Bu earned 10th Place ($40,000) for his RSI project, “On the Maximum Number of Spanning Trees in a Planar Graph with a Fixed Number of Edges: A Linear-Algebraic Connection,” mentored by Yuchong Pan.
Each of them took prizes for math projects that finished within the top ten spots.
Another PRIMES student became a finalist ($25,000), and seven other PRIMES and RSI students won national scholar awards.
Congratulations to the winners, and a big thank you to their mentors, PRIMES Chief Research Advisor Pavel Etingof, RSI Faculty Advisor David Jerison, and PRIMES/RSI head mentor Tanya Khovanova!
February 29:
MIT Students Take First Place in the 84th Putnam Math Competition
MIT Students Take First Place in the 84th Putnam Math Competition
From left to right, front row: Putnam Fellows Ankit Bisain, Papon Lapate, Jiangqi Dai, Brian Liu, and Luke Robitaille, and Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize winner Isabella Zhu. In the background are MIT students recognized for finishing in the top 26.
For the fourth time in the history of the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, and for the fourth year in a row, all five of the top spots in the contest, known as Putnam Fellows, came from a single school — MIT.
Putnam Fellows include three repeats, sophomores Papon Lapate and Luke Robitaille, and junior Brian Liu, plus junior Ankit Bisain and first-year Jiangqi Dai. Each receives an award of $2,500.
MIT’s 2023 Putnam team, made up of Bisain, Lapate, and Robitaille, also finished in first place — MIT’s eighth first-place win in the past 10 competitions. Teams are based on 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.
The top scoring female, first-year Isabella Zhu, received the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize, which includes a $1,000 award. She is the seventh MIT student to receive this honor since the award began in 1992.
In total, 68 out of the top 100 test-takers who took the exam on December 2, 2023, were MIT students. Beyond the top 5 scorers, MIT students took 8 of the next 11 spots (each awarded $1,000), 7 of the next 10 after that (each awarded $250), and 48 out of a total of 75 honorable mentions.
“I am incredibly proud of our students’ amazing effort and performance at the Putnam Competition,” says Associate Professor of Mathematics Yufei Zhao ’10, PhD ’15. “MIT is truly a unique place to be a math major.”
Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's exam!
A full list of the winners can be found on the Putnam website.
February 21:
Three Math Majors Named 2024 Burchard Scholars
Three Math Majors Named 2024 Burchard Scholars
Juniors Sashko Horokh, Margaret Wang, and Grace Zhang are among 35 MIT students named 2024 Burchard Scholars by the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS).
The Burchard Scholars program recognizes sophomores and juniors who have demonstrated outstanding abilities and academic excellence in the humanities, arts, and social sciences as well as in STEM fields.
February 18:
Semyon Dyatlov Receives Simons Fellowship
Semyon Dyatlov Receives Simons Fellowship
Professor Semyon Dyatlov was awarded a 2024 Simons Fellowship in Mathematics. Outstanding mathematicians recognized by the Simons Fellows program are able to extend academic leaves from one term to a full year, enabling recipients to focus solely on research for the long periods often necessary for significant advances.
He was cited “for outstanding contributions to fundamental problems in applied linear algebra developed in his PhD dissertation entitled 'Graphs, Principal Minors, and Eigenvalue Problems.'”
This prize is awarded every two years by SIAM to one early career researcher who has done outstanding research in applied mathematics. He will receive the prize at the 2024 SIAM Annual Meeting (AN24) in Spokane, Wash.
Congratulations, John!
January 8:
Department Welcomes Professor Aleksandr Logunov
Department Welcomes Professor Aleksandr Logunov
Please welcome Aleksandr Logunov, who joined our faculty as a full professor as of January 1. Aleksandr specializes in harmonic analysis, potential theory, and geometric analysis.
He received his BS in 2012 and, under Viktor Petrovich Havin, his PhD in 2015 from St. Petersburg State University, and was a postdoc at Tel Aviv University. He was a researcher and assistant professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University, and most recently a professor at the University of Geneva.
He is the 2021 recipient of the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics — New Horizons in Mathematics, 2020 EMS Prize of the European Mathematical Society, 2018 Salem Prize, and 2017 Clay Research Award.
Congratulations, Aleksandr!
January 30:
Grad Students Ishan Levy and Mehtaab Sawhney Receive Clay Research Fellowships
Grad Students Ishan Levy and Mehtaab Sawhney Receive Clay Research Fellowships
Levy is known for his contributions to homotopy theory, and Sawhney is recognized for his breakthroughs on fundamental problems across extremal combinatorics, probability theory, and theoretical computer science.
Rupert Li is a concurrent senior and master’s student at MIT. He will graduate in May with an SB in mathematics, an SB in computer science, economics, and data science, and a minor in business analytics. He will also be awarded an MEng in computer science, economics, and data science. Rupert‘s research includes sphere-packing and coding theory, and works with Henry Cohn and Nike Sun.
As a Marshall Scholar, a fellowship that offers an opportunity for graduate study in the United Kingdom, Rupert will pursue the MASt degree in pure mathematics at Cambridge University, followed by the MSc in mathematics and foundations of computer science at Oxford University.
Rupert also will receive honorable mention for the 2024 AMS-MAA-SIAM Morgan Prize, for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student, for his focus on problems in combinatorics that led to co-authoring 10 mathematical research paper.
December 6:
Sigurdur Helgason, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, Dies at 96
Sigurdur Helgason, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, Dies at 96
Sigurdur Helgason, emeritus professor of mathematics at MIT, passed away on Sunday, December 3, 2023, at the age of 96.
For many decades, Sigurdur led the study of group actions on manifolds. Generations of mathematicians entered the field through his classic 1962 text Differential Geometry and Symmetric Spaces, and its greatly expanded 1978 second edition Differential Geometry, Lie Groups, and Symmetric Spaces. His own research contributions included the Plancherel and Paley-Wiener theorems for Riemannian symmetric spaces. He was a superb lecturer, a well-regarded graduate advisor, and a cherished colleague.
Sigurdur came to MIT as a CLE Moore Instructor in 1954. Following postdoctoral appointments at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University, he joined the MIT mathematics faculty in 1959. He officially retired from the faculty after 55 years in 2014.
December 6:
Four Receive 2024 Lusztig and Bershadsky PRIMES Mentorships
Four Receive 2024 Lusztig and Bershadsky PRIMES Mentorships
From left: Felix Gotti, Serina Hu, Vijay Srinivasan, and David Darrow.
Four members of our community received the 2024 named PRIMES mentorships for exceptional mentor service.
Those receiving the 2024 George Lusztig Mentorships are:
Felix Gotti, an NSF postdoc who has been the PRIMES group research coordinator and the CrowdMath lead mentor for the past two years. His direct PRIMES/CrowdMath mentees have published nine research papers under his supervision. He is studying atomic and combinatorial aspects of commutative rings and monoids,
Serina Hu, who is studying noncommutative algebra and representation theory. She is the director of √mathroots and has also mentored for PRIMES, DRP, and GUMMI; and
Vijay Srinivasan, who is the head mentor for √mathroots; other past mentorships include DRP and GUMMI. He is studying number theory and arithmetic geometry.
The 2024 Bershadsky Mentor Award, courtesy of Michael and Victoria Bershadsky, is awarded to David Darrow, who since 2021 has mentored for PRIMES USA, of which he is also a 2017 alum. His research interests include fluid dynamics, physical applied math, probability, and geometry.
Congratulations go out to David, Felix, Serina, and Vijay, and we also wish to thank Professor Lusztig and Michael and Victoria Bershadsky for making these mentorships possible!
December 6:
Save the Date: 2024 Simons Lecture Series features Elon Lindenstrauss Feb. 13-15 and Lenka Zdeborova April 23-25
Save the Date: 2024 Simons Lecture Series features Elon Lindenstrauss Feb. 13-15 and Lenka Zdeborova April 23-25
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne’s Lenka Zdeborová will give three lectures April 23, 24, and 25, as part of the Department of Mathematics’s annual Simons Lecture Series.
She is an associate professor of physics and of computer science and communication systems as well as head of the Statistical Physics of Computation Laboratory.
Computation through the lens of spin glasses
Lecture 1:
Phase transitions in computational problems
Lecture 2:
Inference, learning and optimization in complex landscapes I
Lecture 3:
Inference, learning and optimization in complex landscapes II
Each lecture will begin with a 4 p.m. reception in 2-290, followed by an hour lecture from 4:30-5:30 p.m. in 2-190.
This annual lecture series features presentations by top mathematicians. Many thanks to Jim and Marilyn Simons for their financial support of these lectures.
October 24:
Jörn Dunkel is New MathWorks Professor and a Schmidt Polymath Awardee
Jörn Dunkel is New MathWorks Professor and a Schmidt Polymath Awardee
Left: Jörn Dunkel, Right: Gil Strang
The Provost has selected Jörn Dunkel as the new MathWorks professor, taking over from Gil Strang.
Gil, the first holder of the Mathworks Professorship, recently retired after 61 years on our faculty. His last lecture in 18.06 was streamed live and has over 945,000 views.
Jörn also received the 2023 Schmidt Science Polymath award. For recently tenured professors with remarkable track records doing interdisciplinary research, the Schmidt Futures Foundation award include large grants to explore a “substantive disciplinary shift” soon after achieving tenure. (Also see MIT News story.)
Congratulations, Jörn and Gil!
October 19:
Karol Bacik to Receive APS’ Acrivos Award in Fluid Dynamics
Karol Bacik to Receive APS’ Acrivos Award in Fluid Dynamics
MIT undergraduates presented individual and joint research projects at the summer 2023 SPUR Conference to judges Davesh Maulik, John Urschel, and David Vogan.
The judges said that seniors Saba Lepsveridze and Yihang Sun’s paper “Size of the Largest Sum-Free Set in [n]^3,” as mentored by Mehtaab Sawhney, impressed them with a “solution to a longstanding question in additive combinatorics” and congratulated them “for a very lucid presentation.”
Senior Daniel Santiago and junior Isaac Lopez’s paper “Positive Mass Theorems for Asymptotically Euclidean Smooth Metric Measure Spaces,” as mentored by Michael Law, studied a new iteration of a classical problem in general relativity and “found a very elegant solution to it, which improved on earlier work of (Julius) Baldauf and (Tristan) Ozuch,” said the judges.
Before Tristan joined us in 2020 as an instructor, he received his PhD in mathematics at École Normale Supérieure, where he was advised by Olivier Biquard. His research is focused on geometric analysis and particularly on Einstein manifolds and Ricci flows.
John's research is focused on numerical linear algebra, spectral graph theory, and theoretical machine learning, with an emphasis on theoretical results and provable guarantees. After graduating from MIT in 2021, he worked with Peter Sarnak as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study and was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University.
Congratulations, John and Tristan!
October 5:
Tristan Collins Is Promoted to Associate Professor
Tristan Collins Is Promoted to Associate Professor
Tristan Collins
The MIT Corporation Executive Committee has approved the promotion of Tristan Collins to associate professor. He is now the Class of 1948 Career Development Associate Professor.
Congratulations, Tristan!
October 5:
Davesh Maulik Is Named Simons Investigator
This program supports "outstanding theoretical scientists in their most productive years, when they are establishing creative new research directions, providing leadership to the field, and effectively mentoring junior scientists."
He belongs to a 16-member cohort of 2023 Simons Investigators in Mathematics, Physics, Astrophysics, and Computer Science.
Past Simons investigators in our Department are, in chronological order, Paul Seidel, Larry Guth, Bjorn Poonen, Elchanan Mossel, Zhiwei Yun, Alexei Borodin, and Wei Zhang.
October 5:
MIT Mathematicians’ Disproof of Telescope Conjecture Featured in Quanta
MIT Mathematicians’ Disproof of Telescope Conjecture Featured in Quanta
From Left: Robert Burklund, Jeremy Hahn, Ishan Levy, and Tomer Schlank
From Left: Photo credits: Jim Hoyer/UCPH; Christopher Harting; and for Levy and Schlank, Archives of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach
Quanta Magazine’s story on the telescope conjecture highlights recent work by Jeremy Hahn, the Rockwell International Career Development Assistant Professor of Mathematics, along with PhD student Ishan Levy, Robert Burklund PhD ’22, and Tomer Schlank, a recent visiting associate professor.
The four mathematicians presented their research at the birthday conference for former MIT Math Professor Michael Hopkins, Hahn’s advisor at Harvard.
In the late 1980s, Hopkins had proved six of seven conjectures by Doug Ravenel of the University of Rochester; the seventh was the telescope conjecture. At the conference, the quartet presented their proof that the telescope conjecture was false, making it the only one of Ravenel’s original conjectures not to be true.
This finding means that “The universe of different shapes is far more complicated than mathematicians anticipated,” according to the article.
Congratulations also to this year's 167 new SB recipients who graduate this May. Four also graduated in February, and another math major received their degree in September 2022.
May 24:
Tianyuan (Margaret) Zheng Receives Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Award
Tianyuan (Margaret) Zheng Receives Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Award
Photo by Chen Liu
Math major Tianyuan (Margaret) Zheng ’23, who is also majoring in Computer Science, Economics, and Data Science (6-14) and minoring in Music (21M), was chosen for the 2023 Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Award by the Arts at MIT Student Art Awards Committee.
Zheng’s artistic involvement on campus is multi-faceted; she is best known for bringing to life Wide Tim, the illustrated incarnation of MIT’s mascot Tim the Beaver. “My vision for Wide Tim is that he’s a very happy, very positive character,” says Zheng.
Her goal is to “spread joy and raise awareness of art and culture aspects of MIT student life,” she says. As of May 2023, she has created more than 130 artworks and collaborated with more than 35 MIT departments and organizations.
Established by the Council for the Arts at MIT in 1979, these awards honor past MIT President Jerome B. Wiesner and Laya Wiesner for their commitment to the arts at MIT.
May 24:
Anqi Li, Carl Schildkraut, and Daniel Zhu Receive Bucsela Prizes
Anqi Li, Carl Schildkraut, and Daniel Zhu Receive Bucsela Prizes
The 2023 Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics has been awarded to senior math majors, from left, Carl Schildkraut, Anqi Li, and Daniel Zhu, for distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise, and enthusiasm for mathematics.
Congratulations to all!
May 24:
Chirag Falor, Serina Hu, and Nitya Mani Receive Peter Baddoo Community Building Awards
Chirag Falor, Serina Hu, and Nitya Mani Receive Peter Baddoo Community Building Awards
First photo, from left: Steven Johnson, Chirag Falor, and Michel Goemans; second photo, from left: Michel, Nitya Mani, and Serina Hu.
Three students recently received the Peter Baddoo Community Building Award, for individuals who have made significant contributions to building and strengthening our MIT Math community.
Senior Chirag Falor was awarded for his work as the Undergraduate Mathematics Association Social Chair. “From organizing study groups and workshops to coordinating social activities, Chirag has consistently put in tremendous effort to ensure that students feel supported and connected,” says one nominator.
Graduate students Nitya Mani and Serina Hu received this award for their work in organizing the department retreat, which usually is the work of at least five people.
This award is named in honor of Peter Baddoo, a Department instructor who was 29 when he died on February 15. Baddoo received the Community Building Award in 2022 for helping to organize tea and coffee hours for the postdoc community.
Congratulations, Chirag, Serina, and Nitya!
May 24:
Philippe Rigollet Earns MIT’s Perkins Award
Named in honor of Frank E. Perkins, Dean of the Graduate School from 1983-1985, this award is presented to a faculty member who demonstrates unbounded compassion and dedication toward students.
This award recognizes excellence in applied mathematics, with preference given to students in physical applied math, computational science, numerical analysis, computational biology, or theoretical physics. Alasdair is a PhD candidate in Jörn Dunkel’s group.
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, Alasdair!
May 24:
Teaching and Learning Awards
Teaching and Learning Awards
First photo, from left: Gabrielle Kaili-May Liu and Esha Bhatia; second photo, from left: Giada Franz, Bill Minicozzi, and Andrew Horning.
The Department of Mathematics recognized four math community members with Teaching and Learning awards for their contributions to teaching, mentoring, and student support in our math subjects.
Math majors Gabrielle Kaili-May Liu and Esha Bhatia were recognized for their work as a PRIMES Circle mentor and 18.03 teaching assistant, respectively.
Giada Franz taught her first MIT class, 18.100B, and Andrew Horning was the primary instructor for 18.335 while also co-teaching 18.06 with nearly 500 students.
Congratulations, Andrew, Esha, Gabrielle, and Giada!
May 24:
Rupert Li & Audrey Xie Receive Goldwater Scholarships
Rupert Li & Audrey Xie Receive Goldwater Scholarships
Third-years Rupert Li & Audrey Xie each received a Barry Goldwater Scholarship for 2022-2023. Rupert is mentored by professors Henry Cohn, Joseph Gallian of University of Minnesota Duluth, and James Propp of UMass-Lowell. Audrey is working on research related to the latent spaces of generative models and last year developed methods for gradient-based hyperparameter adaptation as part of Professor Jonathan Ragan-Kelly's group at CSAIL. They were among 413 college students selected on the basis of academic merit, from a nationwide field of candidates.
Congratulations, Audrey and Rupert!
May 24:
Phi Beta Kappa Inducts 33 Mathematics Seniors
Phi Beta Kappa Inducts 33 Mathematics Seniors
The Xi Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa has elected 33 mathematics majors, among 102 electees from MIT's Class of 2023, to become members.
Phi Beta Kappa is the nation's oldest academic honor society with a very selective invitation process. Membership is awarded to students in recognition of excellent academic records and commitment to the objectives of a liberal education.
Congratulations to our newest members of Phi Beta Kappa!
April 26:
Ribbon cutting held for Srinivasa Ramanujan statue
Ribbon cutting held for Srinivasa Ramanujan statue
From left to right: Prof. Bjorn Poonen, Gurumurthy Kalyanaram PhD ’89, Dept. Head Michel Goemans, Prof. Michael Sipser, and Indiaspora founder MR Rangaswami read from Ramanujan’s Notebooks following the dedication of the Department’s Srinivasa Ramanujan bronze bust on the second floor of the Simons Building.
Indiaspora and the Agastya International Foundation officiated the Department’s April 20 ribbon-cutting event to formally dedicate the bronze bust of esteemed mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920).
He and six other MIT faculty members are among 269 leaders from academia, the arts, industry, public policy, and research elected this year by one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies.
Congratulations, Wei!
April 7:
Save the Date for Singer Conference
Save the Date for Singer Conference
With the help of the MIT School of Science, our department will be holding a long-delayed memorial conference in honor of the late Institute Professor Isadore Singer. The conference will be held on May 12, 2023.
We are pleased to have a wonderful roster of speakers. Robert Bryant (Duke), Nigel Hitchin (Oxford), and Cumrun Vafa ’81 (Harvard), as well as our own Richard Melrose.
The conference is being organized by Dan Freed (UT Austin), Michael Hopkins (Harvard), John Lott (UC Berkeley) and Tom Mrowka ’83 (MIT), with administrative help from events assistant Rebecca Campobasso and assistant to the department head Sara Turk.
March 27:
Peter Shor Awarded Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture and Medal
Peter Shor Awarded Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture and Medal
Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics Peter Shor PhD '85 will deliver a lecture in Stockholm on March 30 following his being awarded the Lise Meitner Distinguished Medal for his accomplishments in mathematics, computer science, and quantum physics.
February 18:
Tobias Colding Receives Simons Fellowship
Tobias Colding Receives Simons Fellowship
Professor Tobias Colding was awarded a 2023 Simons Fellowship in Mathematics. Outstanding mathematicians recognized by the Simons Fellows program are able to extend academic leaves from one term to a full year, enabling recipients to focus solely on research for the long periods often necessary for significant advances.
Congratulations, Tobias!
February 16:
Peter Baddoo, 1993-2023
Peter Baddoo, 1993-2023
It is with a sense of deep sorrow that we write to inform you of an unexpected and tragic loss in the Math community. On Wednesday afternoon, Feb 15, our department was notified of the sudden passing of Peter Baddoo, at the age of 29, by cardiac arrest while playing basketball on campus.
Peter studied mathematics as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford, then completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge. He was an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow at Imperial College prior to joining our department as an Instructor in January 2021.
Peter was a brilliant applied mathematician with broad research interests and activities that spanned complex function theory, fluid dynamics, and machine learning and data-driven methods. He was an exemplary teacher and colleague who gave generously of his time in assisting colleagues, graduate students and undergraduates alike. He was a catalyst in organizing social events for our postdoctoral fellows and instructors, for which he received a Math Community Service Award.
Peter was a lively, joyful young man, a gentle soul with a kind spirit and a ready smile. His interests extended well beyond mathematics, and included music (saxophone) and sport (lacrosse, squash and basketball). He dearly loved his family and friends, and was a devoted member of the Park Street Church. His last years were blessed by the love of his life who he was to marry this spring. Peter will be sorely missed by all who knew him.
February 16:
MIT Takes All of the Top Honors in 83rd Putnam Competition
MIT Takes All of the Top Honors in 83rd Putnam Competition
Front row, Brian Liu; second row Mingyang Deng and Daniel Zhu; third row Luke Robitaille and Binwei Yan; and back row Papon Lapate.
For the third time in the history of the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, and for the third year in a row, all five of the top spots in the contest, known as Putnam Fellows, came from a single school — MIT.
Putnam Fellows are first years Papon Lapate and Luke Robitaille, sophomore Brian Liu, junior Mingyang Deng, and senior Daniel Zhu. Daniel has placed as a Fellow every year he has competed in the exam.
The 2022 Putnam team, listed in alphabetical order, are Deng, Robitaille, and Zhu. Teams are based on the three top scorers from each institution. This is the MIT team's seventh first-place win in the past nine competitions.
Junior Binwei Yan, who finished in the top 15, received the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize, which includes a $1,000 award. She is the sixth MIT student to receive this honor since the award began in 1992.
MIT students also dominated the rest of the scoreboard: 9 of the next 11 (each awarded $1,000), 7 of the next 9 (each awarded $250), and 49 of the 75 honorable mention rankings. In total, 70 out of the top 100 test-takers overall were MIT students.
Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's exam!
A full list of the winners can be found on the Putnam website.
He is the Rockwell International Career Development Assistant Professor of
Mathematics. Jeremy's research is in in algebraic topology and homotopy
theory. With collaborators, he has done work in equivariant chromatic
homotopy theory, the classification of high-dimensional manifolds, and the
redshift conjectures in algebraic K-theory. He hopes to better understand
the behavior of new invariants of ring spectra, such as syntomic and
prismatic cohomology.
He is among nine new MIT Sloan Fellows this year. Including this year's
recipients, a total of 327 MIT faculty have received Sloan Research
Fellowships since they began in 1955. Altogether, the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation selected 126
U.S. and Canadian early-career scholars across seven fields for the
two-year, $75,000 fellowship to further their research program.
“This paper introduced new notions and developed sophisticated new technology that has played and continues to play a central role in gauge theory and low-dimensional topology,” according to the AMS citation.
December 15:
Pavel Etingof Elected Member of European Academy of Sciences and Arts
Pavel Etingof Elected Member of European Academy of Sciences and Arts
Pavel Etingof has been elected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Academy members are elected for their outstanding achievements in science, arts and governance and hold exceptional standing in society as a result of their scientific work, publications or leadership.
To celebrate his achievement, we enlisted chatGPT of OpenAI to generate a poem about Pavel:
Pavel Etingof, master of math,
Whose mind is sharp and nimble,
Has been elected to the European Academy,
Where his contributions will be celebrated fully.
His work in representation theory,
Has helped to advance our understanding,
Of complex mathematical concepts,
That have long been demanding.
But he is not just a scholar,
His mentoring skills are second to none,
As the Chief Research Advisor of the PRIMES program,
He has helped many young minds to become.
And in his spare time,
He can be found in the forest,
Foraging for mushrooms,
His knowledge of which is the best,
Is truly impressive,
And his love of nature,
Shines through in all that he does,
We celebrate this momentous occasion,
And honor the achievements of our colleague and friend,
May he continue to excel and innovate,
In the pursuit of knowledge without end.
Congratulations, Pavel!
December 15:
Four Graduate Students Receive 2023 Lusztig and Bershadsky PRIMES Mentorships
Four Graduate Students Receive 2023 Lusztig and Bershadsky PRIMES Mentorships
From left: Nitya Mani with George Lusztig, Julius Baldauf, Mary Stelow, and Kent Vashaw.
Four graduate students received the 2023 named PRIMES mentorships for exceptional mentor service.
Nitya Mani, who is studying graph theory, probability, and optimization, is a PRIMES, SPUR, and GUMMI mentor, whose PRIMES student Edward Yu won the Gold Medal in Math at the 2022 USA S.-T. Yau High School Science Award.
Mary Stelow is a co-coordinator of PRIMES Circle and has mentored for RSI and DRP, and is a GUMMI co-chair. Her research interests are in gauge theory, Floer theory, and low dimensional topology.
Dr. Kent Vashaw is an NSF Mathematical Science Research postdoc and instructor whose research interests broadly are at the intersection of homological algebra, noncommutative algebra, and representation theory.
The 2023 Bershadsky Mentor Award, courtesy of Michael and Victoria Bershadsky, is awarded to Julius Baldauf ’19, who been both a student and mentor for DRP, SPUR, and UROP, and is active with Yulia's Dream. Julius was awarded the Rogers Prize for the best SPUR paper in 2018, and the Charles and Holly Housman Award for excellence in teaching in 2022. Julius' research interests are in geometry and analysis.
Congratulations Nitya, Mary, Kent, and Julius, and thank you Professor Lusztig and Michael & Victoria Bershadsky for making these mentorships possible!
December 15:
Seniors Anqi Li and Ilani Axelrod-Freed Honored with Schafer Prize
Seniors Anqi Li and Ilani Axelrod-Freed Honored with Schafer Prize
From Left: Anqui Li and Ilani Axelrod-freed
Two seniors were honored with the Association for Women in Mathematics’ annual Alice T. Schafer Prize for excellence in mathematics by an undergraduate woman.
Anqi Li has been named the runner-up, and Ilani Axelrod-Freed received an honorable mention. Their achievements and statements are on the AWM site, and their prizes will be presented at the upcoming Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston.
Congratulations, Anqi and Ilani!
December 12:
Jia Shi Awarded 2023 AWM Dissertation Prize
Jia Shi Awarded 2023 AWM Dissertation Prize
CLE Moore instructor Jia Shi will receive the seventh annual Association for Women in Mathematics Dissertation Prize.
Jia and two others will each be presented with the 2023 AWM Dissertation Prize at the January 4 Joint Prize Session at the 2023 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston.
Mentored by Gigliola Staffilani, Jia is interested in fluid mechanics and partial differential equations. She received her PhD at Princeton University with Charles Fefferman and Javier Gomez-Serrano as advisors.
Congratulations, Jia!
December 12:
Sheffield and Miller Awarded Eisenbud Prize
They earned this award "for their monumental series of papers on Liouville Quantum Gravity." The Leonard Eisenbud prize, which honors works that bring mathematics and physics closer together, will be awarded during the January Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston.
“I started working in this general area some 15 or 20 years ago, and at the time had no idea how far it would develop, or how exciting it would turn out to be,” says Scott.
Congratulations, Scott and Jason!
December 1:
Tom Leighton Wins IEEE von Neumann Medal
Tom Leighton Wins IEEE von Neumann Medal
Professor Tom Leighton PhD '81, chief executive officer of Akamai Technologies, received the 2023 IEEE John von Neumann medal "for fundamental contributions to algorithm design and their application to content delivery networks."
This award is given for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology.
Congratulations, Tom!
November 7:
Carina Hong ’22 Honored With Morgan Prize
Carina Hong ’22 Honored With Morgan Prize
Letong (Carina) Hong '22 will receive the 2023 AMS-MAA-SIAM Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student, for proving a number of results and solving conjectures in combinatorics, number theory, and probability.
Carina, a double major in courses 18 and 8 and the former president of the Undergraduate Mathematics Association, is currently at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar for China.
Among others, she thanked her undergraduate advisors Pavel Etingof, "whose kindness and support has been defining in my mathematical journey," Scott Sheffield, "for walking me into the brilliant world of random surfaces with charisma and humor," and Henry Cohn, "for teaching me so much about an intricately charming problem and encouraging me, especially during setbacks."
The American Mathematical Society's 2023 Joseph L. Doob Prize is awarded to Bjorn Poonen's 2017 book Rational Points on Varieties, in the series Graduate Studies in Mathematics.
The citation called his book "an essential reference for anybody who wishes to apply the tools and techniques of modern algebraic geometry to the venerable area of Diophantine equations."
The prize will be awarded at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston this January.
"I am indebted to the many researchers who, motivated by classical Diophantine equations, developed this beautiful subject connecting number theory and algebraic geometry," says Bjorn. "I find it very rewarding to be honored for this, the single mathematical project that I have devoted more of my life to developing than any other."
October 27:
MIT Hosts the 2022 Math Prize for Girls
MIT Hosts the 2022 Math Prize for Girls
Left to right: Advantage Testing Foundation founder Arun Alagappan, Jane Street’s Sandor Lehoczky, Boston College Professor Eli Grigsby, and Math Prize for Girls winner Jessica Wan.
Photo: Jared Charney
Congratulations to the winners of the 14th annual Math Prize for Girls, which was hosted by MIT during the weekend of October 7-9, 2022. Created and organized by the Advantage Testing Foundation, the competition drew 240 girls from across the US and Canada to compete for cash prizes.
"This competition encourages more girls to be passionate about mathematics and interested in STEM careers, and this is certainly much-needed," says Department head Michel Goemans.
He shares this prestigious award with Charles H. Bennett, Gilles Brassard, and David Deutsch, for their foundational work in quantum information. Shor’s algorithm finds the prime factors of an integer in polynomial time on a quantum computer, while this is unknown for any classical algorithm. This, and his techniques for error-correction in quantum computers, “paved the way for today’s fast-developing quantum computers,” says the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.
Also, former MIT math faculty member and also PhD alum (’95) Daniel Spielman, now Sterling Professor at Yale U., was awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics for “breakthrough contributions to theoretical computer science and mathematics, including to spectral graph theory, the Kadison-Singer problem, numerical linear algebra, optimization, and coding theory.”
And our former NSF postdoc Maggie Miller, now at Stanford University and a Clay Research Fellow, earned a Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize for her work on fibered ribbon knots and surfaces in 4-dimensional manifolds.
August 30:
Simons Lecture Series: Cynthia Dwork September 19-22
Simons Lecture Series: Cynthia Dwork September 19-22
Harvard University Professor Cynthia Dwork will give three lectures
September 19, 20 and 22, 2022, on
Mathematics and Mores: The Theoretical Underpinnings of Private
Data Analysis and Algorithmic Fairness
:
September 19: Differential Privacy and the US Census
September 20: Differential Privacy: Relaxations, Amplifications,
and a Surprising Application
September 22: The Defining Problem of AI and the Calculus of
Inclusion
The lectures are 4:30-5:30 p.m. in 2-190, each preceded by a 4 p.m.
reception in 2-290.
The Department of Mathematics annually hosts the
Simons Lecture Series
featuring presentations by top mathematicians.
Many thanks to Jim and Marilyn Simons for their financial support of
these lectures.
Senior Milan Haiman's paper "Irreducibility of Generalized Permutahedra, Supermodular Functions, and Balanced Multisets," suggested by their mentor Yannick Yao, "makes a serious contribution to the study of irreducible generalized permutohedra, establishing a double exponential upper bound for the number of such objects in dimension n," stated the judges.
Sophomore Kenta Suzuki's paper "Gelfand-Kirillov Dimension of Representations of GL(n) over a Non-Archimedean Local Field" was mentored by Hao Peng. "Suzuki's paper completely determines the Gelfand-Kirillov dimension of irreducible representations of GL(n) over p-adic fields, by relating the question to the geometry of partial flag varieties," the judges wrote. "Suzuki gave a beautiful presentation of his results and clearly answered many questions from the audience."
MIT undergraduates presented individual and joint research projects at the summer 2022 SPUR Conference to judges Tristan Collins, David Vogan, and Wei Zhang.
July 19:
Faculty Promotions for Jörn Dunkel, Andrew Lawrie, and Yufei Zhao
Faculty Promotions for Jörn Dunkel, Andrew Lawrie, and Yufei Zhao
Promoted Faculty Jörn Dunkel, Andrew Lawrie, and
Yufei Zhao
The MIT Corporation Executive Committee has approved the following
faculty promotions:
Jörn Dunkel
is now a full professor, and
Andrew Lawrie
and
Yufei Zhao
were each promoted to Associate Professor.
Congratulations to Jörn, Andrew, and Yufei!
July 19:
Newly Appointed and Continuing Faculty Chairs
Newly Appointed and Continuing Faculty Chairs
Faculty Chairholders Tristan Collins, Jeremy Hahn,
Bill Minicozzi, Scott Sheffield, and
Gigliola Staffilani
The Provost has selected Assistant Professor
Tristan Collins to
hold the Class of 1948 Career Development Chair, and Assistant
Professor
Jeremy Hahn as the
next Rockwell International Career Assistant Professor of
Mathematics. Each will serve three-year terms beginning July 1,
2022.
Also, the Singer Professorship of
Bill Minicozzi, the
Leighton Family Professorship of
Scott Sheffield, and
the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professorship of
Gigliola Staffilani
have all been extended for another five-year term.
Congratulations to all!
July 19:
Department Welcomes Assistant Professor Daniel Álvarez Gavela
Department Welcomes Assistant Professor Daniel Álvarez Gavela
Specializing in symplectic and contact geometry, Dani joined our
department in 2020 as a Simons postdoc, and this past year served as
an instructor. Since last year, he has been an organizer of the
Boston Informal Symplectic Seminar
and the
MIT Geometry and Topology Seminar. He is also an active member of the Department's Diversity and
Community Building Committee.
Congratulations, Daniel!
July 19:
Plenary and Invited Speakers at July's ICM 22
Plenary and Invited Speakers at July's ICM 22
The 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) hosted
its virtual conference
July 6-14, 2022. Department faculty members who spoke at ICM 2022
included:
This program supports "outstanding theoretical scientists in their
most productive years, when they are establishing creative new
research directions, providing leadership to the field, and
effectively mentoring junior scientists."
He is among 16 of the 2022 Simons Investigators in Mathematics,
Physics, Astrophysics, and Computer Science.
Congratulations Wei!
July 19:
Dor Minzer Receives Presburger Award
Dor Minzer Receives Presburger Award
The European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS)
selected Assistant Professor
Dor Minzer for the
2022 EATCS Presburger Award for Young Scientists
"for his deep technical contributions towards resolving the 2-to-2
Games Conjecture."
The Presburger Award is given "for outstanding contributions in
theoretical computer science, documented by a published paper or a
series of published papers."
Congratulations, Dor!
June 10:
Juncal Arbelaiz Earns Schmidt Science Postdoctoral Fellowship
This postdoctoral program was created by Schmidt Futures in 2017 to
advance interdisciplinary studies among early-career researchers.
Juncal, who will be graduating this summer, works with Professors
Peko Hosoi
and
Ali Jadbabaie
in the interdisciplinary Sociotechnical System Research Center
(SSRC).
Congratulations to Juncal!
June 10:
Students Recognized by 2022 MIT Awards Convocation
Students Recognized by 2022 MIT Awards Convocation
Ananya Gurumurthy, Omomayowa A. Songonuga and Ben Spector
Ananya Gurumurthy
'23 received the
William L. Stewart Jr. Award
for outstanding contributions to extracurricular activities and
events.
Omomayowa A. Songonuga
'22 received the
Ronald E. McNair Scholarship Award
established in Dr. McNair's honor by the Black Alumni/ae of MIT, to
recognize a Black undergraduate who has demonstrated strong academic
performance and who has made a considerable contribution to the
minority community.
Ben Spector
'22 received the
Patrick E. McGovern Jr. '59 Entrepreneurship Award
for making a significant impact on the quality, visibility, and
overall spirit of entrepreneurship education and support across the
Institute.
June 9:
Barbara Peskin Receives Institute Excellence Award
Barbara Peskin Receives Institute Excellence Award
Barbara Peskin with Vice President for Human Resources Ramona Allen
Academic Administrator
Barbara Peskin
has been recognized by an
Excellence Award
in the Outstanding Contributor category at the 2022 Excellence
Awards + Collier Medal celebration. She was recognized for her
dedication to this department in general, and specifically to its
educational mission.
Congratulations, Barbara!
May 18:
Shengtong Zhang Receives Bucsela Prize
Shengtong Zhang Receives Bucsela Prize
The 2022 Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics has been awarded to
senior math major
Shengtong Zhang
for distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise, and
enthusiasm for mathematics.
Congratulations, Shengtong!
May 18:
Phi Beta Kappa Inducts 17 Mathematics Seniors
Phi Beta Kappa Inducts 17 Mathematics Seniors
The Xi Chapter of
Phi Beta Kappa
has elected 17 mathematics majors, among 82 electees from MIT's
Class of 2022, to become members. Phi Beta Kappa is the nation's
oldest academic honor society with a very selective invitation
process. Membership is awarded to students in recognition of
excellent academic records and commitment to the objectives of a
liberal education.
Congratulations to our newest members of Phi Beta Kappa!
May 18:
Teaching and Learning Awards
Teaching and Learning Awards
The Department of Mathematics recognized math majors with Teaching and
Learning awards, for their contributions to teaching.
Professor
Steven Johnson
poses with, from left, juniors
Abe Montes
and
Keita Allen
, who were awarded for their work as Undergraduate Teaching
Assistants for 18.02 and as exemplary tutors; and with sophomore
Paige Dote, who was praised for developing the IAP Real Analysis "bridge" class.
Senior Undergraduate Teaching Assistant
Quinn Brodsky
(at left) for 18.03; and sophomore Undergraduate Assistant
Yi (Eva) Xie
for 18.600, pictured with Steven.
Congratulations to Abe, Keita, Paige, Quinn, and Eva!
May 18:
Ariana Park Receives Community Building Award
Ariana Park Receives Community Building Award
Junior
Ariana Park
received the Community Building Award for her work in developing the
peer mentoring program.
Congratulations, Ariana!
May 18:
Seniors and PhD Candidates Awarded 2022 NSF Fellowships
Seniors and PhD Candidates Awarded 2022 NSF Fellowships
Professor
Alexei Borodin
is a moderator of the Satellite Coordination Group for in-person and
online events created to complement the virtual ICM 2022. "I think
it is very important for mathematicians to get back to face-to-face
interactions after two years of the pandemic, and ICM satellites are
perfect for that."
Speaking at this vICM day at MIT are faculty members from MIT and
Harvard U.: ICM plenary speakers Larry Guth and Scott Sheffield, and
invited speakers Semyon Dyatlov, Stefanie Jegelka, Elchanan Mossel,
Scott Sheffield, Lauren Williams, and Melanie Matchett Wood.
"This mini-ICM should be very interesting and will cover a wide
range of mathematics!" says Dept. Head Michel Goemans.
Meeting every four years, ICMs are the largest and most significant
meetings of the mathematical community, aiming to showcase the most
important recent advances across all subfields.
The award citation credits Peter's "seminal contributions that have
forever shaped the foundations of quantum computing. Indeed, quantum
computing exists today, in practice, because of Peter Shor."
Professor
Roman Bezrukavnikov
has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He and six other MIT faculty members are among more than 250 leaders
from academia, the arts, industry, public policy, and research
elected this year by the honorary society, which is also a leading
center for independent policy research.
Steven was nominated by students for his class 18.369: Mathematical
Methods in Nanophotonics, and how he used
GitHub
to organize and update the course materials.
May 10:
Ashwin Sah and Mehtaab Sawhney Receive Johnson Prize
Ashwin Sah and Mehtaab Sawhney Receive Johnson Prize
From left: Ashwin Sah, Mehtaab Sawhney, and William Minicozzi
The 2022 Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize, for a research
paper accepted for publication in a major journal, has been awarded
to graduate students
Ashwin Sah
and
Mehtaab Sawhney
for their paper
"Singularity of discrete random matrices,"
co-written with Vishesh Jain PhD '20, which has been published in
Geometric and Functional Analysis
.
Congratulations, Ashwin and Mehtaab!
May 10:
Julius Baldauf-Lenschen and Calder Morton-Ferguson Receive Housman Award
Julius Baldauf-Lenschen and Calder Morton-Ferguson Receive Housman Award
From left: Julius Baldauf-Lenschen, William Minicozzi, Calder
Morton-Ferguson, and Michel Goemans
Graduate students
Julius Baldauf-Lenschen
and
Calder Morton-Ferguson
have received the 2022 Charles and Holly Housman Award for
Excellence in Teaching, presented to graduate students in
mathematics for their skill and dedication in undergraduate
teaching.
Congratulations, Julius and Calder!
May 10:
Adela Zhang Receives Graduate Appreciation Fellowship
Adela Zhang
has been awarded the 2022 Graduate Appreciation Fellowship,
presented to a graduate woman entering her final year, in
recognition of contributions to teaching and departmental service.
Congratulations, Adela!
May 10:
MIT Mathematics Awards for Service to the Math Community
MIT Mathematics Awards for Service to the Math Community
Awards were presented recently to several MIT Mathematics members for
their outstanding contributions to building and strengthening our
mathematics community:
Postdocs
Peter Baddoo
and
Charlotte Kirchhoff-Lukat
, for their work in bringing together the postdoc community through
the series of tea and coffee hours they have organized
Research scientists
Edgar Costa
and
David Roe
, for their behind-the-scenes efforts creating and maintaining
researchseminars.org
- a service not just to the MIT Math community but to mathematicians
worldwide.
Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions!
May 5:
Celebrate International Women in Math Day with Two Films
Celebrate International Women in Math Day with Two Films
The
MIT Women in Mathematics
hosts two screenings to celebrate May 12's International Women in
Math Day:
May 2:
Dennis Porche Selected for School of Science Infinite Mile Award
Dennis Porche Selected for School of Science Infinite Mile Award
The School of Science has selected Dennis Porche, assistant to our
department head, as one of seven staff members to receive the
2022 Infinite Mile Award
.
Dennis is "amazingly dedicated to the well-being" of the department,
write the nominators. "He will spend many hours making sure
everything is perfect, nothing or no one is omitted, everyone is
properly acknowledged, and everything goes smoothly."
Congratulations Dennis!
April 13:
Simons Lecture Series: Bhargav Bhatt April 27-29
The lectures are 4:30-5:30 p.m. in 2-190, each preceded by a 4 p.m.
reception in 2-290.
The Department of Mathematics annually hosts the
Simons Lecture Series
featuring presentations by top mathematicians. This is the first
Simons Lecture Series since it was paused during 2020's pandemic
shutdown.
U.S. News also ranked
our
PhD program No. 1 for 2023
(tied with Princeton). The magazine last revisited its science PhD
program rankings in 2019, when MIT Math held the No. 2 spot (tied
with Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley).
April 13:
Bonnie Berger Receives SIAM Fellowship
Bonnie Berger Receives SIAM Fellowship
The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) named
Professor
Bonnie Berger
to the
2022 class of SIAM Fellows
"for pioneering work in computational molecular biology, including
comparative and compressive genomics, network inference, genomic
privacy, and protein structure prediction."
The fellow designation honors SIAM members for their outstanding
contributions to the fields of applied mathematics and computational
science.
She is MIT's tenth recipient of this award. Others include Michael
Artin, Tom Leighton, and Gil Strang (2009), Alan Edelman (2011),
Michel Goemans (2013), Pablo Parrilo (2018), and Jeremy Kepner
(2021).
Congratulations Bonnie!
March 21:
Yulia's Dream
Yulia's Dream
On March 20, 2022, PRIMES launched a new program in response to the
Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Yulia's Dream
is a free math enrichment and research program for talented high
school students (grades 9-11) from Ukraine.
Yulia's Dream is dedicated to the memory of Yulia Zdanovskaya, a
21-year-old Ukrainian math student and a silver medalist at the 2017
European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad who was killed by a
Russian-fired missile in her home city of Kharkiv. We hope to help
other Ukrainian boys and girls fulfill her dream.
March 1:
MIT Takes All of the Top Honors in 82nd Putnam Exam
MIT Takes All of the Top Honors in 82nd Putnam Exam
From left: Michael Ren, Daniel Zhu, Edward Wan, Shengtong Zhang,
Andrew Gu, and Dain Kim
For the second time in Putnam history, all five of the top scorers,
designated as Putnam Fellows in the 82nd
William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
, came from a single school — MIT. Putnam Fellows, in alphabetical
order, are seniors Andrew Gu and Michael Ren, sophomore Edward Wan,
senior Shengtong Zhang, and junior Daniel G. Zhu.
The 2021 Putnam team, listed in alphabetical order, are Wan, Zhang,
and Zhu. This is the MIT team's sixth first-place win in the past
eight competitions. Zhang was also a Putnam Fellow in 2018 and 2019,
and Zhu was also a 2019 Putnam Fellow.
Junior Dain Kim, who finished in the top 15, received the Elizabeth
Lowell Putnam Prize. She was also recognized by our department as a
top female scorer in the 2019 contest.
MIT also took 9 of the next 10 spots, 9 of the next 12, and 40 of
the 78 honorable mentions. Among the top 105 test-takers overall, 63
were MIT students.
Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's exam!
Altogether, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation selected 118 U.S. and
Canadian early-career scholars for the two-year, $75,000 fellowship
to further their research program.
Sloan Fellowships were also awarded to 19 other mathematicians,
including Jonathan Niles-Weed PhD ’19 under the supervision of
Philippe Rigollet
, and now of New York University; former CLE Moore Instructor
Charlotte Chan, currently at the University of Michigan; and former
instructor and PRIMES mentor Asaf Ferber, now at University of
California, Irvine.
Ziquan, an algebraic geometer, is one of three selected for their
research achievements and their potential to become leaders in
mathematics.
Congratulations Ziquan!
February 14:
George Lusztig Receives Wolf Prize
George Lusztig Receives Wolf Prize
George Lusztig
, the Abdun-Nur Professor of Mathematics, has been awarded the
prestigious
2022 Wolf Prize in Mathematics
"for groundbreaking contributions to representation theory and
related areas."
George is the Department's second Wolf Prize in Mathematics
Laureate. Emeritus Professor Michael Artin received the Wolf Prize
in 2013.
February 1:
Lisa Sauermann and Yufei Zhao Receive the Edmund F. Kelly Award
Lisa Sauermann and Yufei Zhao Receive the Edmund F. Kelly Award
The Edmund F. Kelly Research Award has been awarded to Assistant
Professors
Lisa Sauermann
and
Yufei Zhao
.
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 Lisa and Yufei!
January 18:
David Darrow Named Churchill Scholar
David Darrow Named Churchill Scholar
MIT Math senior
David Darrow
received a prestigious 2022
Churchill Scholarship
to pursue an MPhil in scientific computing at Cambridge University.
This scholarship is awarded to individuals with exceptional academic
talent and outstanding achievement.
He was cited for revolutionizing enumerative combinatorics,
"revealing deep connections with other branches of mathematics, such
as commutative algebra, topology, algebraic geometry, probability,
convex geometry, and representation theory."
This is Richard's second Steele Prize. In 2001, he was awarded the
Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition, for his
two-volume work,
Enumerative Combinatorics
.
Congratulations Richard!
December 20:
Michel Goemans Receives AMS Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research
Michel Goemans Receives AMS Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research
Three received the 2022
George Lusztig
Mentorships.
Marisa Gaetz
’20 is a
PRIMES Circle
coordinator and DPR mentor.
Yibo Gao
’17 has served as a
PRIMES
,
SPUR+
,
UROP+
,
DRP
, and
RSI
mentor. One of his PRIMES students won 4th place in the 2020
Regeneron STS, and three others were 2020 Yau Science Award USA
semifinalists.
Arun Kannan
has served as a PRIMES and DRP mentor. One of Kannan's PRIMES
students, Honglin Zhu, was selected as a 2021 Regeneron STS Scholar
for his paper, jointly written with Kannan, that appeared in the
Journal of Algebra
.
The
Bershadsky Mentor Award
, courtesy of Michael and Victoria Bershadsky, goes to
YounHun Kim
, who has served as a PRIME,
MathROOTS
, RSI, and DRP mentor. One of his PRIMES students was a Regeneron
STS finalist, and his RSI student was a semifinalist.
Congratulations Arun, Marisa, Yibo, and YounHun, and thank you
Professor Lusztig and Michael & Victoria Bershadsky for making these
mentorships possible!
December 3:
First-year PhD Students Travis Dillon and Alex Cohen Receive Morgan Prize Honors
First-year PhD Students Travis Dillon and Alex Cohen Receive Morgan Prize Honors
Travis Dillon
will receive the 2022
AMS-MAA-SIAM Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize
for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student.
A graduate of Lawrence University, he is recognized for his work in
number theory, combinatorics, discrete geometry, and symbolic
dynamics.
In addition,
Alex Cohen
will receive the 2022 Frank and Brennie Morgan Honorable Mention
Prize for his undergraduate work at Yale, where he solved a number
of long-standing open problems in areas from combinatorics to
analysis and partial differential equations.
They will both be awarded at January’s Joint Math Meeting Seattle.
The Mikhail Gordin prize, offered jointly by the American
Mathematical Society (AMS) and the European Mathematical Society
(EMS), is awarded to a mathematician working in probability or
dynamical systems, with preference given to early career
mathematicians from or professionally connected to an Eastern
European country.
Semyon is recognized for his work on quantum chaos, scattering
theory and, in particular, differentiable dynamical systems.
Congratulations Semyon!
November 22:
Lisa Sauermann Awarded European Prize in Combinatorics
Lisa Sauermann Awarded European Prize in Combinatorics
Lisa Sauermann
, who recently joined our department as assistant professor, has
been selected as one of the recipients of the 2021
European Prize in Combinatorics
, which was awarded at Eurocomb in September. The prize is for
research in combinatorics and is awarded every two years.
She was cited for her "profound contribution to combinatorics,
particularly for results on the growth rate of algebraically defined
classes, for the solution of an old Erdös, Faudree, Rousseau, and
Schelp and for the solution of edge-statistics conjecture."
Congratulations Lisa!
November 18:
Carina Hong and Alexandra Hoey Receive 2022 Alice T. Schafer Honors
Carina Hong and Alexandra Hoey Receive 2022 Alice T. Schafer Honors
The Association for Women in Mathematics announced that
Letong "Carina" Hong
, a math and physics double major, won the 2022
Alice T. Schafer Mathematics Prize
for excellence in mathematics by an undergraduate woman. In
addition, Mathematics major
Alexandra Hoey
was awarded honorable mention.
Carina participated in REUs at the University of Minnesota-Duluth
and the University of Virginia that led to a number of papers,
including three accepted for publication. She also participated in
the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics and the IAS Women and
Mathematics program. Carina was recently selected for a
Rhodes Scholarship
. Carina also serves as President of MIT's Undergraduate Mathematics
Association (UMA).
Alexandra participated in the MIT Summer Program in Undergraduate
Research and spent two summers at the University of Virginia REU,
focusing on arithmetic statistics. Her work has led to two papers –
one of which will appear in Transactions of the American
Mathematical Society. She has also served as a PRIMES Circle mentor.
The Schafer Prize Winners will be presented at the January 2022
Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle.
He was recognized for “contributions to quantum computing, in
particular quantum algorithms and quantum information theory.”
The AMS Fellows program recognizes members who have made outstanding
contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement,
communication, and utilization of mathematics.
Congratulations Peter!
October 6:
Four PRIMES/RSI Students Receive Davidson Honors
Four PRIMES/RSI Students Receive Davidson Honors
From Left: Sean Li, Andrei Mandelstam, Espen Slettnes, Kenta Suzuki
PRIMES
student
Sean Li
won the $10,000
Davidson Fellowship
for his project "On Group-Theoretic Extensions of Penney's Game,"
mentored by Tanya Khovanova, who he says "provided high-level
insight and gave myriads of advice on exposition." Sean is attending
MIT as a prospective math major.
Honorable mentions went to PRIMES students Espen Slettnes and Kenta
Suzuki (now an MIT student).
RSI
student Andrei Mandelstam also received an honorable mention. Of the
six math projects receiving Davidson honors this year, four were
completed in our PRIMES or RSI programs.
This prize, awarded to a young outstanding Canadian mathematician,
will also be given to Giulio Tiozzo, who is at the University of
Toronto.
Tristan will virtually present "Exploring string vacua through
geometric transitions" at a
CRM colloquium
on Nov. 19, 2021.
Congratulations Tristan!
September 13:
Instructor Yilin Wang and Hong Wang PhD '19 Awarded 2022 Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize in Mathematics
Instructor Yilin Wang and Hong Wang PhD '19 Awarded 2022 Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize in Mathematics
From Left: Yilin Wang, Hong Wang
CLE Moore Instructor
Yilin Wang
and
Hong Wang
PhD ’19, a UCLA assistant professor of mathematics, are recipients
of the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize, awarded to outstanding
early-career women in mathematics by the
Breakthrough Prize Foundation
.
Yilin is cited "for innovative and far-reaching work on the Loewner
energy of planar curves" according to the award citation, and Hong
"for advances on the restriction conjecture, the local smoothing
conjecture, and related problems."
"Once again, it is uplifting to see women in mathematics receiving a
major prize for their outstanding research," says Department of
Mathematics Head
Michel Goemans
, the RSA Professor of Mathematics. "We are proud of Yilin's
achievements in probability and Hong’s contributions to Fourier
analysis."
Students Dain Kim and Anqi Li’s paper "Cubic Goldreich-Levin,"
suggested by their mentor and SPUR ’16 and PRIMES ’13 alum
Jonathan Tidor
, “makes a substantial contribution to a challenging area of
algorithms and combinatorics,” stated the judges.
Daishi Kiyohara’s project, "A new approach to the upper estimate of
lattice points on a curve via 𝓁2 decoupling," was suggested by
Larry Guth
and mentored by
Feng Gui
. “This project introduces exciting new techniques and ideas from
Fourier decoupling theory to count lattice points on curves
satisfying certain algebraic non-degeneracy conditions,” said the
judges.
This summer’s Aug. 5
RSI (Research Science Institute) Symposium
also saw 11 outstanding high school students from the U.S.,
Bulgaria, China, Hong Kong, and Kazakhstan present online their math
research projects, mentored by graduate students from our
department.
Michel Goemans
received the
George B. Dantzig Prize
, recognizing Michel’s "outstanding contributions to the field of
combinatorial optimization; most notably, the initiation of new
research directions, introduction of novel and deep techniques, and
ingenious use of sampling, rounding, and geometric ideas to
significantly advance several fields, including the pioneering use
of semi-definite programming for the design of approximation
algorithms."
Michel was also named RSA Professor of Mathematics. The RSA public
key encryption technology was invented at MIT by Ron Rivest, Adi
Shamir and Len Adleman, who were on the faculty in Mathematics (for
Len and Adi) and in EECS (for Ron).
Congratulations Michel!
July 19:
Allen Liu Awarded Hertz Fellowship
Allen Liu Awarded Hertz Fellowship
Mathematics alumnus
Allen Liu
’20, now a first-year graduate student at EECS, was among 12
doctoral candidates to receive the prestigious
Hertz Fellowship
.
Allen is developing algorithms with provable guarantees for a
variety of fundamental learning problems in preference learning,
robust statistics, and other areas. Under
Ankur Moitra
, Liu developed an efficient algorithm that provably learns the
parameters of a mixture of Gaussians from samples, even amid
adversarial noise.
Congratulations Allen!
July 19:
Ankur Moitra Appointed Norbert Wiener Professor
Ankur Moitra Appointed Norbert Wiener Professor
Ankur Moitra
has been promoted to full professor, and now holds the Norbert
Wiener Professorship in Mathematics. Norbert Wiener, the father of
cynernetics, was on the faculty in the Department from 1926 until
his retirement in 1960 as Institute Professor Emeritus.
Philippe Rigollet
was named a fellow of the
Institute for Mathematical Statistics
. He was recognized for "outstanding contributions to the analysis
of statistical versus computational trade-offs, to the theory of
aggregation, and to statistical optimal transport."
Congratulations Philippe!
June 2:
Three Math Majors Named 2021 Burchard Scholars
Three Math Majors Named 2021 Burchard Scholars
From Left: Ryan Conti, Swapnil Garg, Jeffery Yu
Sophomore
Ryan Conti
and juniors
Swapnil Garg
and
Jeffery Yu
are among 38 MIT students named 2021 Burchard Scholars by the School
of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS). The Burchard
Scholars program recognizes sophomores and juniors who have
demonstrated outstanding abilities and academic excellence in the
humanities, arts, and social sciences as well as in STEM fields.
May 28:
Phi Beta Kappa Inducts 58 Mathematics Seniors
Phi Beta Kappa Inducts 58 Mathematics Seniors
The Xi Chapter of
Phi Beta Kappa
has elected 58 mathematics majors, among 148 electees from MIT’s
Class of 2021, to become members. Phi Beta Kappa is the nation's
oldest academic honor society with a very selective invitation
process. Membership is awarded to students in recognition of
excellent academic records and commitment to the objectives of a
liberal education.
Congratulations to our newest members of Phi Beta Kappa!
May 28:
Congratulations to our 2021 PhDs!
Congratulations to our 2021 PhDs!
Department Head Michel Goemans says a few words to some of our
PhDs-to-be at the May 24 Hooding Ceremony.
Congratulations to our 26 doctoral candidates receiving their PhDs
this year!
May 28:
Korina Digalaki and Vanshika Jain Receive Honorable Mentions for 2021 Alice T. Schafer Prize
Korina Digalaki and Vanshika Jain Receive Honorable Mentions for 2021 Alice T. Schafer Prize
From Left: Korina Digalaki, Vanshika Jain
Math seniors
Korina Digalaki
and
Vanshika Jain
won Honorable Mentions for the
2021 Alice T. Schafer Prize
for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics, by the Association for Women
in Mathematics.
Congratulations Korina and Vanshika!
May 28:
Qiuyu Ren and Junyao Peng Each Receive Bucsela Prize
Qiuyu Ren and Junyao Peng Each Receive Bucsela Prize
From Left: Qiuyu Ren, Junyao Peng
Seniors
Qiuyu Ren
and
Junyao Peng
each received the 2021 Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics for
distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise, and
enthusiasm for mathematics.
Congratulations Qiuyu and Junyao!
May 28:
Jonathan Tidor Receives Johnson Prize
Jonathan Tidor Receives Johnson Prize
The 2021 Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize for a research
paper accepted for publication in a major journal, went to
Jonathan Tidor
, a fourth-year doctoral candidate. His paper,
"Testing linear-invariant properties"
(jointly with Professor
Yufei Zhao
), has been published in
Foundations of Computer Science
.
Congratulations Jonathan!
May 28:
Andrei Ionov Receives Housman Award
Andrei Ionov Receives Housman Award
Graduate student
Andrei Ionov
has been awarded the 2021 Charles and Holly Housman Award for
excellence in teaching. This award is presented to graduate students
in mathematics for skill and dedication in undergraduate teaching.
Congratulations Andrei!
May 28:
Ruoxuan Yang Receives Graduate Appreciation Fellowship
Ruoxuan Yang Receives Graduate Appreciation Fellowship
Graduate student
Ruoxuan Yang
has been awarded the 2021 Graduate Appreciation Fellowship. This is
presented to graduate women entering their final year, in
recognition of contributions to teaching and departmental service.
Congratulations Ruoxuan!
May 28:
Teaching and Learning Awards
Teaching and Learning Awards
Jack-William Barotta (photo credit M. Scott Brauer), Andrew Lin,
Nelson Niu, Junho Whang, Pei-Ken Hung
Seniors
Jack-William Barotta
,
Andrew Lin
, and
Nelson Niu
, and CLE Moore Instructors
Junho Whang
and
Pei-Ken Hung
, were recognized by the Department with Teaching and Learning
Awards. This is presented in recognition of contributions to
teaching.
Also recognized for their outstanding contributions to teaching were
Josh Amaniampong
,
Yongyi Chen
,
Murilo Curato Zanarella
,
Felix Gotti
,
Katie Gravel
,
Brin Harper
,
Xzavier Herbert
,
Sujay Kazi
,
Daniel Kriz
,
Jeffery Li
,
Rene Reyes
,
Nika Silkin
,
Shengtong Zhang
, and the
“Proofs-IAP Workshop” team
.
Undergraduates
Talia Blum
,
Katie Gravel
, and
Letong "Carina" Hong
, and graduate students
Peter Haine
and
Chengzhao "Richard" Zhang
received Community Building Awards "for individuals who have made
significant contributions to building and strengthening our MIT
Mathematics community."
Honorable mention goes to
Andrea Arias
,
Jack-William Barotta
,
Kevin Chang
,
Brin Harper
,
Xzavier Herbert
,
Andrew Lin
,
Rachana Madhukara
,
Nelson Niu
,
Ana Reyes Sanchez
,
Boya Song
, and
Rona Wang
.
Congratulations Talia, Katie, Carina, Peter, and Richard!
May 28:
Students Recognized by 2021 MIT Awards Convocation
Students Recognized by 2021 MIT Awards Convocation
Kevin Costello, Marisa Gaetz, Letong "Carina" Hong, Miles
Johnson, Anjali Nambrath
Kevin Costello
’21 received the Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Award, for
outstanding achievement in and contributions to the arts at MIT.
Marisa Gaetz
’G received the Priscilla King Gray Award for Public Service, which
recognizes exceptional dedication to community engagement and making
positive social and environmental changes at MIT and beyond.
Letong "Carina" Hong
’23 received the Emerging Leader Award in recognition of significant
contributions to the community and demonstrated potential for
leadership and continuing service.
Miles Johnson
’21 received the Ronald E. McNair Scholarship, established in Dr.
McNair’s honor by the Black Alumni/ae of MIT, to recognize a Black
undergraduate who has demonstrated strong academic performance and
who has made a considerable contribution to the minority community.
Anjali Nambrath
’21 received the Laya W. Wiesner Award as an undergraduate woman
student who has most enhanced MIT community life.
Members are elected in recognition of their distinguished and
continuing achievements in original research. Membership is one of
the highest honors that a scientist can achieve. They join 15 other
NAS members in our department.
April 28:
Scott Sheffield Named American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow
Scott Sheffield Named American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow
Professor
Scott Sheffield
has been elected Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
. As described by AAAS, "The election of new Academy members in 2021
provides an opportunity to recognize extraordinary people who help
solve the world’s most urgent challenges, create meaning through
art, and contribute to the common good from every field, discipline,
and profession."
Jerry
teaches 18.05
, is a lecturer at
Experimental Study Group
for versions of 18.01A, 02A and 03, and serves on our Education
Committee. Professor Haynes Miller also commented on his "invaluable
contributions to the
MIT Mathlet project
."
Congratulations Jerry!
April 28:
John Bush and Martin Bazant Develop Covid-19 Risk Guidelines
John Bush and Martin Bazant Develop Covid-19 Risk Guidelines
By considering the fluid mechanics of indoor spaces, they developed
a new safety guideline for limiting airborne transmission of
COVID-19 indoors. Their mathematical model yields a time limit for a
given indoor space that depends on the ventilation rate, mask use
and number of occupants. Their study underscores the inadequacy of
the 6-Foot Rule in protecting against airborne transmission.
Assistant Professor
Yufei Zhao
will be awarded support by the NSF's Faculty Early Career Development
Program, for his project "Analytic and Spectral Methods in
Combinatorics."
Congratulations Yufei!
March 23:
PRIMES and RSI Students Win Big at Regeneron
Yunseo Choi, who is also an
RSI
alum, took first place ($250,000), and Gopal Goel earned 4th
place ($100,000). Three PRIMES alums, along with another RSI
student, were finalists, and 12 PRIMES students received national
scholar awards.
The 10-year fellowship is awarded by the Office of the Vice
Chancellor and the Registrar’s Office to recognize faculty, who have
made exemplary and sustained contributions to the teaching and
education of undergraduates at MIT.
The Sloan Foundation awarded these fellowships to 128 U.S. and
Canadian researchers, who will each receive $75,000 to be spent over
a two-year term on any expense supportive of their research.
Congratulations Dor and Lisa!
February 18:
George Lusztig Receives Simons Fellowship
George Lusztig Receives Simons Fellowship
Professor
George Lusztig
was awarded a 2021 Simons Fellowship in Mathematics. Outstanding
mathematicians recognized by the Simons Fellows program are able to
extend sabbatical leaves from one term to a full year, enabling
recipients to focus solely on research for the long periods often
necessary for significant advances.
Congratulations George!
February 9:
PRIMES and Marisa Gaetz Receive MLK Jr. Leadership Award
PRIMES and Marisa Gaetz Receive MLK Jr. Leadership Award
From Left: Marisa Gaetz, Pavel Etingof, Slava Gerovitch, and Tanya
Khovanova
Lisa, who recently joined our department as assistant professor, was
recognized for her work in low-dimensional topology, and in
particular her surprising resolution of the 50-year-old
Conway Knot problem
.
Maggie, an NSF postdoctoral fellow at MIT, has also made important
contributions to long standing problems in low-dimensional topology.
Smith, also an NSF postdoc, has made deep contributions to the
theory of elliptic curves and class groups. Both will be moving on
to Stanford this summer.
These fellowships, which begin on July 1, 2021, go to recent PhDs
who are potential leaders in research mathematics.
Congratulations Lisa, Maggie and Alex!
January 14:
Alan Edelman Elected ACM Fellow
Alan Edelman Elected ACM Fellow
Alan Edelman
PhD ’89 was among three MIT faculty named Association for Computer
Machinery
2020 Fellows
. He was cited “for contributions to algorithms and languages for
numerical and scientific computing.”
Alan does research on high-performance computing, numerical
computation, linear algebra, random matrix theory, and scientific
machine learning. He leads the MIT
Julia Lab
and is chief scientist at
Julia Computing
. He is also a fellow of SIAM, AMS, and IEEE.
Three received the 2021
George Lusztig
Mentorships.
Peter Haine
is a DRP and MathROOTS mentor, and a PRIMES Circle program
coordinator since 2018.
Chun Hong Lo
, who is a PRIMES, RSI, UROP+ and SPUR mentor, saw three PRIMES
mentees become 2019 Yau Science Award USA semifinalists.
Adela (YiYu) Zhang
is a PRIMES, RSI, UROP+, MathROOTS, and PRIMES Circle mentor.
The new Bershadsky Mentor Award, courtesy of Michael and Victoria
Bershadsky, goes to
Andrey Khesin
, a PRIMES mentor and MathROOTS program director.
Congratulations Peter, Chun, Adela, and Andrey, and thank you
Professor Lusztig, and Michael and Victoria Bershadsky for making
these mentorships possible!
November 6:
Andrew Sutherland Is Named 2021 AMS Fellow
He was recognized for "contributions to number theory, both on the
theoretical and computational aspects of the subject."
Congratulations Drew!
October 30:
Ashwin Sah and Mehtaab Sawhney Receive 2021 Morgan Prize
Ashwin Sah and Mehtaab Sawhney Receive 2021 Morgan Prize
Graduate students
Ashwin Sah
and
Mehtaab Sawhney
will receive the 2021
AMS-MAA-SIAM Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize
for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student,
for their work as MIT undergraduates. Previously, they received
Honorable Mention for the Morgan Prize for their joint work with
David Stoner. The award recognizes their
innovative results across a broad range of topics in
combinatorics, discrete geometry, and probability.
Congratulations Ashwin and Mehtaab!
September 15:
Lisa Piccirillo Awarded 2021 Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize in Mathematics
Lisa Piccirillo Awarded 2021 Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize in Mathematics
Assistant Professor
Lisa Piccirillo
was selected for an inaugural
2021 Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize
, created in 2019 by the Breakthrough Foundation to recognize
outstanding early-career women in mathematics. Lisa is cited for
“resolving the classic problem that the Conway knot is not smoothly
slice.” She was also recently named one of this year's
WIRED25
for "People Who Are Making Things Better."
“I can’t wait to see what comes next from these brilliant young
women,” said School of Science Dean Nergis Mavalvala, congratulating
Lisa Piccirillo, fellow New Frontiers prizewinner and 2018 Math PhD
alum Nina Holden, and two women faculty physicists, each selected
for the Breakthrough's New Horizons Prize in Physics.
"They worked very hard to improve teaching and learning for MIT
students in this digital era, and they also helped the rest of the
department get up to speed," says Department Head
Michel Goemans
.
He is among eight distinguished faculty scientists and engineers who
will be provided fellowship funds "to advance transformative,
university-based fundamental research."
Congratulations Elchanan!
July 1:
Gigliola Staffilani Honored with Commitment to Caring Award
Gigliola Staffilani Honored with Commitment to Caring Award
Gigliola Staffilani
was honored with the Committed to Caring (C2C) award by the Office
of Graduate Education. The C2C program recognizes outstanding
mentors and promotes thoughtful, engaged mentorship throughout the
Institute.
“Her students spoke glowingly of her caring action and the positive
impact she has made on graduate student lives,” says Department Head
Michel Goemans.
Gigliola was one of 12 outstanding advisors and mentors at MIT to
receive the biennial C2C award.
This program "supports outstanding theoretical scientists in their
most productive years, when they are establishing creative new
research directions, providing leadership to the field and
effectively mentoring junior scientists."
They are among 15 of the 2020 Simons Investigators in Mathematics,
Physics, Astrophysics, and Computer Science.
Alexei and Zhiwei join their fellow Simons Investigators Larry Guth,
Elchanan Mossel, Bjorn Poonen, and Paul Seidel.
Congratulations Alexei and Zhiwei!
June 18:
Yufei Zhao Receives MIT's UROP Outstanding Mentor Award
Yufei Zhao Receives MIT's UROP Outstanding Mentor Award
Yufei Zhao
received this year’s UROP
Outstanding Mentor Award
, presented to research mentors who have demonstrated exceptional
guidance and teaching in a research setting. Yufei's undergraduate
mentees have already produced numerous high-quality results and
published in prestigious venues. Beyond their research projects,
Yufei offers guidance on their decision making, and personally
assists in finding summer internships. Students wrote that Yufei
"made research mathematics less intimidating to us and truly sparked
our interests in combinatorics." "Professor Zhao is invested in our
success."
June 4:
Ju-Lee Kim Receives MIT's Earll M. Murman Award
Ju-Lee Kim Receives MIT's Earll M. Murman Award
Ju-Lee Kim
is this year’s recipient of the
Earll M. Murman Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising
, "presented to a faculty member who has served as an excellent
advisor and mentor for undergraduates and who has had a significant
impact on their personal lives and academic success." Ju-Lee is also
recognized for expanding her services as Major Advisor Co-Chair to
make the Math Major more inclusive and supportive.
May 29:
Phi Beta Kappa Inducts 39 Mathematics Seniors
Phi Beta Kappa Inducts 39 Mathematics Seniors
The Xi Chapter of
Phi Beta Kappa
has elected 39 mathematics majors, among 117 electees from MIT’s
Class of 2020, to become members. Phi Beta Kappa is the nation's
oldest academic honor society with a very selective invitation
process. Membership is awarded to students in recognition of
excellent academic records and commitment to the objectives of a
liberal education.
May 29:
Marisa Gaetz, Timothy Leplae-Arthur, and Sam Turton Recognized by 2020 MIT Awards Convocation
Marisa Gaetz, Timothy Leplae-Arthur, and Sam Turton Recognized by 2020 MIT Awards Convocation
Marisa Gaetz, Timothy Leplae-Arthur and Sam Turton
Marisa Gaetz
‘20 received the
William L. Stewart, Jr. Award
, given in recognition of outstanding contributions by an individual
student or student organization to extracurricular activities and
events.
Timothy Leplae-Arthur
‘20 received the
Ronald E. McNair
Scholarship, established in Dr. McNair’s honor by the Black
Alumni/ae of MIT, to recognize a Black undergraduate who has
demonstrated strong academic performance and who has made a
considerable contribution to the minority community.
Sam Turton
PhD ’20 received the
John S.W. Kellett
'47 Award, in recognition of an MIT individual or group for an
exceptional and/or sustained commitment to creating a more welcoming
environment at MIT, including but not limited to, improving the
experience of lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender (LBGT), and
questioning individuals.
Congratulations to our 26 doctoral candidates receiving their PhDs
this spring!
May 27:
Andrew Ahn Receives Johnson Prize
Andrew Ahn Receives Johnson Prize
The 2020 Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize for a research
paper accepted for publication in a major journal, went to
Andrew Ahn
, a fifth-year doctoral candidate.
May 27:
Oscar Mickelin and Chengzhao (Richard) Zhang Receive Housman Awards
Oscar Mickelin and Chengzhao (Richard) Zhang Receive Housman Awards
Oscar Mickelin and Richard Zhang
Graduate students
Oscar Mickelin
and
Richard Zhang
have each been awarded the 2020 Charles and Holly Housman Award for
excellence in teaching. This award is presented to graduate students
in mathematics for skill and dedication in undergraduate teaching.
Congratulations Oscar and Richard!
May 26:
Mehtaab Sawhney Named Churchill Scholar
Mehtaab Sawhney Named Churchill Scholar
MIT math senior
Mehtaab Sawhney
received a prestigious
Churchill Scholarship
to pursue graduate studies at Cambridge University. This scholarship
is awarded to individuals with exceptional academic talent and
outstanding achievement.
May 21:
Sanath Devalapurkar Named Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow
Sanath Devalapurkar Named Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow
Sanath Devalapurkar
‘20 is among this year’s recipients of the 2020 Paul and Daisy Soros
Fellowship for New Americans, in support of graduate study. He will
use
his fellowship
to support his doctoral studies in mathematics at Harvard
University.
May 21:
Marisa Gaetz Won Honorable Mention — 2020 Alice T. Schafer Prize
Marisa Gaetz Won Honorable Mention — 2020 Alice T. Schafer Prize
Math major
Marisa Gaetz
won Honorable Mention for the
2020 Alice T. Schafer Prize
for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics, by the Association for Women
in Mathematics.
Congratulations Marisa!
May 21:
Marisa Gaetz and Maya Sankar Named 2020 Hertz Fellows
Marisa Gaetz and Maya Sankar Named 2020 Hertz Fellows
Marisa Gaetz and Maya Sankar
Seniors
Marisa Gaetz
and
Maya Sankar
were among 16 to receive the
Hertz Fellowship.
The Hertz Fellowship is awarded annually to graduate students in
science and technology who demonstrate the greatest potential to
tackle the most urgent problems facing society.
Congratulations Marisa and Maya!
May 21:
Three Math Majors Named 2020 Burchard Scholars
Three Math Majors Named 2020 Burchard Scholars
Ifeoluwapo Ademolu-Odeneye
,
Kevin Costello
, and
Edwin Song
are among 38 MIT sophomore and junior students named 2020 Burchard
Scholars by the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
(SHASS).
The Burchard Scholars program recognizes sophomores and juniors who
have demonstrated outstanding abilities and academic excellence in
the humanities, arts, and social sciences as well as in STEM fields.
May 21:
Anlong Chua and Douglas Stryker Each Receives the Jon A. Bucsela Prize
Anlong Chua and Douglas Stryker Each Receives the Jon A. Bucsela Prize
Anlong Chua and Douglas Stryker
Anlong Chua
and
Douglas Stryker
each received the 2020 Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics for
distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise, and
enthusiasm for mathematics.
Congratulations Anlong and Douglas!
May 13:
Casey Rodriguez Selected for the School of Science Infinite Kilometer Award
Casey Rodriguez Selected for the School of Science Infinite Kilometer Award
CLE Moore Instructor and NSF Postdoc Fellow
Casey Rodriguez
was selected for the
2020 Infinite Kilometer Award
, recognizing postdocs and research staff for exceptional
contributions to their research program and to the community. Casey
is described as an outstanding junior colleague: an "inspiring
teacher and role model for many math majors," a community builder
for fellow postdocs, and one fully engaged in the department's
diversity mission. One student described Casey as a master of class
participation. "Casey doesn't simply teach mathematics, he preaches
it, infecting his students with his love of math."
Congratulations Casey!
May 13:
Edgar Costa Received the School of Science Infinite Kilometer Award
Edgar Costa Received the School of Science Infinite Kilometer Award
Dr. Edgar Costa
, a research scientist in the Simons Collaboration on Arithmetic
Geometry, Number Theory, and Computation, received the
2020 Infinite Kilometer Award
: for his excellent mentorship of UROP projects and math majors,
development of the
Bean Theory
website (to track the multiple seminars and special events for
number theorists in the Boston community), and for hosting the
weekly
coding jam
, open to anyone wanting to contribute to the L-functions and
Modular Forms Database (LMFDB) related to the Langlands Program.
These outside commitments befit the Infinite Kilometer's recognition
of a research staff member contributing "to their local and global
MIT community."
Congratulations Edgar!
May 9:
Slava Gerovitch Selected for School of Science Infinite Mile Award
Slava Gerovitch Selected for School of Science Infinite Mile Award
History of Science and Math Lecturer
Slava Gerovitch
received the
Infinite Mile Staff Award
for his exemplary service as Director and Administrator of the
Department's Research and Reading Programs for Undergraduates and
High School Students. He co-founded the
PRIMES program
, helped to establish EECS PRIMES, and co-created five additional
PRIMES math sections — all to serve diverse groups and provide for
unique instruction arrangements. As Pavel Etingof describes, Slava
has made PRIMES "a powerful recruiting tool for MIT" and "a major
part of the diversity effort of the Math Department and the School
of Science."
Congratulations Slava!
May 8:
Bonnie Berger Is Elected Member of National Academy of Sciences
Bonnie Berger Is Elected Member of National Academy of Sciences
Bonnie Berger
has been elected to the
National Academy of Sciences
. Members are elected in recognition of their distinguished and
continuing achievements in original research. Membership is one of
the highest honors that a scientist can achieve.
This award recognizes a department that has distinguished itself by
undertaking an unusual or particularly effective program of value to
the mathematics community, internally or in relation to the rest of
society.
MIT PRIMES was founded by
Pavel Etingof
and
Slava Gerovitch
as an outreach program for high school students. To date, 408
students have participated in MIT PRIMES and PRIMES-USA, 103
completed the PRIMES Circle program, and 100 participated in the
summer MathROOTS program. More than 130 PRIMES alumni have
matriculated at MIT.
Nike Sun
has been awarded the 2020
Wolfgang Doeblin Prize
, awarded bi-annually by the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical
Statistics and Probability. The prize is awarded to a single
individual for outstanding research in the field of probability, and
who is at the beginning of their mathematical career.
Congratulations Nike!
March 2:
Peter Shor Receives the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and Is Elected to National Academy of Engineering
Peter Shor Receives the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and Is Elected to National Academy of Engineering
Peter Shor
, with Charles H. Bennett (IBM Research) and Gilles Brassard
(University of Montreal), received The BBVA Foundation
Frontiers of Knowledge Award
, in the category of Basic Sciences, "for their fundamental role in
the development of quantum computation and cryptology."
MIT students set records at the 2019 Putnam Competion: (left to
right) Shentong Zhang, Yuan Yao, Kevin Sun, Daniel Zhu, Qi Qi and
Dain Kim. Not pictured: Ashwin Sah.
For the first time in Putnam history, in the 80th annual
William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
, all of the top scorers, designated Putnam Fellows, were from one
institution, MIT! In alphabetical order, the Fellows are Ashwin Sah,
Kevin Sun Yuan Yao, Shentong Zhang, and Daniel Zhu.
MIT also took 9 of the next 11 top spots, 8 of the following 12, and
33 of the 80 Honorable Mentions. Included among these participants
were top female participants Dain Kim and Qi Qi. Qi was one of the
three winners of the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize.
He was among five MIT researchers from three departments who
received the fellowship.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awarded 126 U.S. and Canadian
early-career scientists and scholars, including 20 mathematicians,
$75,000 fellowships to be used to further their research.
February 18:
Roman Bezrukavnikov Receives Simons Fellowship
Roman Bezrukavnikov Receives Simons Fellowship
Professor Roman Bezrukavnikov was awarded a 2020 Simons Fellowship in Mathematics. Outstanding mathematicians recognized by the Simons Fellows program are able to extend academic leaves from one term to a full year, enabling recipients to focus solely on research for the long periods often necessary for significant advances.
Congratulations, Roman!
January 30:
Morgan Prize Honorable Mention Given to Four Students, Formerly or Presently Connected to the Mathematics Department
Morgan Prize Honorable Mention Given to Four Students, Formerly or Presently Connected to the Mathematics Department
Left: Murilo Corato Zanarella, Right: Mehtaab Sawhney, David Stoner,
and Ashwin Sah
MIT math graduate student
Murilo Corato Zanarella
received the 2020 Frank and Brennie Morgan Honorable Mention Prize
for his undergraduate research at Princeton University. Three
students, Mehtaab Sawhney '20, Ashwin Sah '20, and RSI alum David
Stoner (graduate of Harvard, and now a graduate student at Stanford)
were jointly awarded for their collection of papers on a wide range
of topics in discrete mathematics. The Morgan Prizes were presented
in January at the 2020 Joint Mathematics Meeting.
Congratulations, everyone!
January 30:
Larry Guth to Receive the Maryam Mirzakhani Prize of the National Academy of Sciences
Larry Guth to Receive the Maryam Mirzakhani Prize of the National Academy of Sciences
He is recognized “for developing surprising, original, and deep
connections between geometry, analysis, topology, and combinatorics,
which have led to the solution of, or major advances on, many
outstanding problems in these fields.” The Mirzakhani prize honors
exceptional contributions to the mathematical sciences by a
mid-career mathematician.
Congratulations Larry!
2019
December 19:
Alexei Borodin Receives the Fermat Prize
Alexei Borodin Receives the Fermat Prize
Alexei Borodin
has been awarded the
2019 Fermat Prize
for the invention of integrable probability theory, a new area at
the interface of representation theory, combinatorics, and
statistical physics.
The prize also went to Maryna Viazovska, professor at École
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
The Fermat Prize is awarded every two years by the
Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse
to one or several mathematicians under the age of 45, for
contributions to an area where Pierre de Fermat's work was
particularly influential: statements of variational principles;
foundations of probability and analytical geometry; and number
theory.
December 10:
Russian Academy of Sciences Elects Gilbert Strang as Foreign Member
Russian Academy of Sciences Elects Gilbert Strang as Foreign Member
Gilbert Strang
has been elected as a foreign member of the Russian Academy of
Sciences (RAS), in the section of Applied Mathematics and Computer
Science.
Gil is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Congratulations Gil!
December 10:
Lucas Mason-Brown named to Forbes 30 Under 30
Lucas Mason-Brown named to Forbes 30 Under 30
PhD candidate
Lucas Mason-Brown
is among those named to this year’s
Forbes 30 Under 30
social entrepreneurs listing. His work as a cofounder of
Data for Black Lives
has built a network of more than 4,000 scientists and activists
committed to using data to create measurable change in the lives of
black people. He shares this accolade with the organization’s
co-founder, Yeshimabeit Milner.
Congratulations Lucas!
December 10:
PRIMES Names Lusztig Mentors
PRIMES Names Lusztig Mentors
From left, Professor George Lusztig, Yongyi Chen, Vishal Arul, and
Kaavya Valiveti
Vishal Arul has served as a PRIMES and
MathROOTS
mentor since 2016, and has been the Academic Coordinator of
MathROOTS since 2017. His PRIMES student Dhruv Rohatgi is a 2016
Siemens semifinalist and a
2017 Regeneron STS scholar
.
Kaavya Valiveti began as a PRIMES mentor this year, and is leading
two reading projects simultaneously.
Congratulations to Vishal, Yongyi, and Kaavya, and thank you George
for making the Lusztig mentorship possible!
December 10:
Bonnie Berger to Deliver the AWM-SIAM Sonia Kovalevsky Lecture
Bonnie Berger to Deliver the AWM-SIAM Sonia Kovalevsky Lecture
This Prize highlights the achievements of women in applied and
computational mathematics. It was jointly established in 2002 to
honor Sonia Kovalevsky and her work on the theory of differential
equations.
Congratulations Bonnie!
November 27:
Larry Guth Receives Bôcher Memorial Prize
Larry received the prize for his “deep and influential development
of algebraic and topological methods for partitioning the Euclidean
space and multi-scale organization of data, and his powerful
applications of these tools in harmonic analysis, incidence
geometry, analytic number theory, and partial differential
equations.” Larry wrote about this technique in his book “
Polynomial Methods in Combinatorics
.”
“Larry is being recognized for two outstanding papers that use
polynomial partitioning, a powerful technique first introduced by
Larry together with Nets Katz for their solution of the Erdos
distinct distance problem in incidence geometry,” said Department
Head Michel Goemans.
The other 2020 Bôcher Prize recipients are Camillo De Lellis and
Laure Saint-Raymond, and previous recipients from MIT include
Richard Melrose
and
Isadore Singer
.
He was recognized for “contributions to algebraic geometry, in
particular the minimal model program and the K-stability of Fano
varieties.”
Congratulations Chenyang!
October 27:
MIT Hosts the 2019 Math Prize for Girls
MIT Hosts the 2019 Math Prize for Girls
Congratulations to the winners of the 11th annual
Math Prize for Girls
created and organized by the Advantage Testing Foundation, which was
hosted by the MIT Math Department during the weekend of October
12-13, 2019. The competition drew 276 girls from across the US and
Canada to compete for cash prizes.
Gigliola Staffilani
gave the Maryam Mirzakhani keynote lecture, named in honor of
Mirzakhani, who was the first woman mathematician to receive the
Fields Medal.
Edelman was cited “for outstanding breakthroughs in high performance
computing, linear algebra, and computational science and for
contributions to the Julia programming language.”
One of the IEEE Computer Society's highest honors, the Sidney
Fernbach Award recognizes outstanding contributions in the
application of high-performance computers (HPC) using innovative
approaches.
October 8:
Victor Kac to Be Inducted Into Accademia Nationale dei Lincei
Victor Kac to Be Inducted Into Accademia Nationale dei Lincei
Victor Kac
will join Galileo and Einstein as a member to the Accademia
Nationale dei Lincei, the oldest science academy in the world.
“I was quite surprised and profoundly honored,” says Kac, who joins
only 20 other Accademia foreign members in math, such as Fields
medalists Pierre Deligne, Pierre-Louis Lions, David Mumford, and
Shing-Tung Yau.
From left, David Jerison, Shengtong Zhang, Yuan Yao, Jonathan Tidor,
Douglas Stryker, Ao Sun, Qiuyu Ren, Yuqiu Fu, and Ankur Moitra.
SPUR
, our Summer Program in Undergraduate Research, wrapped up another
ambitious season with three teams sharing the 2019 Hartley Rogers
Jr. Family Prize for the best
SPUR paper
.
Yuan Yao and Shengtong Zhang and their mentor and SPUR alum
Jonathan Tidor
presented “
Equiangular Lines with a Fixed Angle
,” which judges cited as a “breakthrough solution of a longstanding
problem in equiangular lines.” The panel was also impressed by their
results in spectral graph theory. The project was suggested by
Zilin Jiang
and
Yufei Zhao
.
Douglas Stryker and mentor
Ao Sun
were awarded for “Construction of High Codimension Ancient Mean
Curvature Flows and Codimension Bounds by the Tangent Flow at —∞,”
for “the construction of the first example of ancient solutions to
mean curvature flow for curves in higher-dimensional Euclidean
space.” The panel also commended Douglas “for his superb
presentation.” The project was suggested by
William Minicozzi
.
Quiyu Ren and mentor
Yuqui Fu
’s “On the Union of Essentially Distinct δ-tubes” was cited for
research on problems motivated by the Kakeya conjecture.
Specifically, the panel was “impressed by the rigidity results and
new insights into measures of near-convexity.” The project was
suggested by
Larry Guth
.
The teams were among several who presented their findings before the
faculty panel of
Davesh Maulik
,
Richard Stanley
, and Yufei Zhao at the annual
SPUR Conference
, which was held August 2, 2019. The conference was hosted by
SPUR/SPUR+ faculty advisors
David Jerison
and
Ankur Moitra
, and program director
Slava Gerovitch
. Thanks go out to the
Rogers family
for their support of this program.
October 4:
Wei Zhang Receives Clay Research Award
Wei Zhang Receives Clay Research Award
Wei Zhang
received the 2019 Clay Research Award, in recognition of
his work in arithmetic geometry and arithmetic aspects of
automorphic forms
. Presented by the
Clay Mathematics Institute
, the award notes his “landmark contributions” that include a proof
of the global Gan-Gross-Prasad conjecture for a wide class of
automorphic representations of unitary groups, a proof he did with
Zhiwei Yun
of a higher-order generalization of the Gross-Zagier formula over
function fields, and a proof of Kolyvagin’s conjecture on the
structure of Selmer groups for a large class of elliptic curves over
Q.
He formulated an arithmetic version of the Gan-Gross-Prasad
Conjecture – a vision for a far-reaching generalization of the
Gross-Zagier formula over number fields – and pioneered a relative
trace formula approach to its proof. He recently achieved a major
step in this program by proving the Arithmetic Fundamental Lemma.
The award was presented to Wei Zhang at the Clay Research Conference
in Oxford in October 2019. In 2017, Wei was awarded the 2018 New
Horizons in Mathematics Breakthrough Prize with Zhiwei Yun.
Congratulations Wei!
October 3:
Four PRIMES Students Receive Davidson Prizes
Four PRIMES Students Receive Davidson Prizes
Left to right: Aayush Karan, Daniel Zhu, Merrick Cai, Sanjit Bhat
A record number of
Davidson Institute Fellowships
received — 4! — were collected by our
PRIMES
high school students this summer. They swept all three prizes in
math, and won the only award in Massachusetts.
Two received 2019 Davidson Fellowships:
Aayush Karan
, 17, of Muskego, WI, received the $25,000 Davidson Fellowship for
his project “Generating Set for Nonzero Determinant Links under
Skein Relation,” done under the mentorship of CLE Moore instructor
Dr. Jianfeng Lin, and published in Topology and Its Applications 265
(2019). He said in his award statement, “Under Dr. Lin’s mentorship,
I not only completed my project in knot theory but was able to learn
a great deal about the research process.” Aayush has entered MIT as
a freshman this fall.
Daniel Zhu
, 17, of Potomac, MD, received the $10,000 scholarship for his
project "On the Okounkov-Olshanski formula for the number of
tableaux of skew shapes,"" under mentor UMass-Amherst Prof.
Alejandro Morales, MIT Math PhD '12. In his statement, he said that
Prof. Morales was "a constant source of ideas, suggestions, or just
simply motivation."
Two others received honorable mentions: Merrick Cai, who also is
attending MIT this fall, and was mentored by
Daniil Kalinov
; and Sanjit Bhat of Acton, MA, under mentor
Dimitris Tsipras
of EECS.
"I wish to congratulate PRIMES Chief Advisor
Pavel Etingof
, Head Mentor
Tanya Khovanova
, and the
mentors
, and to thank them for their dedication and hard work!" said PRIMES
Director
Slava Gerovitch
.
September 18:
The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
August 15:
Daniel Freedman Wins Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
Daniel Freedman Wins Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
Professor emeritus
Daniel Z. Freedman
has been awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental
Physics. He shares the $3 million prize with two colleagues, Sergio
Ferrara of CERN and Peter van Nieuwenhuizen of Stony Brook
University, with whom he developed the theory of supergravity.
“Dan’s work on supergravity has changed how scientists think about
physics beyond the standard model, combining principles of
supersymmetry and Einstein’s theory of general relativity,” says
Michael Sipser, dean of the MIT School of Science and the Donner
Professor of Mathematics. “His exemplary research is central to
mathematical physics and has given us new pathways to explore in
quantum field theory and superstring theory.”
Congratulations Dan!
Read more about Dan’s achievement in the
MIT News
.
July 24:
Bonnie Berger Receives ISCB Senior Scientist Award
Bonnie Berger Receives ISCB Senior Scientist Award
Bonnie Berger
was honored by the International Society for Computational Biology
for the Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award at the
ISMB/ECCB
Conference, July 21-25, 2019 in Basel, Switzerland. At the
conference, Bonnie presented the keynote address, "Biomedical Data
Sharing and Analysis at Scale."
The ISCB Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award recognizes leaders in
the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics for their
significant research, education, and service contribution.
Congratulations Bonnie!
July 23:
Zhiwei Yun Awarded ICCM Gold Medal
Zhiwei Yun Awarded ICCM Gold Medal
Zhiwei (second from left) receives the ICCM Gold Medal of
Mathematics by faculty members of Tsinghua University including
Shing-Tung Yau (far right), chairman and co-founder of ICCM. [Photo
provided to China Daily]
At the last Congress, which was in 2016, Zhiwei had received a
Silver medal, and
Wei Zhang
received a Gold medal.
Formerly known as the Morningside Medal of Mathematics, this
recognition is given to exceptional mathematicians of Chinese
descent under the age of 45 for their achievements in pure and
applied mathematics.
Congratulations Zhiwei!
July 21:
Elchanan Mossel Named 2019 Simons Investigator
This award is given to outstanding theoretical scientists to support
long-term investigations of fundamental questions.
Congratulations Elchanan!
July 16:
Tenure Granted to Semyon Dyatlov and Ankur Moitra
Tenure Granted to Semyon Dyatlov and Ankur Moitra
The MIT Corporation Executive Committee has approved faculty
promotions for
Semyon Dyatlov
and
Ankur Moitra
. Semyon and Ankur were promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure.
Read more about them and six other recently promoted School of
Science professors at
MIT News
.
Congratulations Semyon and Ankur!
July 1:
Nike Sun Receives NSF CAREER Award
Nike Sun Receives NSF CAREER Award
Associate Professor Nike Sun has been honored with an award through
the Faculty Early Career Development Program for her project “Phase
Transitions in Randomized Combinatorial Search and Optimization
Problems.”
Congratulations Nike!
July 1:
Bjorn Poonen Appointed Distinguished Professor in Science
Bjorn Poonen Appointed Distinguished Professor in Science
Professor Bjorn Poonen
has been appointed as the inaugural Distinguished Professor in
Science by the School of Science.
Congratulations Bjorn!
July 1:
Larry Guth Appointed Claude E. Shannon Professor of Mathematics
Larry Guth Appointed Claude E. Shannon Professor of Mathematics
Professor Larry Guth
has been selected as the Claude E. Shannon Professor of Mathematics.
Congratulations Larry!
July 1:
Laurent Demanet Promoted to Professor of Applied Mathematics
Laurent Demanet Promoted to Professor of Applied Mathematics
Laurent Demanet
has been promoted from Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics to
Professor of Applied Mathematics.
Congratulations Laurent!
June 6:
Congratulations to our 2019 PhDs!
Congratulations to our 2019 PhDs!
June 1:
Eric Larson PhD '18 Receives Hertz Foundation Thesis Award
Eric Larson PhD '18 Receives Hertz Foundation Thesis Award
Math alum
Eric Larson
PhD ’18 earned the 2019
Hertz Thesis Prize
from the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation for providing a proof for
a long-unsolved mathematical problem as his April 2018 doctoral
thesis “The Maximal Rank Conjecture.”
“To have a mathematics thesis win a Hertz Thesis Prize is extremely
special. It’s never happened before,” said Hertz Fellow Thomas
Weaver. “In my opinion, this is the most remarkable thesis in pure
math that I’ve ever seen a Hertz Fellow produce.”
Larson continues to work on the interpolation problem with his wife,
Isabel Vogt
PhD ’19. They will both complete postdoctoral appointments at
Stanford next year, then begin tenure-track faculty positions at the
University of Washington in 2020.
May 17:
Vishal Arul, Gweneth McKinley, and Sam Turton Receive 2019 Housman Awards
Vishal Arul, Gweneth McKinley, and Sam Turton Receive 2019 Housman Awards
Sam Turton, Gweneth McKinley, and Vishal Arul with Charles Housman
Graduate students
Vishal Arul
,
Gweneth McKinley
, and
Sam Turton
have each been awarded the Charles and Holly Housman Award for
excellence in teaching. This award is presented to graduate students
in mathematics for skill and dedication in undergraduate teaching.
Congratulations Vishal, Gwen, and Sam!
May 17:
2019 MIT Convocation Awards Math Seniors Ahaan Rungta and Luke Sciarappa (Archive)
2019 MIT Convocation Awards Math Seniors Ahaan Rungta and Luke Sciarappa (Archive)
Ahaan Rungta received the Harold J. Pettegrove Award, given in
recognition of outstanding service to intramural athletics.
Luke Sciarappa received the Frederick Gardiner Fassett Jr. award,
presented annually to up to three individuals of the Fraternities,
Sororities, and Independent Living Groups (FSILG), who have most
unselfishly demonstrated the qualities of spirit, dedication, and
service in furthering the ideals of MIT brotherhood, sisterhood, and
membership excellence.
Congratulations Ahaan and Luke!
May 16:
Cesar Cuenca Earns 2019 Johnson Prize
Cesar Cuenca Earns 2019 Johnson Prize
Cesar Cuenca and his advisor, Alexei Borodin
The 2019 Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize for a research
paper accepted for publication in a major journal went to
Cesar Cuenca
, a fifth-year doctoral candidate.
May 12:
Bill Minicozzi and Yufei Zhao Earn 2019 First-Year Advisor Awards
Bill Minicozzi and Yufei Zhao Earn 2019 First-Year Advisor Awards
MIT awarded
Bill Minicozzi
the Outstanding Veteran First-Year Advisor award, and
Yufei Zhao
the Innovative First-Year Seminar award for his
Putnam Seminar
.
The award ceremony was held on May 16 in the Student Center, to
celebrate the outstanding contributions of first year students,
their advisors, and associate advisors.
Congratulations Bill and Yufei!
May 10:
Ashwin Sah Receives the Goldwater Scholarship
Ashwin Sah Receives the Goldwater Scholarship
Math major
Ashwin Sah
received the
Barry Goldwater Scholarship
for 2019-2020. Mentored by Yufei Zhao and Joseph Gallian (University
of Minnesota Duluth), Ashwin was among 496 college students selected
on the basis of academic merit, from a nationwide field of
candidates.
“He is a favorite; there is no way around it,” says OCW Director
Curt Newton. “It’s clear that Gil’s teaching has struck just the
right chord with learners and educators around the world.”
He also published his 12th book to accompany his latest class,
18.065
(Matrix Methods in Data Analysis, Signal Processing, and Machine
Learning.)
Senior
Yunkun Zhou
has received the 2019 Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics for
distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise, and
enthusiasm for mathematics.
Congratulations Yunkun!
May 1:
Kristin Kurianski Honored at MIT Graduate Women of Excellence Celebration
Kristin Kurianski Honored at MIT Graduate Women of Excellence Celebration
Doctoral student
Kristin Marie-Dettmers Kurianski
has been chosen as an honoree in the 2019 biennial celebration of
Graduate Women of Excellence. The celebration by the Office of the
Dean for Graduate Education recognizes graduate women based on their
leadership and service contributions at the Institute, their
dedication to mentoring, and their drive to make changes to improve
the student experience.
Kristin and others were recognized on April 29, where honorees
presented posters on their accomplishments and future plans.
Congratulations Kristin!
April 26:
Peter Shor receives 2018 Micius Quantum Prize
Peter Shor receives 2018 Micius Quantum Prize
Professor
Peter Shor
receives the 2018
Micius Quantum Prize
, "for his groundbreaking theoretical work on factoring algorithms
and quantum error correction." The Micius Quantum Prize is given by
the recently established Micius Quantum Foundation, in recognition
of "significant science advance ranging from the early conceptual
contributions to the recent experimental breakthroughs." Professor
Shor is one of six Micius Quantum Prize recipients.
April 23:
David Jerison Receives Guggenheim Fellowship
David Jerison Receives Guggenheim Fellowship
Professor
David Jerison
has been awarded a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship by the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
. He is among 168 winners, chosen among nearly 3,000 applicants.
David will use the fellowship to study interfaces that divide
regions in optimal ways, such as those interfaces that minimize
energy, cost, or loss of information.
Tanya is the head mentor of the math section of MIT's Research
Science Institute (RSI), and since its inception in 2010, of MIT
PRIMES . She was nominated for her exceptional ability to guide her
colleagues and inspire them to attain goals.
Congratulations Tanya!
April 12:
Kim DeMayo and Jonathan Harmon to Receive Infinite Mile Awards
Kim DeMayo and Jonathan Harmon to Receive Infinite Mile Awards
Department Staff Members
Kimberli DeMayo
(Human Resources Coordinator) and
Jonathan Harmon
(Faculty Support) are among this year’s recipients of the School of
Science
Infinite Mile Award
. Both were nominated in the "Beyond Expectations" category,
consistently going above and beyond their job expectations.
Congratulations Kim and Jonathan!
March 26:
Victor Kac Receives Simons Fellowship
Victor Kac Receives Simons Fellowship
Professor
Victor Kac
was awarded a 2019 Simons Fellowship in Mathematics.
Outstanding mathematicians recognized by the Simons Fellows program
are able to extend sabbatical leaves from one term to a full year,
enabling recipients to focus solely on research for the long periods
often necessary for significant advances. Victor will spend his
2019-2020 sabbatical at the University of Rome, La Sapienza.
Congratulations Victor!
March 22:
Tom Leighton Wins Visionary Award
Tom Leighton Wins Visionary Award
Professor
Tom Leighton
PhD ’81 received SC Media's first ever
Visionary award
as
Akamai Technologies'
chief executive officer, at the 23rd annual SC Awards gala on March
6, 2019, in San Francisco. The Visionaries of the Last 30 Years
category honors those who have shaped the industry and will serve to
impact the future.
Akamai also took home the Best Web Application Solution award for
its
Kona Site Defender
web application.
Congratulations Tom!
March 22:
Semyon Dyatlov, Yufei Zhao, Larry Guth, Pei-Ken Hung and Zhouli Xu Receive ICCM Best Paper Awards
Semyon Dyatlov, Yufei Zhao, Larry Guth, Pei-Ken Hung and Zhouli Xu Receive ICCM Best Paper Awards
Semyon Dyatlov, Yufei Zhao, Larry Guth, Bottom Row: László Miklós
Lovász, Bjorn Poonen, George Lusztig
Several in the MIT math community received
Best Paper Awards
from the 2018 International Consortium of Chinese Mathematicians in
December. Awardees included:
The ICCM Global Selection Committee included
Bjorn Poonen
, and the award ceremony featured a Distinguished Lecture by
George Lusztig
.
March 22:
Andrew Lawrie Receives the Edmund F. Kelly Award
Andrew Lawrie Receives the Edmund F. Kelly Award
The Edmund F. Kelly Research Award has been awarded to Assistant
Professor
Andrew Lawrie
. Every three years, the mathematics department gives this award to
a junior faculty member "in recognition of work that applies
mathematical methods to a new area or that offers a fundamentally
new perspective on a classical problem."
Congratulations Andrew!
February 26:
MIT Takes 2nd Place in Putnam Competition, Two Named Putnam Fellows
MIT Takes 2nd Place in Putnam Competition, Two Named Putnam Fellows
In the 79th annual
William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
, the team of Junyao Peng, Ashwin Sah, and Yunkun Zhou took second
place, behind Harvard. Yuan Yao and Shengtong Zhang were among the
five Putnam Fellows.
MIT took 9 of the next 10 top spots, including Danielle Wang, who
will receive her second Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize. (Danielle
recently was also a runner-up in the 2019 Alice T. Schafer
Mathematics Prize from the
AWM
.)
Our students took 6 of the next 12 spots, and 28 out of 74 honorable
mentions. In total, MIT students dominated in the demanding six-hour
mathematics competition, taking 45 of the top 101 spots.
“I am super proud of our students' performance on the Putnam
Competition,” said Yufei Zhao, our Putnam coach. “The number of high
scorers from MIT shows the unparalleled strength of our
undergraduate math community.”
Administered by the Mathematical Association of America on December
1, the competition included 164 MIT students among 4,623 test-takers
from 568 U.S. and Canadian institutions.
Clay Research Fellows are recent PhDs who are selected for their
research and their potential to become leaders in research
mathematics.
Peter Hintz
is also a Clay Research Fellow. Past fellows include professors
Roman Bezrukavnikov, Alexei Borodin, Semyon Dyatlov, Davesh Maulik,
and Aaron Pixton.
Congratulations Ewain (and Scott!).
February 22:
Andrew Lawrie and Yufei Zhao Receive Sloan Fellowships
Andrew Lawrie and Yufei Zhao Receive Sloan Fellowships
Sloan Fellows are selected on “the basis of a candidate’s research
accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become a leader in his
or her field.”
The
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
awarded 126 U.S. and Canadian early-career scientists and scholars
$70,000 fellowships to be used to further their research.
Simons Professor of Mathematics
Bonnie Berger
has been selected as the 2019 recipient of the International Society
for Computational Biology Senior Scientist Award.
ISCB is the premier society in computational biology and
bioinformatics with 3,400 members. The
ISCB annual award
recognizes “highly significant, long-term career achievement,” in
Bonnie’s case for visionary, foundational, and deep contributions to
the field.
“It’s a tremendous honor to join such a distinguished and
accomplished group of scientists,” Bonnie said.
Bonnie will receive this award and will be giving the
Senior Scientist keynote
at the
ISMB/ECCB
2019 meeting July 21–25, 2019, in Basel, Switzerland.
February 13:
Mathematician Finds Balance and Beauty in Math
Mathematician Finds Balance and Beauty in Math
"It was a feeling of solving something that most people couldn’t
solve, I think, that triggered my interest," said
Zhiwei Yun
, of being in third grade when he discovered an interest in math.
Read about Zhiwei's transition into math research, why he came to
MIT, and more in the
MIT News
.
January 30:
Aden Forrow Receives 1851 Research Fellowship and Jonasz Slomka Receives ETH Zurich Postdoctoral Fellowship
Aden Forrow Receives 1851 Research Fellowship and Jonasz Slomka Receives ETH Zurich Postdoctoral Fellowship
Radha, a physics and mathematics double major*, will study
theoretical and experimental physics at Cambridge University before
returning to the United States to pursue her PhD in high-energy
particle physics.
Kyle graduated with a double major in mathematics and computer
science, and a minor in music, and will receive his MEng in computer
science and engineering this spring. As a Marshall Scholar, Swanson
will study mathematics and computer science at Cambridge.
*Radha has since withdrawn from being a math major
November 1:
Bonnie Berger, Larry Guth, Elchanan Mossel, Zhiwei Yun, and Wei Zhang Named 2019 AMS Fellows
Bonnie Berger, Larry Guth, Elchanan Mossel, Zhiwei Yun, and Wei Zhang Named 2019 AMS Fellows
They were recognized for “outstanding contributions to the creation,
exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of
mathematics,” with the following citations:
Bonnie Berger for contributions to computational biology,
bioinformatics, algorithms, and for mentoring;
Larry Guth for contributions to harmonic analysis,
combinatorics, and geometry, and for exposition of high-level
mathematics;
Elchanan Mossel for contributions to probability, combinatorics,
computing, and especially the interface between them;
Zhiwei Yun for contributions to geometry, number theory, and
representation theory, including his construction of motives
with exceptional Galois groups;
Wei Zhang for contributions to number theory, algebraic
geometry, and geometric representation theory.
Congratulations Bonnie, Larry, Elchanan, Zhiwei, and Wei!
October 30:
PRIMES Student Espen Slettnes Wins Broadcom Math Prize
PRIMES Student Espen Slettnes Wins Broadcom Math Prize
PRIMES-USA
student intern Espen Slettnes won first place in Mathematics at
2018 Broadcom MASTERS
, a national science and engineering competition for middle-school
students.
Espen is a home-schooled eighth grader from Castro Valley,
California, who presented at the
PRIMES conference
in May. Espen’s project was "Minimal Embedding Dimensions of
Rectangle k-Visibility Graphs," under mentor
Jesse Geneson
PhD ’15. Jesse and Espen will also have asteroids named in their
honor by MIT Lincoln Lab, as part of the
Ceres Connection
program.
“Our PRIMES students continue to win all the top awards in the
country, and they are getting even younger!” said Department Head
Michel Goemans
. “Congrats to Espen (and Jesse), and to
Slava Gerovitch
,
Tanya Khovanova
, and
Pavel Etingof
for creating and directing such an amazing, highly successful math
enrichment program.”
October 18:
Chenyang Xu Wins New Horizons Prize
Chenyang Xu Wins New Horizons Prize
Chenyang Xu
will receive a 2019 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize for his work
on the Minimal Model Program in algebraic geometry.
The "early-career" version of the
Breakthrough Prize
is awarded to promising junior researchers who have already produced
important work in mathematics.
Prior to joining our department this year, Chenyang was a professor
at the Beijing International Center of Mathematical Research. He
recently
spoke at ICM 2018
, and was awarded China’s inaugural Future Science Prize in
Mathematics and Computer Science in 2017.
The award, received in July at International Association of
Mathematical Physics’
International Congress on Mathematical Physics
, in Montreal, Canada, is “for his groundbreaking work on the
universality of local correlations in random tilings and
nonintersecting random walks, and the discovery of locally
interacting particle systems linked to random matrix ensembles.”
Congratulations Vadim!
October 11:
Semyon Dyatlov Receives Early Career Awards
Given in recognition of a single achievement in Mathematical
Physics, this triennial award went to Semyon for his “introduction
and the proof of the fractal uncertainty principle (FUP), which has
important applications to quantum chaos and to observability and
control of quantum systems.”
Semyon recently also received a
CAREER Award
from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Mathematical
Sciences for “Classical and Quantum Chaos.”
Congratulations Semyon!
September 5:
PRIMES-USA student Franklyn Wang and RSI Student David Wu Win Davidson Awards
PRIMES-USA student Franklyn Wang and RSI Student David Wu Win Davidson Awards
PRIMES-USA
participant Franklyn Wang, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School
for Science & Technology and Regeneron Science Talent Search 2018
finalist, won for
solving a math problem
that has puzzled mathematicians for nearly a century. Franklyn
presented his findings in his paper "Monodromy Groups of
Indecomposable Rational Functions," mentored by
Prof. Michael Zieve
of the University of Michigan.
David Wu
, now an MIT freshman, wrote his paper under mentor and MIT doctoral
student
Robert Burklund
, as part of the 2017
RSI math program
class. The paper, “Nonuniform Distributions of Patterns of Sequences
of Primes in Prime Moduli,” aims to improve methods for gathering
data on prime number patterns by several orders of magnitude, and
may be applied to cryptography and cybersecurity. David was also a
2017 Siemens semifinalist
and a
2018 Regeneron STS finalist
.
Three other PRIMES students earned honorable mentions: Ayush Agarwal
of San Ramon, CA, Louis Golowich of Lexington, MA, and Michael Ma of
Plano, TX.
August 20:
Ankur Moitra and Bill Minicozzi Earn School of Science Teaching Prizes
Ankur Moitra and Bill Minicozzi Earn School of Science Teaching Prizes
Ankur Moitra
and
Bill Minicozzi
were among four recipients of the School of Science’s 2018 Teaching
Prizes for Graduate and Undergraduate Education.
Ankur was awarded the prize for graduate education for a course he
designed called “Algorithmic Aspects of Machine Learning”
(18.S996/18.409). Notes from this class have been turned into a
monograph, which has already been used in courses across the
country. Nominators said Moitra distinguished himself as an
inspirational, caring, and captivating teacher.
Bill was awarded the prize for undergraduate education for his
teaching of “Multivariable Calculus” (18.02). Students consistently
praised his clarity, ability to engage the class, and sense of
humor. Nominators also noted his ability to treat difficult topics
at an appropriate pace in his upper-level undergraduate courses.
The prizes are awarded annually to School of Science faculty members
who demonstrate excellence in teaching. Winners are chosen from
nominations by their students or colleagues.
August 20:
Alan Edelman's Julia 1.0 Debuts at Convention
Alan Edelman's Julia 1.0 Debuts at Convention
Julia, a free, open-source programming language created by
Alan Edelman
and others at MIT, was officially launched as Julia 1.0 at the
recent
JuliaCon
in London.
“The release of 1.0 says that Julia is now ready to change the
technical world by combining the high-level productivity and ease of
use of Python and R with the lightning-fast speed of C++,” said
Alan, in a CSAIL article.
August 17:
Jörn Dunkel and Others Solve Age-old Spaghetti Mystery
Jörn Dunkel and Others Solve Age-old Spaghetti Mystery
If you happen to have a box of spaghetti in your pantry, try this
experiment: Pull out a single spaghetti stick and hold it at both
ends. Now bend it until it breaks. How many fragments did you make?
If the answer is three or more, pull out another stick and try
again. Can you break the noodle in two? If not, you’re in very good
company.
It’s nearly impossible to break a dry spaghetti noodle into only two
pieces. Showing how it’s done is an MIT study by
Jörn Dunkel
, his graduate student
Vishal Patil
, instructor
Norbert Stoop
, and others.
The spaghetti challenge, which flummoxed even the likes of famed
physicist Richard Feynman ’39, was solved in their paper published
this week in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
.
From left, Joshua Amaniampong, Juan Gil, Jake Wellens, Ankur Moitra,
Davesh Maulik, Dhruv Rohatgi, Julius Baldauf-Lenschen, and Ao Sun.
The 2018 Hartley Rogers Jr. Family Prize for the best
SPUR
paper was awarded to three teams, to be split evenly, as decided by
the faculty committee (
Ju-Lee Kim
,
Bill Minicozzi
, and
Elchanan Mossel
).
SPUR student Julius Baldauf-Lenschen and mentor
Ao Sun
were awarded “for a sharp lower bound for the entropy of immersed
curves with type 1 singularities and an excellent, clear
presentation.” The project was suggested by Bill Minicozzi.
SPUR+ students Juan Gil and Joshua Amaniampong and mentor
Jake Wellens
, who suggested the project, were awarded "for new theoretical
applications of partial rejection sampling and their practical
implementation."
SPUR student Dhruv Rohatgi and mentor Jake Wellens were awarded "for
elegant design constructions, their application to bi-partite clique
partitions and for novel contributions to ordered Ramsey theory."
The project was suggested by
Asaf Ferber
.
Congratulations to all of the students and mentors. We also
appreciate everyone who helped out, including those who provided
ideas for the
projects
, all of the mentors, SPUR/SPUR+ faculty advisers
Davesh Maulik
and
Ankur Moitra
, and the program director,
Slava Gerovitch
, along with the
Rogers family
for their support of this program.
July 18:
Peter Shor Receives the IEEE Sumner Award and Information Theory Society Paper Award
Peter Shor Receives the IEEE Sumner Award and Information Theory Society Paper Award
Peter Shor
has been awarded the IEEE’s
2018 Eric E. Sumner Award
for Outstanding Contributions to Communications Theory, specifically
"for contributions to quantum communication and information theory."
He also received the 2017
Information Theory Society Paper Award
for "The Quantum Reverse Shannon Theorem and Resource Tradeoffs for
Simulating Quantum Channels,"
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
, May 2014, which he wrote with MIT Physics Professor Aram Harrow,
Charles Bennett, Igor Devetak, and Andreas Winter. This award is
given annually for an outstanding publication in the fields of
interest to the Society appearing anywhere during the preceding four
calendar years.
Congratulations Peter!
July 17:
Zhao Receives the School of Science Future of Science Award, 2018 Dénes König Prize, and Named Class of 1956 Career Development Assistant Professor
Zhao Receives the School of Science Future of Science Award, 2018 Dénes König Prize, and Named Class of 1956 Career Development Assistant Professor
Yufei Zhao
has been named the second recipient of the School of Science’s
Future of Science Award
. Among other research accomplishments, Yufei with three
undergraduates solved an open problem concerning the number of
independent sets in an irregular graph—a conjecture first proposed
in 2001.
Yufei was also recently named the Class of 1956 Career Development
Assistant Professor, effective July 2018. Last month, SIAM awarded
Yufei the
2018 Dénes König Prize
, given biennially to an early career researcher for outstanding
research in discrete mathematics.
“Yufei exemplifies the best of our faculty members,” says Department
Head Michel Goemans. “He is a skilled, creative researcher who is
also an outstanding teacher and mentor both in and outside the
classroom.”
Congratulations Yufei!
July 1:
Jonathan Kelner Promoted to Professor of Applied Mathematics
Jonathan Kelner Promoted to Professor of Applied Mathematics
Jonathan Kelner
has been promoted from Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics to
Professor of Applied Mathematics.
Congratulations Jonathan!
June 28:
Pavel Etingof Earns MIT's Perkins Award
Pavel Etingof Earns MIT's Perkins Award
Professor
Pavel Etingof
has been awarded MIT’s
Frank E. Perkins award for Excellence in Graduate Advising
. Named in honor of Frank E. Perkins, Dean of the Graduate School
from 1983-85, this award is presented to a faculty member who
demonstrates unbounded compassion and dedication toward students. He
also earned this award in 2015.
May 22:
Kevin Sackel and Jane Wang Receive Housman Awards
Kevin Sackel and Jane Wang Receive Housman Awards
Graduate students
Kevin Sackel
and
Jane Wang
have each been awarded the Charles and Holly Housman Award for
excellence in teaching. This award is presented to graduate students
in mathematics for skill and dedication in undergraduate teaching.
Congratulations Kevin and Jane!
May 21:
Sammy Luo Receives Jon A. Bucsela Prize
Sammy Luo Receives Jon A. Bucsela Prize
Math major
Sammy Luo
'18 received the 2018 Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics for
distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise, and
enthusiasm for mathematics.
Congratulations Sammy!
May 20:
Bertrand Stone '18 Receives Sudler Prize
Bertrand Stone '18 Receives Sudler Prize
Math major Bertrand Stone ’18 received the 2018
Louis Sudler Prize
for his contributions to music at MIT, including his flute concerto,
which was premiered by MITSO last fall.
April 25:
Theresa Cummings Receives Infinite Mile Award
Theresa Cummings Receives Infinite Mile Award
Academic Services staffer
Theresa Cummings
is one of this year’s recipients of the School of Science
Infinite Mile Award
. Theresa was nominated for the “Beyond Expectation Award,” for
consistently going above and beyond the requirements of her job to
make the Math Department a better place.
Theresa manages the complex enterprise surrounding the department's
massive service courses (18.01, 18.02, 18.03, ...), as well as
managing all of the make-up, conflict, special-needs, and advanced
standing exams, and a host of other special topics. She is also an
important point of contact with the Registrar’s Office, Student
Disability Services, the UAAP, GECD, and other departments.
Congratulations Theresa!
April 18:
Alexei Borodin and Larry Guth Named AAAS Fellows
Alexei Borodin and Larry Guth Named AAAS Fellows
Alexei Borodin
and
Larry Guth
have been elected as Fellows of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
. With members including many of the most accomplished scholars and
practitioners worldwide, the American Academy is one of the
country's oldest learned societies and independent policy research
centers.
Congratulations Alexei and Larry!
April 6:
Gigliola Staffilani Receives MIT's Earll M. Murman Award
Gigliola Staffilani Receives MIT's Earll M. Murman Award
The award is "presented to a faculty member who has served as an
excellent advisor and mentor for undergraduates and who has had a
significant impact on their personal lives and academic success."
The award was presented at the 2018
Awards ConvocationThursday, May 10
in the Samberg Center.
Congratulations Gigliola!
April 3:
MIT Math Ranks Highly in QS World, U.S News
MIT Math Ranks Highly in QS World, U.S News
The Mathematics Department ranked first in the QS World University
Rankings for 2018. (
MIT also received
a number 1 ranking in 11 other subject areas.)
Quacquarelli Symonds Limited subject rankings, published annually,
are designed to help prospective students find the leading schools
in their field of interest. Rankings cover 48 disciplines and are
based on an institute’s research quality and accomplishments,
academic reputation, and graduate employment.
The Department’s PhD program tied with Harvard, Stanford and U.C.
Berkeley for a
No. 2 spot
(following Princeton at No. 1) in the U.S. News and World Report’s
2018 rankings. U.S. News last ranked the nation’s top PhD programs
in the sciences in 2014, when mathematics tied with Princeton
University for the No. 1 spot.
April 3:
Chord Sculpture Recognized for Innovative Design
Chord Sculpture Recognized for Innovative Design
Photo by Peter Vandermarker
Chord
, Antony Gormley’s 3D steel sculpture in the Simons Building, has
received
an award
for fabrication and installation from the American Institute of
Steel Construction.
Projects such as Chord selected for recognition will be announced at
the 2018 NASCC: The Steel Conference in Baltimore on April 11.
Awards will be presented to the submitting firms and their project
team at the individual project sites in the spring and summer of
2018. And winning projects will be featured in the May issue of
Modern Steel Construction magazine.
Sponsored by the American Institute of Steel Construction, the
Innovative Design in Engineering and Architecture with Structural
Steel (IDEAS2) “recognizes projects where structural steel has been
utilized in an innovative manner.”
The sculpture was installed on the occasion of the 100th anniversary
of the building, as a percent-for-art project in association with
the Simons renovations.
March 29:
Tom Leighton wins 2018 Marconi Prize
Tom Leighton wins 2018 Marconi Prize
Professor Tom Leighton
has been selected to receive the 2018 Marconi Prize. The Marconi
Society, dedicated to furthering scientific achievements in
communications and the Internet, is honoring Leighton for his
fundamental contributions to technology and the establishment of the
content delivery network (CDN) industry.
Leighton ’81, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and a
member of CSAIL, will be awarded at The Marconi Society’s annual
awards dinner in Bologna, Italy, on Oct. 2.
“Being recognized by the Marconi Society is an incredible honor,”
said Leighton. “It’s an honor not just for me, but also for Danny
Lewin, who created this company with me, and for all of the people
at Akamai who have worked so hard for over two decades to make this
technology real so that the internet can scale to be a secure and
affordable platform where entertainment, business, and life are
enabled to reach unimagined potential."
March 8:
Ankur Moitra Receives Young Investigator Award
Ankur Moitra Receives Young Investigator Award
Congratulations to
Ankur Moitra
for receiving the 2018 Young Investigator Award from the Office of
Naval Research (ONR) for his proposed research "An Algorithmic
Theory of Robustness." His research falls under ONR's
Mathematical Data Science program
.
Ankur was one of 31 scientists "awarded for research that holds
strong promise across a wide range of naval-relevant science and
technology areas."
February 28:
Alexei Borodin Receives Inaugural Alexanderson Award
Alexei Borodin Receives Inaugural Alexanderson Award
Alexei Borodin
, jointly with Ivan Corwin and Patrik Ferrari, received the
inaugural
Alexanderson Award
for their article "Free energy fluctuations for directed polymers in
random media in 1+1 dimensions," Communications in Pure and Applied
Mathematics, 67 (2014). This work began during the October 2011 AIM
workshop "The Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation and universality class."
The American Institute of Mathematics' award is given in honor of
Gerald Alexanderson, Professor of Mathematics at Santa Clara
University and founding chair of the AIM Board of Trustees. The
Alexanderson Award recognizes outstanding research articles arising
from AIM research activities that have been published within the
past three years.
Congratulations Alexei!
February 26:
Yufei Zhao Receives Dénes König Prize
Yufei Zhao Receives Dénes König Prize
Congratulations to Assistant Professor
Yufei Zhao
, SB '10, PhD '15, who is the 2018 recipient of the Dénes König
Prize.
His award is based on the paper he co-authored with David Conlon and
Jacob Fox, "A relative Szemerédi theorem," published in Geometric
and Functional Analysis 25 (2015). This paper was completed during
his PhD at MIT.
The SIAM Activity Group on Discrete Mathematics (SIAG/DM)
Dénes König Prize
is awarded biennially to an early career researcher or early career
researchers for outstanding research in an area of discrete
mathematics, based on a publication in the three calendar years
prior to the year of the award.
Congratulations Yufei!
February 22:
MIT Team Wins Putnam, Five Named Putnam Fellows
MIT Team Wins Putnam, Five Named Putnam Fellows
Mathematics Professor Yufei Zhao, far right, stands with winners of
the 78th annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. From
left are Junyao Peng, Yunkun Zhou, Sammy Luo, Allen Liu, Jiyang Gao,
Ashwin Sah, and Omer Cerrahoglu.
MIT students were among 4,638 test-takers from 575 institutions last
December, and once again produced the highest number of top
individual scorers. In addition to having the 1st place team and 5
out of the 6 highest ranking individuals named Putnam Fellows, MIT
had 5 of the next 9 top scorers, and 7 of the next 10. In addition,
21 out of 74 students who received honorable mention were from MIT.
In total, 38 out of 100 top scorers are MIT students.
This is our fourth time in the past five years that the MIT team
ranked first.
February 17:
Andrei Neguț and Tristan Collins Receive Sloan Fellowship
Andrei Neguț and Tristan Collins Receive Sloan Fellowship
Congratulations to
Andrei Neguț
and
Tristan Collins
, who were among those awarded a 2018 Sloan Research Fellowship.
Andrei has been an assistant professor with us since 2015, and
Tristan will be joining us as assistant professor this fall. Andrei
was among
eight MIT researchers
from six departments who were awarded
2018 Sloan Research Fellowships
. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awarded 126 American and Canadian
researchers fellowships that are given to early-career scientists
and scholars identified as rising stars among the next generation of
scientific leaders. Fellows receive $65,000 to be used to further
their research.
Congratulations Andrei and Tristan!
January 18:
James Munkres Named AMS Fellow
James Munkres Named AMS Fellow
Congratulations to Professor Emeritus
James R. Munkres
, who was named a
Fellow
by the American Mathematical Society. He was honored for
contributions to algebraic topology, and for exposition.
Congratulations James!
January 17:
Michael Sipser Named ACM Fellow
Michael Sipser Named ACM Fellow
School of Science Dean
Michael Sipser
was among four MIT faculty named Association for Computer Machinery
2017 Fellows
for making “landmark contributions to computing.”
Sipser has made numerous contributions to complexity theory, and in
particular on circuit complexity, multi-interactive proof systems,
the use of expanders, and quantum computing.
He will be recognized at the ACM’s annual awards banquet June 23,
2018, in San Francisco, California.
A member of CSAIL and the Donner Professor of Mathematics, Mike
received the MIT
Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellowship
in 2016 in recognition of his commitment to undergraduate education.
He also received the
Irwin Sizer Award
from the MIT Graduate School Council for the development with
Professor
Tom Leighton
of the 18C major Mathematics with Computer Science. Mike is a Fellow
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American
Mathematical Society.
Congratulations Mike!
January 17:
Lucas Mason-Brown Hosts Anti-Discrimination Conference
Lucas Mason-Brown Hosts Anti-Discrimination Conference
Calculating the cost of tech-fueled discrimination, MIT mathematics
graduate student Lucas Mason-Brown’s Data for Black Lives conference
provided numbers behind the technologies that enable exclusion.
January 17:
PRIMES Students Franklyn Wang, Swapnil Garg, and Anlin Zhang
Awarded at Siemens finals
PRIMES Students Franklyn Wang, Swapnil Garg, and Anlin Zhang
Awarded at Siemens finals
MIT PRIMES program participant Franklyn Wang took second place at
the final 2017 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology
on Dec. 5. Franklyn, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for
Science and Technology in Virginia, is part of the MIT PRIMES-USA
distance mentoring math research program, in which high school
students complete a challenging math research project over 12
months. His $50,000 award was for solving a longstanding
mathematical problem that has a wide range of potential
applications.
PRIMES students Swapnil Garg and his team and Anlin Zhang and her
team were also finalists and earned $25,000 scholarships at the
National Finals, which were held at The George Washington University
in Washington, D.C., December 1-5, 2017.
This year, PRIMES has collected 28
Siemens Competition awards
: 21 semifinalists, 4 regional finalists, and 3 national finalists
(including the second place winner).
For the full list of PRIMES honors and awards, please visit the
PRIMES web page
.
Congratulations to Franklyn, Swapnil, and Anlin!
2017
December 11:
Zhenkun Li, Gwen McKinley, and Ao Sun Named Lusztig Mentors
Zhenkun Li, Gwen McKinley, and Ao Sun Named Lusztig Mentors
Professor
George Lusztig
used a significant part of his
2014 Shaw Prize in mathematics
to help endow the PRIMES mentorships, which recognize math doctoral
candidates who offer exceptional mentoring to high school students
involved in the PRIMES program.
Congratulations to Zhenkun, Gwen, and Ao, and thank you George for
making the Lusztig mentorship possible!
December 6:
Alan Edelman Named IEEE Fellow
Alan Edelman Named IEEE Fellow
Alan Edelman
PhD ’89, an Applied Mathematics professor in the Department of
Mathematics at MIT, has been named a 2018 Fellow of the IEEE for his
"contributions to the development of technical-computing languages,"
namely the
Julia language
for numerical/scientific computing.
“It is a great pleasure for me to see the Julia project being
recognized. For me, this is about the thousands of contributors,”
Edelman said. “Often software is not recognized in academic
environments as research, but this is clearly changing.”
Julia is widely described as being the solution to “The Two Language
Problem,” where a high-level language is easier to use, but is not
suitable for “real world” use—people needed to prototype in one
language, but then need to translate to another language for
performance in serial, in parallel, or on GPUs. Created with Jeff
Bezanson PhD ’15, Stefan Karpinski, and Viral Shah, Julia is now
used worldwide in businesses, classes, and in research.
The next
JuliaCon
will be Aug. 7-11, 2018, in London. Edelman has served as executive
chair for JuliaCon from 2015-2017, and remains on the committee.
Congratulations Alan!
December 4:
Wei Zhang and Zhiwei Yun Awarded 2018 New Horizons in Mathematics Breakthrough Prize
Wei Zhang and Zhiwei Yun Awarded 2018 New Horizons in Mathematics Breakthrough Prize
Professors
Wei Zhang
and
Zhiwei Yun
have been awarded the New Horizons in Mathematics Breakthrough
Prize, which is given to promising junior researchers who have
already produced important work in mathematics. The team of Wei and
Zhiwei were recognized Sunday “for deep work on the global
Gan-Gross-Prasad conjecture and their discovery of geometric
interpretations for the higher derivatives of L-functions in the
function field case.” Zhiwei, currently a professor at Yale
University, will be joining the Department of Mathematics next
month. “I am delighted that the joint work of these two recently
hired faculty members is being recognized by this prestigious
award,” said Interim Department Head Michel Goemans, who attended
the ceremony. “Their work on the Taylor expansion of L-functions
constitutes the most important progress in 30 years towards the
Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, one of the seven Clay
Millenium problems.”
Applied Mathematics doctoral candidate and former NFL player
John Urschel
was a presenter at the ceremony, which was held at NASA’s Ames
Research Center in Mountain View, California.
Larry Guth
won the
2016 New Horizons in Mathematics prize
for “ingenious and surprising solutions to longstanding open
problems in symplectic geometry, Riemannian geometry, harmonic
analysis, and combinatorial geometry.”
November 30:
Henry Cohn Receives Conant Prize
Henry Cohn Receives Conant Prize
Adjunct Professor
Henry Cohn
received the 2018 Levi L. Conant Prize from the American
Mathematical Society at the Joint Math Meeting for his article
"A Conceptual Breakthrough in Sphere Packing,"
published in the February 2017 issue of the Notices of the AMS.
Henry is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research New England,
and his research interests include discrete mathematics, broadly
interpreted. Professor David Vogan
received the Levi L. Conant Prize
in 2011.
“It's a pleasure and an honor to receive the 2018 Levi L. Conant
Prize,” said Henry. “The /E/_8 and Leech lattices are fascinating
objects, and I hope readers will grow to love them as much as I do.”
Describing Henry’s award, the
AMS announcement
stated: “In 2016, Maryna Viazovska gave an astounding solution to
the sphere packing problem in dimension 8. Just a week later,
(Abhinav) Kumar, (Stephen D.) Miller, (Danylo) Radchenko, and
Viazovska solved the sphere packing problem in dimension 24 by
similar ideas. Cohn's article unfolds the dramatic story behind
these proofs. What is special about 8 and 24 that makes the proof
work only in these dimensions? The answer is that there are truly
extraordinary sphere packings in these dimensions, arising from the
/E/_8 lattice in dimension 8 that appears in Lie theory, and the
Leech lattice in dimension 24 that is so closely connected with
finite simple sporadic groups.”
Congratulations, Henry!
November 29:
John Urschel Will Be Presenter at Dec. 3 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony
John Urschel Will Be Presenter at Dec. 3 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony
Applied Mathematics doctoral candidate and former NFL player
John Urschel
will be a presenter at the sixth annual
Breakthrough Prize
ceremony on Sunday, Dec. 3.
"I think I'm more honored than anything to be thought of as someone
who should present such an award," said Urschel.
The Breakthrough honors top achievements in the fields of
mathematics, fundamental physics, and life sciences.
Larry Guth
won the 2016
New Horizons in Mathematics prize
for "ingenious and surprising solutions to longstanding open
problems in symplectic geometry, Riemannian geometry, harmonic
analysis, and combinatorial geometry."
Urschel’s fellow presenters will be actors Mila Kunis, Ashton
Kutcher, and Kerry Washington, and the event will be hosted by actor
Morgan Freeman
. The Breakthrough Prize is presented by founders Sergey Brin
(Google), Yuri Milner (DST Global) and Julia Milner, Mark Zuckerberg
(Facebook) and Priscilla Chan (Chan Zuckerberg Initiatives), and
Anne Wojcicki (23andMe), along with Vanity Fair editor Graydon
Carter.
November 27:
A Mathematician Who Dances to the Joys and Sorrows of Discovery
A Mathematician Who Dances to the Joys and Sorrows of Discovery
Federico Ardila (SB '98, PhD '03), a math professor at San Francisco
State University, opens up to
Quanta magazine
about his journey as a mathematician, teacher, Colombian transplant,
DJ, and creator of mathematical spaces.
“Had I known what MIT was, I should have known not to apply. There
is no way I should have applied with that kind of transcript…I like
telling this story to my students because I think we often close
doors to ourselves by thinking that we’re not eligible or that we’re
not good enough. And especially if you’re somebody who feels
‘othered’ in your discipline or who feels like you’re lacking
confidence, it’s easy to close doors on yourself. There’s a lot of
people in life who are ready to close doors for you, so you can’t do
it for yourself.”
November 22:
John Bush's study explains how droplets "levitate" on liquid surfaces
John Bush's study explains how droplets "levitate" on liquid surfaces
A drop or two of cold cream in hot coffee can go a long way toward
improving one’s morning. But what if the two liquids didn’t mix? MIT
scientists have now explained why under certain conditions a droplet
of liquid should not coalesce with the liquid surface below. If the
droplet is very cold, and the bath sufficiently hot, then the
droplet should “levitate” on the bath’s surface, as a result of the
flows induced by the temperature difference.
Professor
John Bush
is a member of the team, whose results, published in the
Journal of Fluid Mechanics
, offer a detailed, mathematical understanding of drop coalescence,
which can be observed in everyday phenomena, from milk poured in
coffee to raindrops skittering across puddles, and sprays created in
surf zones.
Assistant Professor
Giulia Saccà
received the Anna Maria Molteni Award in Mathematics and Physics for
her research on hyper-Kähler geometries. She was among five young
Italian researchers working in North America who received 2017
ISSNAF Awards on November 8 at the Italian Embassy in Washington,
D.C. ISSNAF (Italian Scientists and Scholars of North America
Foundation) acknowledges young Italian researchers by presenting the
ISSNAF Awards for Young Investigators in five subjects and awarding
the winner in each category with a $3,000 prize.
November 2:
PRIMES Students Franklyn Wang, Swapnil Garg, and Anlin Zhang Advance in Siemens Competition
PRIMES Students Franklyn Wang, Swapnil Garg, and Anlin Zhang Advance in Siemens Competition
Slava Gerovitch, Pavel Etingof, and Tanya Khovanova
The MIT PRIMES program has three students among the national
finalists in the 2017 Siemens Competition in Math, Science &
Technology.
The finalists are PRIMES students
Swapnil Garg
and his team;
Anlin Zhang
and her team; and
Franklyn Wang
(in the individual category). The Regional Finals were held at MIT
along with five other schools earlier this month. Winners of the
regional events will advance to the National Finals to be held at
The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., December 4-5,
2017.
So far, PRIMES student contestants took home 28
Siemens Competition awards
this year, consisting of 21 semifinalists, 4 regional finalists and
3 national finalists.
For the full list of PRIMES honors and awards, please visit the
PRIMES web page.
November 2:
27 PRIMES Contestants Take Home Siemens Competition Awards
27 PRIMES Contestants Take Home Siemens Competition Awards
Slava Gerovitch, Pavel Etingof, and Tanya Khovanova
This year’s MIT PRIMES contestants took home more than twice as many
awards than last year as they made it past the first round of the
2017 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology.
With 20 semifinalists and 7 regional finalists, PRIMES student
contestants took home 27
Siemens Competition awards
this year, compared with 12 in 2016 and in 2015. They were chosen
from a pool of more than 1,860 projects submitted this year.
The 101 regional finalists will now advance to the next round of the
competition – the Regional Finals, in one of six regional
competitions virtually hosted over three consecutive weekends in
November at MIT November 3-4, along with five other schools.
For the full list of PRIMES honors and awards, please visit the
PRIMES web page.
October 26:
Hilary Finucane Receives NIH Award
Hilary Finucane Receives NIH Award
Broad Institute Fellow
Hilary Finucane
PhD ’17 received the
Early Independence Award
from the National Institutes of Health. In June 2017, she completed
her PhD in applied math; her research was in statistical genetics,
and she was advised by
Alkes Price
. Hilary also recently contributed to “Association analysis
identifies 65 new breast cancer risk loci” in Advance Online
Publication (AOP) on
www.nature.com
.
Congratulations to the winners of the 9th annual
Math Prize for Girls
contest, which took place on Saturday, September 24, 2017 at MIT.
The competition drew 266 girls from across the US and Canada to
compete for $55,000 in cash prizes.
Gigliola Staffilani
and School of Science Dean
Michael Sipser
are among the
board of advisors
for this event, which is held by Advantage Testing Foundation.
Bill Minicozzi now holds the Singer Professorship in Mathematics,
a chair that was recently held by
Tom Mrowka
, and previously by
Dan Stroock
. This was established by the James and Marilyn Simons Professorship
Fund in 1999, in honor of Institute Professor and Abel Prize winner
Isadore Singer
. Formerly named the Simons Distinguished Professorship of
Mathematics until Professor Singer’s retirement, it was renamed in
2010.
Scott Sheffield has been awarded the Leighton Family Professorship
in Mathematics, a chair previously held by
Michel Goemans
. The chair was established in 2007 by the Leighton Family Fund.
Both chairs are for five years, renewable once.
Aaron Pixton has received the Class of 1957 Career Development chair
for a three-year term. This is an Institute chair for a junior
faculty member.
Congratulations Bill, Scott, and Aaron!
October 3:
Math Dept Welcomes Four Professors
Math Dept Welcomes Four Professors
The Department of Mathematics welcomes this year two new senior
faculty members,
Wei Zhang
and Zhiwei Yun, and two junior faculty members,
Giulia Saccà
and
Yufei Zhao
.
Wei Zhang
is a number theorist who works in arithmetic geometry. He
received his PhD from Columbia University in 2009 under Shouwu
Zhang, took a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, and was a
professor at Columbia University. He is the recipient of the
2010 SASTRA Ramanujan prize. Together, Zhiwei Yun and Wei Zhang
have made some exciting progress toward the Birch and
Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture in number theory, by characterizing
higher derivatives of L-functions in the number field case.
Zhiwei Yun’s
work is in representation theory, number theory, and algebraic
geometry, and specifically the Langlands program. He received
his PhD from Princeton University under Bob MacPherson in 2009,
was a CLE Moore Instructor at MIT, and held faculty positions at
Stanford and Yale. He is a Packard Fellow and received the 2012
SASTRA Ramanujan prize. He will start at MIT in the spring.
Giulia Saccà
is an algebraic geometer. She received her PhD from Princeton
University under Gang Tian in 2013, and has held positions at
the Institute for Advanced Study and at Stony Brook University.
Giulia is currently teaching 18.725, Algebraic Geometry.
Yufei Zhao
works in extremal, probabilistic, and additive combinatorics. He
received his MIT PhD under Jacob Fox in 2015, and was a
postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford. Yufei is
currently teaching the Putnam seminar 18.A34 and Graph Theory
and Additive Combinatorics, 18.S997.
Welcome!
September 28:
Chenyang Xu Awarded Future Science Prize
Chenyang Xu Awarded Future Science Prize
Chenyang Xu
, an algebraic geometer who will join our Department as Full
Professor in Fall 2018, received the
2017 Future Science Prize
in Mathematics & Computer Science at a ceremony in Beijing on
October 29, 2017. He was recognized for his contributions to
birational algebraic geometry.
The purpose of the Future Science Prize is to reward scientists that
have made outstanding contributions to science and technology in
Greater China. It is referred to as China's new Nobel Prize. This
non-governmental prize was established last year in Life Science and
in Physical Science, but Chenyang wins the inaugural Future Prize in
Mathematics & Computer Science.
Congratulations, Chenyang!
September 7:
PRIMES student Felix Wang Named Davidson Fellow
PRIMES student Felix Wang Named Davidson Fellow
PRIMES
student Felix Wang, 18, of Newton, has been chosen as a 2017
Davidson Fellow with a $25,000 scholarship award for his paper,
"Functional equations in Complex Analysis and Number Theory."
He is one of only 20 students across the country to receive this
honor. Felix, a rising college freshman at Stanford University and
graduate of Roxbury Latin in West Roxbury, thanked his PRIMES
mentors
Pavel Etingof
and
Tanya Khovanova
, along with grad student
Thao Do
and University of Michigan Professor Michael Zieve. "Both mentors
provided tremendous assistance, and have always inspired and
motivated me," Felix said. “I am unbelievably excited and honored to
be a Davidson Fellow,” said Wang. “Mathematics has fascinated me
since childhood. In middle school, I spent countless hours poring
over textbooks in preparation for various math competitions, but by
the time I reached high school, my interest in learning math to win
competitions had faded. I searched for a more challenging and more
fulfilling way to use my talents, and decided to attempt mathematics
research.” He credits PRIMES as the program that fulfilled his need
for a challenge.
Congratulations PRIMES and Felix!
August 31:
ICM 2018 Speakers Include Tom Mrowka, Bjorn Poonen, Alex Postnikov, Chenyang Xu, Zhiwei Yun, and Wei Zhang
ICM 2018 Speakers Include Tom Mrowka, Bjorn Poonen, Alex Postnikov, Chenyang Xu, Zhiwei Yun, and Wei Zhang
Tom Mrowka
will deliver a plenary address at the International Congress of
Mathematicians 2018, which will be held August 1-9, 2018, in Rio de
Janeiro.
Other MIT math faculty invited to speak at
ICM 2018
include
Bjorn Poonen
and our new full professor
Wei Zhang
in the Number Theory section; new professors Zhiwei Yun and
Chenyang Xu
in the Algebraic and Complex Geometry section; and
Alex Postnikov
in the Combinatorics section. Meeting every four years, ICM is where
the Fields medals are awarded.
August 16:
Scott Sheffield Wins Clay Research Award
Scott Sheffield Wins Clay Research Award
The
Clay Mathematics Institute
presented Jason Miller and
Scott Sheffield
with the 2017
Clay Research Award
, for their groundbreaking and conceptually novel work on the
geometry of the Gaussian free field and its application to the
solution of open problems in the theory of two-dimensional random
structures. The award is "in recognition of their introduction of a
novel geometric combinatorial method to study doubling properties of
solutions to elliptic eigenvalue problems” (
full citation
). Scott Sheffield holds the Leighton Family Chair in Mathematics at
MIT since July 2017. Jason Miller is at the University of Cambridge,
and was a Schramm Fellow and an NSF Fellow at MIT under Scott’s
mentorship. For those who missed it, Quanta magazine recently wrote
about their research in “
A Unified Theory of Randomness
.”
August 15:
Daniel Freedman's Work on Neutrino Scattering is Confirmed 40 Years Later
Daniel Freedman's Work on Neutrino Scattering is Confirmed 40 Years Later
Before his arrival at MIT,
Daniel Freedman
wrote
"Coherent Effects of a Weak Neutral Current,"
which appeared in the 1974 issue of
Physical Review
. His paper proposed the process called coherent elastic
neutrino-nucleus scattering, specifically pointing out that it had a
much larger strength than other neutrino reactions.
Dan, a theoretical physicist emeritus in the
Applied Mathematics
division, recently received a pleasant surprise—more than 40 years
later. “I received a message from the head of an experimental
collaboration of about 80 physicists telling me that the experiment
had finally been realized and confirmed my prediction.”
Peter Shor
received the
2017 Dirac Medal
from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, along with
Charles Bennett of IBM and David Deutsch of Oxford. Peter was
recognized for his groundbreaking work in quantum computation,
including his quantum factoring algorithm, quantum error-correcting
codes, and quantum fault-tolerant computation. The award was
announced on August 8, the 115th anniversary of
Paul Dirac
’s birth. Earlier recipients of the medal include Emeritus Professor
Dan Freedman
and several MIT physicists.
Justin Lim and his mentor
Frederic Koehler
were awarded for their “elegant analysis and presentation of
spanning Maker-Breaker games.” The project, “Building Forests in
Maker-Breaker Games: Upper and Lower Bounds,” was suggested by
Asaf Ferber
.
Jianqiao Xia and his mentor
Gus Lonergan
were awarded for a “penetrating study of the intersection pattern of
irreducible components of Springer fibers coming from two-row
partitions.” The project, “Topology of Two-Row Type Springer
Fibers,” was suggested by
Roman Bezrukavnikov
.
Congratulations to all of the students, mentors, and faculty who
provided
projects
, and thanks to all mentors, SPUR faculty advisors
David Jerison
and
Ankur Moitra
, SPUR+ coordinator
Cris Negron
, and the program director,
Slava Gerovitch
, along with the Rogers family for their support of this program.
August 2:
SPUR/RSI Lecture Series Wraps up with Conference Aug. 4
SPUR/RSI Lecture Series Wraps up with Conference Aug. 4
To a packed classroom, Prof. John Bush kicked off the summer
SPUR/RSI lecture series with his lecture "Hydrodynamic Quantum
Analogs." Led by SPUR/RSI faculty advisors David Jerison and Ankur
Moitra, the afternoon series concludes with the
SPUR Program Conference
, featuring presentations by 13 undergraduates. Students in the
program work full time for six weeks on original individual or joint
research projects, as mentored by a math grad student, and at the
conference, the undergraduates present their papers to mentors,
peers, and a panel of faculty members.
July 17:
Lucas Mason-Brown Named 2017 Echoing Green Fellow
Lucas Mason-Brown Named 2017 Echoing Green Fellow
Math grad student
Lucas Mason-Brown
has been named one of 35 Echoing Green Fellows for his work with
Data for Black Lives (D4BL), an organization he recently co-founded
to mobilize scientists to use data science to fight racial bias in
real estate, finance, criminal justice, and other areas.
July 12:
Alum Mitch Rothstein Returns to MIT to Claim Throne
Alum Mitch Rothstein Returns to MIT to Claim Throne
Mitch Rothstein ’77 played the title character in the MIT
Shakespeare Ensemble production of King John. “I know of no other
example of a college repertory company mounting a production with
both current students and 40 years of alumni,” said Mitch, now a
math professor at the University of Georgia and one of the
ensemble’s first actors. The cast and crew included four current
students and 19 alumni that have graduated as far back as 1974.
July 10:
Allan Gottlieb '67, Returns for 50th Reunion, and Profiled for His Work as the Puzzle Keeper
Allan Gottlieb '67, Returns for 50th Reunion, and Profiled for His Work as the Puzzle Keeper
Allan Gottlieb ’67, a pioneer in parallel computing and New York
University professor, recently celebrated his 50th reunion this week
at MIT. But since he was a junior in the math department he’s been
creating The Puzzle Corner, a math and puzzle column that still
appears in MIT Technology Review magazine. Gottlieb,
who was profiled by Tech Review in 2015
, spoke to Slice of MIT about the evolution of the Puzzle Corner.
MIT Senior Raul Boquin remembers the assignment from his freshman
year as if it were yesterday. During a leadership workshop, he was
asked to write a headline for a newspaper in his imagined future.
The words that came to mind resonated so strongly that they now hang
on the walls of his dorm room: “Equal opportunities in education for
all.”
July 5:
The Double Life of Doctoral Candidate and NFL Pro John Urschel
The Double Life of Doctoral Candidate and NFL Pro John Urschel
In the United States, the set of professional football players has
about 1,700 members, and set the PhD candidates in math also has
thousands of members. In 2017, the intersection of these sets is a
singleton. On an overcast day in late winter, that unique element is
in the Norbert Wiener Common Room in MIT’s Department of
Mathematics, where
John Urschel
is sitting at a table, chatting. Urschel is an offensive lineman
with the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens, a three-year pro with 40
regular-season games played and a couple of playoff starts on his
football résumé. He is also a doctoral candidate in math at MIT who
has passed his qualifying exams and has nine published or accepted
research papers on his academic résumé.
Urschel recently announced his retirement from his football career,
and will concentrate full-time on earning his PhD. His announcement
came days after the release of a
Boston University study
showing the link between football and chronic traumatic
encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease.
June 29:
Welcome New Graduate Students!
Welcome New Graduate Students!
We are welcoming 19 new students into our graduate program.
Coming from around the world, 4 are from China, 3 from Russia, 2
from Hong Kong; and others are from Thailand, Singapore, Romania,
Great Britain and Colombia. Thirteen are pure math, and six are
applied math. Four are women.
Four from MIT are Robert Burklund, algebraic topology; Tudor
Cristea-Platon, physical applied math; and two combinatorics
students, Yibo Gao and Jonathan Tidor. Three are from Harvard:
Sahana Vasudevan, general pure math; Gregory Parker, geometry; and
Pakawut Jiradilok, combinatorics. Three are from the Higher School
of Economics in Russia: Daniil Kalinov, general math; Andrei Ionov,
algebra; and Aleksandra Utilarova, lie algebra. And two are from
University of Cambridge: Dominic Skinner, physical applied math, and
Chun Hong Lo, algebra.
Other new students are:
Jie Jun Ang, probability, Stanford
Araminta Gwynne, general pure math, Northwestern
Kai Huang, geometry, Peking University
Chenyang Shao, analysis, Tsinghua University
Felipe Suarez, science, University de los Andes
Jingwei Xiao, number theory, Columbia
Ruoxuan Yang, analysis, University of Hong Kong
Please help us welcome them to the Department of Mathematics!
June 27:
Our Spring 2017 Newsletter Integral is Now Available
Our Spring 2017 Newsletter Integral is Now Available
June 26:
Hung Cheng Receives Distinguished Achievement Award in Technology and Launches Scholarship Fund
Hung Cheng Receives Distinguished Achievement Award in Technology and Launches Scholarship Fund
Hung Cheng
received the 2017 Distinguished Achievement Award in Technology and
Humanity/Humanities, by the Chinese Institute of Engineers, San
Francisco Bay Chapter. Cheng and his wife, Jill, also pledged $1
million last fall to the Hung and Jill Cheng Scholarship Fund, to
support MIT undergraduates. Cheng was inspired to establish the
scholarship through writing his novel, "Nanjing Never Cries."
Congratulations Hung!
June 14:
Grad Student Xin Sun Assists Physics Team with Photonic Tech Project to Aid Artificial Neural Networks
Grad Student Xin Sun Assists Physics Team with Photonic Tech Project to Aid Artificial Neural Networks
Xin Sun
, as a 5th year Ph.D. student in mathematics, was part of a team of
researchers at MIT and elsewhere that has developed a new approach
to such computations, using light instead of electricity, which they
say could vastly improve the speed and efficiency of certain deep
learning computations. Their results appeared recently in the
journal
Nature Photonics
. “Deep Learning” computer systems are based on artificial neural
networks that mimic the way the brain learns from an accumulation of
examples. These systems enable technologies such as face- and
voice-recognition software, and could search through medical data to
find patterns for diagnostic use, or scan chemical formulas for
possible new pharmaceuticals.
Sun, whose advisor was Scott Sheffield, studies probability theory
and mathematical physics; he has done research on random planar
geometry, including SLE, Gaussian free field, random planar maps and
Liouville quantum gravity. He was recruited to this photonics
project by his friend, physics post-doc Yichen Shen, one of the
first two authors of the article, and part of a team scattered
around the world.
“The team in the physics department was trying to use optical device
to realize mathematical operations involved in the deep learning
algorithm, which are matrix multiplication and nonlinear function,”
he explained. “One problem they encountered is to represent every
matrix by 2 by 2 unitary matrices with other simple operations that
can be easily realized by an optical device.” Together with
Yichen Shen
, he found what he explained "an economic way with respect to the
optical device."
A recent graduate, Xin will go in July to Columbia University as a
Simons Junior Fellow
He received his B.S. in mathematics from Peking University.
June 9:
Sylvain Carpentier Not Only Received his PhD in Mathematics at Commencement on June 9, but Performed That Night with the Boston Pops.
Sylvain Carpentier Not Only Received his PhD in Mathematics at Commencement on June 9, but Performed That Night with the Boston Pops.
Sylvain was the featured soloist with the Pops at Symphony Hall
during Tech Night at the Pops, a 120-year Commencement tradition
hosted by MIT for alumni and guests. He was the first MIT PhD in
Tech Night history to be a soloist.
With the Pops, he performed Frédéric Chopin’s solo piano work,
Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante, Opus 22, and
received a standing ovation.
June 7:
Congratulations To Our New PhDs in Mathematics!
Congratulations To Our New PhDs in Mathematics!
June 6:
Jerison, Staffiliani, French and Chu win Prize for Teaching and Learning in MOOCs
Jerison, Staffiliani, French and Chu win Prize for Teaching and Learning in MOOCs
David Jerison
,
Gigliola Staffiliani
,
Jennifer French
, and
Karene Chu
are one of three winning groups of co-instructors honored by MIT’s
Office of Digital Learning for its inaugural MITx Prize for Teaching
and Learning in MOOCs (massive open online courses). They were
honored for their significant contributions to MITx MOOC coursework
offered on edX.org during the 2016 calendar year. The MITx Prize for
Teaching and Learning recognizes educators who have devoted
themselves to better engaging learners around the world through
digital classrooms.
As part of their 18.01x Calculus Series, the team introduced a new
sketch input tool and live-action videos while demonstrating what
the review panel described as an “incredible level of commitment to
course development and creating the best possible product.” The team
drew content from Jerison’s 18.01 (Single Variable Calculus) course
to serve as the base curriculum for 18.01x, then designed and built
a highly interactive learning experience involving video, problems,
text, and images.
At the May 19 MITx Significant Interest Group event, the team
received a plaque, shared a $1,000 prize for an account of the
faculty’s or department’s choosing, and will be MITx’s nominees for
the edX Prize.
Congratulations David, Gigliola, Jennifer and Karene!
May 26:
Sylvain Carpentier is Awarded the Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize
Sylvain Carpentier is Awarded the Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize
Sylvain Carpentier and Graduate Chair Bill Minicozzi
Graduate student
Sylvain Carpentier
has been awarded the Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize. This
award is presented to a current MIT graduate student in the
Department of Mathematics for a research paper accepted for
publication in a major journal. Sylvain received the prize for his
paper
"A sufficient condition for a rational differential operator to
generate an integrable system"
in the
Japanese Journal of Mathemtics
, March 2017 issue (Vol. 12, no. 1).
Congratulations Sylvain!
May 26:
Gus Lonergan, Jonasz Slomka and Lucas Tambasco are Awarded Charles and Holly Housman Teaching Awards
Gus Lonergan, Jonasz Slomka and Lucas Tambasco are Awarded Charles and Holly Housman Teaching Awards
L-R: John Bush, Ben Housman, Gus Lonergan, Jonasz Slomka, Lucas
Tambasco, Tom Mrowka, Charles and Holly Housman
Graduate students
Gus Lonergan
,
Jonasz Slomka
and
Lucas Tambasco
have each been awarded the Charles and Holly Housman Award for
excellence in teaching. This award is presented to graduate students
in Mathematics for skill and dedication in undergraduate teaching.
Congratulations Gus, Jonasz, and Lucas!
May 26:
Yibo Gao Receives Jon A. Bucsela Prize
Yibo Gao Receives Jon A. Bucsela Prize
Yibo Gao
has received the 2017 Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics for
distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise, and
enthusiasm for mathematics.
Congratulations Yibo!
May 11:
Casals receives Caselles Award and Fellowship
Casals receives Caselles Award and Fellowship
The BBVA Foundation and the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society have
awarded the
Vincent Caselles Mathematical Research Award
to CLE Moore Instructor
Roger Casals
. Among six recipients, Casals received the award for his
contributions to contact topology. The Caselles Award goes to young
mathematicians under 30 to boost the research of young Spanish
mathematicians or those trained in Spain.
Casals also received RSME's José Luis Rubio de Francia Award and the
BBVA Research Fellowship, which funds a three-year research project.
His research on contact and symplectic topology, flexible-rigid
dichotomy and h-principles is also supported by an NSF award.
Congratulations Roger!
May 9:
Calculus Classes on edX, Rerun Starting Soon
April 20:
Cesar Duarte and Becky Ecung Receive Infinite Mile Awards
Cesar Duarte and Becky Ecung Receive Infinite Mile Awards
The School of Science has selected Special Projects Assistant
Cesar Duarte
and Webmaster
Becky Ecung
to receive the
Infinite Mile Award
. The Infinite Mile Award recognizes those individuals who have gone
above and beyond their required duties. This includes going beyond
expectation in mentoring, learning and skill building, innovation,
and community building.
Cesar was nominated for the “Beyond Expectation Award,” for
consistently going above and beyond the requirements of his job to
make the Math Department a better place. Becky was nominated for the
“Innovator Award,” for creating solutions to problems large and
small, and finding simple solutions to the daily struggles for the
department.
Congratulations Cesar and Becky!
April 13:
Scott Sheffield and Jason P. Miller Receive Clay Research Award
Scott Sheffield and Jason P. Miller Receive Clay Research Award
Professor
Scott Sheffield
and former Schramm and NSF fellow
Jason P. Miller
have won the
2017 Clay Research Award
for their work on the geometry of the Gaussian free field and its
application to the solution of open problems in the theory of
two-dimensional random structures. Jason is now at the University of
Cambridge.
Congratulations Scott and Jason!
April 10:
MIT takes 4th place in Putnam Competition
MIT takes 4th place in Putnam Competition
The MIT team of Robert C. Shen, David H. Yang, and Yunkun Zhou
placed 4th this year in the 2016 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical
Competition, after a three-year run of first places.
Yunkun Zhou was named a Putnam Fellow, placing in the top 5.
MIT has 3 students in the next 9 spots: Jiyang Gao, Allen X. Liu,
and Sammy Y. Luo; 7 in the next 11 spots: Evan Chen, Andrew He, Hyun
Sub Hwang, Eshaan Nichani, Mark A. Sellke, Robert C. Shen, and
Lingfu Zhang; and 21 honorable mentions in the next 68: Ryan N.
Alweiss, Yibo Gao, Brian H. Gu, Meghal Gupta, Brice Huang, Kritkorn
Karntikoon, Samuel Korsky, Michael J. Kural, Calvin J. Lee, Justin
K. Lim, Ting-Chun Lin, Yang Liu, Weerachai Neeranartvong, Sung Gi
Park, Tahsin Saffat, Sean Shi, Kevin Sun, Suchan Vivatsethachai,
Jianqiao Xia, David H. Yang, and Kevin Zhou.
Professor
Gigliola Staffilani
has been awarded the 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship by the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
. She is among 173 who were awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in April,
chosen among 3,000 applicants in the Foundation’s 93rd competition.
Gigliola is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Mathematics.
Congratulations Gigliola!
April 4:
Undergraduates Receive NSF Fellowships
Undergraduates Receive NSF Fellowships
The following undergraduate mathematics students have been awarded
2017 NSF Fellowships for Graduate Study:
April 3:
Gweneth McKinley Chosen as an Honoree Graduate Women of Excellence Celebration
Gweneth McKinley Chosen as an Honoree Graduate Women of Excellence Celebration
Doctoral student
Gweneth McKinley
has been chosen as an honoree in the 2017 biennial celebration of
Graduate Women of Excellence. The Office of the Dean for Graduate
Education’s celebration recognizes graduate women who exemplify
leadership and service contributions at the Institute, and
outstanding accomplishment. Gweneth and others will be recognized on
April 24, where honorees will present posters on their
accomplishments and future plans.
Congratulations Gweneth!
March 28:
Hertz Fellowships
Hertz Fellowships
Linus Hamilton
, a first-year graduate student, and fourth-year undergraduate
Ofer Grossman
were among 12 to receive the
Hertz Fellowship
.
Hamilton, from College Park, Md., is pursuing his PhD in applied
mathematics. His advisor is
Ankur Moitra
, who also had received a Hertz Fellowship.
Grossman, who will pursue his PhD in theoretical computer science,
also co-won the 2015 SPUR (Summer Program in Undergraduate Research)
Hartley Rogers Jr. Prize.
Congratulations Linus and Ofer!
March 15:
Tobias Colding, Gigliola Staffilani, Tomasz Mrowka, and Wei Zhang Receive Simons Fellowships
Tobias Colding, Gigliola Staffilani, Tomasz Mrowka, and Wei Zhang Receive Simons Fellowships
PRIMES
math student
Aaron Yeiser
, mentored by Alex Townsend, has won the 2nd place award in the
Regeneron Science Talent Search 2017
(formerly Intel) for his development of a new numerical method for
solving partial differential equations on complicated geometries.
Laura Pierson
, another
PRIMES
student mentored by
Siddharth Venkatesh
, has won the 6th place prize for her work on interpolation of the
representation theory of symmetric groups.
Two other
PRIMES
students,
Alec Sun
and
Felix Wang
were also finalists.
Congratulations PRIMES students!
March 1:
Sloan Research Fellowships
Sloan Research Fellowships
Assistant Professors
Semyon Dyatlov
and
Aaron Pixton
have each been awarded the
2017 Sloan Research Fellowships
. This two-year fellowship recognizes early-career scientists and
scholars of outstanding promise who have a unique potential to make
substantial contributions to their field.
Professor
Tom Leighton
has been inducted into the
National Inventors Hall of Fame
for the Content Delivery Network methods that he invented with his
graduate student
Danny Lewin
. Using Applied Mathematics and Algorithms, Leighton's methods allow
the replication and delivery of content over a large network of
distributed servers, making the Internet faster.
Congratulations Tom!
January 27:
AMS Election Results
AMS Election Results
Three of our senior faculty were elected by members of the AMS to
these respective appointments and terms:
David Jerison, Vice President (Feb. 2017 - Jan. 2020)
PRIMES students
Louis Golowich
and
Richard Zhou
, mentored by
Chiheon Kim
, have won the 4th Prize in the
Siemens Competition
($30,000 award) for their project on the maximum number of pairwise
G-different permutations.
Congratulations, Louis, Richard, and Chiheon!
December 5:
George Lusztig PRIMES Mentorships
George Lusztig PRIMES Mentorships
George Lusztig with the 2016 and 2017 PRIMES Mentors: Isabel Vogt,
Seth Shelly-Abrahamson and Chieon Kim (2016), and Guangyi Yue,
Andrew Rzeznik and Lucas Mason-Brown (2017)
The 2017
George Lusztig PRIMES mentors
are
Lucas Mason-Brown
,
Andrew Rzeznik
, and
Guangyi Yue.
These positions are awarded annually to continuing PRIMES
mathematics mentors for exceptional mentor service in past years.
Congratulations Lucas, Andrew, and Guangyi!
December 1:
Marshall Scholar
Marshall Scholar
Kevin Zhou
, a double major in Mathematics and Physics, has been named a 2017
Marshall Scholar
. With this scholarship, Kevin will study theoretical physics at the
University of Cambridge.
Congratulations Kevin!
October 17:
Gian-Carlo Rota Biographical Memoir
Gian-Carlo Rota Biographical Memoir
The National Academy of Sciences has released a biographical memoir
of former MIT Mathematics Professor, Gian-Carlo Rota. Rota became a
Professor of Mathematics in 1967 and Professor of Applied
Mathematics and Philosophy in 1975. He won the Killian Faculty
Achievement Award in 1996.
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has awarded
Ankur Moitra
the Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, recognizing him
as one in eighteen of the nation's most innovative young scientists
and engineers.
September 26:
Carlsberg Foundation Research Prize 2016
Carlsberg Foundation Research Prize 2016
Professor
Tobias Colding
received the
Carlsberg Foundation Research Prize
for ground-breaking research in differential geometry and geometric
analysis. Awarded annually for over 200 years, this prize is given
to researchers who have contributed significantly to basic research
at a high international level.
Congratulations Toby!
August 8:
Rogers Family Prize
Rogers Family Prize
The 2016 Hartley Rogers Jr. Family Prize for the best SPUR paper was
awarded to
Lingfu Zhang
and his mentor
Hong Wang
for the paper, "Refinements of the 2-Dimensional Strichartz Estimate
using the Maximum Wave Packet" (project provided by
Larry Guth
).
Congratulations Lingfu and Hong!
August 8:
José Luis Rubio de Francia Prize
José Luis Rubio de Francia Prize
Instructor
Roger Casals
has been awarded the
José Luis Rubio de Francia Prize
from the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society. This award recognizes
and encourages the work of young researchers in mathematics.
Congratulations Roger!
August 4:
Building 2 Awards
Building 2 Awards
The Building 2 renovation project has received two prestigeous
awards. First, the Cambridge Historical Commission celebrated the
quality of historial preservation of the property by granting the
project a
2015-2016 Preservation Award
. Second, the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) has
honored the project with a
SCUP/AIA-CAE Award
for "excellence in architecture for building additions or adaptive
reuse."
Quanta Magazine
has featured the work of Professor
Scott Sheffield
for his three-paper series providing a comprehensive view of random
two-dimensional surfaces.
Congratulations Scott!
August 3:
Canadian Thesis Prizes
Canadian Thesis Prizes
Instructor and Postdoctoral Fellow
Vincent Genest
has been awarded two prizes for his Phd work,
Algebraic structures, superintegrable systems and orthogonal
polynomials
. The Canadian Mathematical Society has presented Vincent with the
2016 Doctoral Prize
, and the Canadian Association of Physicists-Division of Theoretical
Physics has awarded him with the
2016 Thesis Prize
.
Congratulations Vincent!
August 2:
Communications of the ACM Cover Story
Communications of the ACM Cover Story
Communications of the ACM
, the leading print and online publication for the computing and
information technology fields, has featured the work of Professor
Bonnie Berger
on the cover of the 2016 August issue. The article, titled
Computational Biology in the 21st Century: Scaling with
Compressive Algorithms
, discusses how algorithmic advances take advantage of the structure
of the massive biological data landscape.
Congratulations Bonnie!
July 23:
Alexei Borodin Receives Simons Fellowship
Alexei Borodin Receives Simons Fellowship
Professor
Alexei Borodin
has been awarded a
2016 Simons Fellowship in Mathematics
. This award is granted to scientists with great potential for
research accomplishment based on their accomplishments within the
past five years.
Congratulations Alexei!
July 21:
Simons Professorship
Simons Professorship
Professor
Bonnie Berger
has been appointed the Simons Professor of Mathematics. Established
by the James and Marilyn Simons Professorship Fund in 1996, this
appointment recognizes outstanding achievements in mathematics,
continued commitment to excellence in education and research, and
service to the mathematics department.
Congratulations Bonnie!
July 21:
JSMF Complex Systems Scholar Award
JSMF Complex Systems Scholar Award
Assistant Professor
Jörn Dunkel
has received a
2016 Complex Systems Scholar Award
from the James S. McDonnell Foundation. The JSMF Scholar Awards
Program supports high quality research to further the science of
complex systems. Awardees are selected by an expert advisory panel
based on the importance and originality of the applicant's proposed
research.
Congratulations Jörn!
June 30:
Simons Investigator
Simons Investigator
The Simons Foundation has awarded Professor
Bjorn Poonen
a
Simons Investigatorship
. This award is given to outstanding theoretical scientists to
support long-term investigations of fundamental questions.
Congratulations Bjorn!
June 2:
New PhDs
New PhDs
May 27:
Rockwell International Career Assistant Professorship
Rockwell International Career Assistant Professorship
Ankur Moitra
has been selected as the next Rockwell International Career
Assistant Professor of Mathematics. This professorship recognizes
and encourages excellence of the research and teaching by our gifted
young faculty.
Congratulations Ankur!
May 26:
Jon A. Bucsela Prize
Jon A. Bucsela Prize
Yongyi Chen
and
Mitchell Lee
each received the 2016 Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics for
distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise, and
enthusiasm for mathematics.
Congratulations Yongyi and Mitchell!
May 26:
Hertz Foundation Fellowship
Hertz Foundation Fellowship
Felipe Hernandez
was awarded the Hertz Foundation Fellowship, given to support an
outstanding student with the freedom to innovate as part of their
graduate studies.
Congratulations Felipe!
May 18:
Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize
Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize
Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prizes L-R: Department Head
Tomasz Mrowka, Awardee Yun William Yu, Awardee Yi Sun, Associate
Department Head John Bush
Graduate students
Yi Sun
and
Yun William Yu
have each been awarded the Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize.
This award is presented to a current MIT graduate student in the
Department of Mathematics for a research paper accepted for
publication in a major journal. Yi Sun received the prize for his
paper "Traces of Intertwiners for Quantum Affine sl2 and
Felder–Varchenko Functions," and Yun William Yu for his paper
"Entropy-Scaling Search of Massive Biological Data."
Congratulations Yi and Yun William!
May 18:
Charles and Holly Housman Teaching Awards
Charles and Holly Housman Teaching Awards
Charles and Holly Housman Teaching Awards L-R: Associate Department
Head John Bush, Holly and Charles Housman, Awardee Carlos Sauer
Ayala (with daughter Micaela), Ben Housman, Department Head Tomasz
Mrowka and Awardee Zachary Abel
Graduate students
Zachary Abel
and
Carlos Sauer Ayala
have each been awarded the Charles and Holly Housman Award for
excellence in teaching. This award is presented to graduate students
in Mathematics for skill and dedication in undergraduate teaching.
Congratulations Zachary and Carlos!
May 9:
American Philosophical Society
American Philosophical Society
Emeritus Professor
Alar Toomre
has been elected to be a member of the
American Philosophical Society
. The APS is America's first learned society and members are elected
after achieving extraordinary accomplishments in their field of
intellectual endeavor.
Congratulations Alar!
May 5:
Edmund F. Kelly Research Award
Edmund F. Kelly Research Award
Assistant Professors
Jörn Dunkel
and
Ankur Moitra
have each been awarded an Edmund F. Kelly Research Award. This award
is given to a junior faculty member “in recognition of work that
applies mathematical methods to a new area or that offers a
fundamentally new perspective on a classical problem.”
Congratulations Jörn and Ankur!
May 5:
Math Department Faculty Promotions
Math Department Faculty Promotions
The Corporation Executive Committee has approved faculty promotions
for
Jared Speck
and
Gonçalo Tabuada
to Associate Professor.
Congratulations Jared and Gonçalo!
May 1:
Irwin Sizer Award and MIT Awards Convocation
Irwin Sizer Award and MIT Awards Convocation
The MIT Awards Convocation awarded Professor
Tom Leighton
and Dean
Michael Sipser
the Irwin Sizer Award of the Graduate School Council, for most
significant improvements to MIT Education. -- in particular, for
their development of the highly successful 18C major: Mathematics
with Computer Science.
The Xi Chapter of
Phi Beta Kappa
has elected 32 mathematics majors, out of 84 electees in the entire
school, from the Class of 2016 to become members. Phi Beta Kappa is
the nation's oldest academic honor society with a very selective
invitation process. Membership is awarded to students in recognition
of excellent academic records and commitment to the objectives of a
liberal education.
Assistant Professor Emmy Murphy has been awarded the
Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry
. With this prize, the Association for Women in Mathematics
recognizes Murphy's outstanding contributions to symplectic and
contact topology. The official award ceremony will take place at the
Joint Mathematics Meetings in January 2017.
Congratulations Emmy!
April 20:
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Professor Pavel Etingof has been elected as a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
. With members including many of the most accomplished scholars and
practitioners worldwide, the American Academy is one of the
country's oldest learned societies and independent policy research
centers.
Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize for the Top Woman Scorer:
Danielle Wang
In addition to having the 1st place team and 2 of the 6 highest
ranking individuals, MIT has 4 of the next 10 top scorers, 3 of the
next 10, and an outstanding 24 out of 63 students who received
honorable mention.
In the Fall of 2016, MIT will officially dedicate the newly
renovated Building 2 in honor of James H. and Marilyn Simons. Thanks
to the couple's generosity the Institute was able to restore and
renovate the building. Alumna Ann Beha led the project, modernizing
the space and expanding it with the addition of a fourth floor while
maintaining the historic integrity of the building's original
limestome façade. The new Simons Building opened in January for the
Spring semester.
PRIMES
and
RSI
math student Meena Jagadeesan has won the 2nd prize nationally in
the Basic Research category of the
Intel Science Talent Search 2016
. She was awarded the prize for her paper on algebraic
combinatorics, written under the guidance of
Miriam Farber
(project suggested by
Professor Alex Postnikov
). This was the only project in mathematics that won a top prize
this year.
Congratulations Meena!
March 7:
MacVicar Fellow
MacVicar Fellow
Dean of Science and Donner Professor of Mathematics
Michael Sipser
has been awarded a
2016 MacVicar Faculty Fellowship
. This award recognizes professors who exhibit exceptional
undergraduate teaching, educational innovation, and mentoring.
Congratulations Mike!
March 2:
Sloan Fellowships
Sloan Fellowships
Assistant Professors
Ankur Moitra
and
Vadim Gorin
have been awarded
2016 Sloan Research Fellowships
. This two-year fellowship recognizes early-career scientists and
scholars of outstanding promise who have a unique potential to make
substantial contributions to their field.
Congratulations Ankur and Vadim!
January 26:
Wigner medal
Wigner medal
Professor Emeritus
Bertram Kostant
has been selected to receive the 2016
Wigner Medal
. Awarded since 1978, the medal is given "to recognize outstanding
contributions to the understanding of physics through Group Theory."
Professor Emeritus
Michael Artin
has been awarded the
National Medal of Science
, the highest honor in science and technology, for his outstanding
contributions to mathematics.
The 2016
George Lusztig PRIMES
mentors are
Chiheon Kim
,
Seth Shelley-Abrahamson
, and
Isabel Vogt.
These positions are awarded annually to continuing PRIMES
mathematics mentors for exceptional mentor service in past years.
Congratulations Chiheon, Seth and Isabel!
November 30:
Bose Grant
Bose Grant
Chemical Engineering and Mathematics Professor
Martin Bazant
, has been awarded a
Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grant
to support his innovative research. Bazant's project involves the
development of theories behind ion transport and reactions in ionic
liquids, on a molecular level. Such research could potentially be
used for ultrafast rechargeable batteries.
Congratulations Martin!
November 19:
Marshall Scholar
Marshall Scholar
Võ Tiến Phong
, a double major in Mathematics and Physics, has been named a 2016
Marshall Scholar
. With this scholarship, Phong will study theoretical physics at
University of Cambridge.
Congratulations Phong!
November 12:
MIT Team Develops Innovative Desalination System
MIT Team Develops Innovative Desalination System
Chemical Engineering and Mathematics Professor
Martin Bazant
, along with graduate student
Sven Schlumpberger
, undergraduate
Nancy Lu
, and former postdoc
Matthew Suss
, has recently published a paper in the journal
Environmental Science and Technology Letters
which describes a new approach to desalinating water. After
extensive theoretical mathematical work on this problem, Bazant's
innovation is a wonderful example of mathematics leading to
experiments, which lead to new processes that address pressing
global needs.
Professor
Larry Guth
has been awarded the
New Horizons in Mathematics Prize
for ingenious and surprising solutions to long standing open
problems in symplectic geometry, Riemannian geometry, harmonic
analysis, and combinatorial geometry.
Math undergraduate
Nadia Wallace
and two other undergraduates,
Katrine Tjoelsen
and
Priya Kalluri
, have won third place at the
2nd Global Grand Challenges Summit Student Day Competition
in Beijing, China. Competing under the heading "Advancing Health
Informatics," the students pitched a software-as-a-service company
for adaptive clinical trials solutions. This summit is jointly
organized by the NAE, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the
Royal Academy of Engineering.
Congratulations Nadia, Katrine and Priya!
September 17:
Daniel Kan Biography in AMS Notices
Daniel Kan Biography in AMS Notices
The
October 2015 issue
of the AMS publication,
Notices
, features a biographical article about former mathematics professor
Daniel M. Kan
(1927-2013). The article, written by
Clark Barwick
, Michael Hopkins,
Haynes Miller
and Ieke Moerdijk, reflects on Daniel's life, work and influence on
the field of mathematics.
Professor
Alexei Borodin
has won the
2015 Henri Poincaré Prize
. This prize, awarded every three years at the International
Mathematical Physics Congress, recognizes outstanding contributions
in mathematical physics and supports young people of exceptional
promise who have already made outstanding contributions to the
field.
PRIMES
student
Noah Golowich
became a Davidson Fellow Laureate ($50,000 award), and
PRIMES USA
student
Peter Tian
became a Davidson Fellow ($25,000 award). Among the 20 national
fellowships only two were awarded for mathematical projects, and
both went to PRIMES students. Both Noah and Peter were also
RSI
students in 2014.
The September 2015 issue of the AMS publication,
Notices
, features a an article about the
PRIMES
program, an MIT research-based program for high school students. The
article was written by
Slava Gerovitch
,
Tanya Khovanova
, and
Pavel Etingof
.
Congratulations, Yuchen, Seth, Ofer, and Dongkwan!
July 29:
Alexander Kuznetsov Prize
Alexander Kuznetsov Prize
Professor
Martin Bazant
has been awarded the
Alexander Kuznetsov Prize in Theoretical Electrochemistry
by the International Society of Electrochemistry. This prize is
awarded every two years to a living individual who has made
groundbreaking contribution to the theory of electrochemical
phenomena.
Congratulations Martin!
July 22:
Clay Prize
Clay Prize
Professor
Larry Guth
, together with Nets Katz, has won the
2015 Clay Research Prize
for his solution to the Erdős distance problem and for other joint
and separate contributions to combinatorial incidence geometry.
Professor
Alexei Borodin
has won the 2015 Loève Prize. The prize, awarded every two years, is
intended to recognize outstanding contributions by young researchers
in probability.
Congratulations Alexei
July 1:
Leslie Fox Prize
Leslie Fox Prize
Applied Math instructor
Alex Townsend
has won the
Leslie Fox prize in Numerical Analysis
. This award is given every two years to a young numerical analyst
for mathematical and algorithmic brilliance in tandem with
presentational skills.
Congratulations Alex!
June 29:
Faculty Chair - Speck
Faculty Chair - Speck
Jared Speck
is the new Cecil and Ida Green Career Assistant Professor of
Mathematics. This professorship recognizes and encourages excellence
in teaching by gifted young faculty members.
Congratulations Jared!
June 29:
Mark Hyman, Jr. Career Development Professorship
Mark Hyman, Jr. Career Development Professorship
Jonathan Kelner
is the new Mark Hyman, Jr. Career Development Associate Professor of
Applied Mathematics. This chair honors outstanding researchers by
allowing them flexibility to pursue new ideas and opportunities.
Congratulations Jonathan!
June 12:
Babbage Award
Babbage Award
Math faculty member
Alan Edelman
has won the 2015
Charles Babbage Award
. This award is given each year to an IPDPS conference participant
in recognition of exceptional contributions to the field of parallel
computation.
Math faculty member
Laurent Demanet
has been promoted to tenure as approved by the MIT Corporation
Executive Committee.
Congratulations Laurent!
May 20:
Graduate Student Appreciation Fellowship
Graduate Student Appreciation Fellowship
Ruthi Hortsch
has received the Math Department's Graduate Student Appreciation
Fellowship, in recognition of outstanding teaching and service to
the department.
Congratulations Ruthi!
May 15:
Charles and Holly Housman Award
Charles and Holly Housman Award
Graduate Students
Dana Mendelson
,
Michael Andrews
, and
Daniel Harris
have been awarded Charles and Holly Housman Awards for Excellence in
Teaching. Pictured above, the students were congratulated by Charles
Housman, Gigliola Staffilani and Tom Mrowka.
Congratulations Michael, Daniel, and Dana!
May 15:
Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize
Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize
Graduate Students
Yufei Zhao
and
Francesco Lin
have been awarded Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prizes. This
prize is given to graduate students in mathematics for an
outstanding paper accepted for publication in a major journal.
Congratulations Francesco and Yufei!
May 15:
Hertz Foundation Fellowships
Hertz Foundation Fellowships
Undergraduates
Cole Graham
,
Alexander Siegenfeld
, and
Jordan Cotler
have been awarded Hertz Foundation Fellowships. These fellowships
are given to support outstanding students with the freedom to
innovate as part of their graduate studies.
Congratulations Cole, Alex and Jordan!
May 15:
Barry Goldwater Scholarship
Barry Goldwater Scholarship
Math major
Felipe Hernandez
has won a Goldwater Scholarship. This prestigious award is
merit-based and highly competive, with only 300 scholarships awarded
nationally.
Congratulations Felipe!
May 15:
Jon A. Bucsela Prize
Jon A. Bucsela Prize
Ka Yu Tam
has received the Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics for
distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise, and
enthusiasm for mathematics.
Congratulations Ka Yu!
May 15:
NSF Graduate Fellows
NSF Graduate Fellows
The following students have been awarded 2015 NSF Fellowships for
Graduate Study:
Amol Aggarwal
Julian Chaidez
Sheela Devadas
Caelan Reed Garrett
Carl Lian
Quanquan Liu
Joel Schneider
Brandon Tran
Alex Siegenfeld
Erik Waingarten
Congratulations!
May 11:
Honorary Degree
Honorary Degree
Professor
Bonnie Berger
will be awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa from
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
during the school's October graduation ceremony. EPFL has top CS and
life science departments and is deeply engaged in many areas of
computing, biology and medicine.
Congratulations Bonnie!
April 29:
National Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Sciences
Department Head
Tomasz Mrowka
has been elected to the
National Academy of Sciences
. Members are elected to the National Academy of Sciences in
recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in
original research. Membership is one of the highest honors that a
scientist can achieve.
The Xi Chapter of
Phi Beta Kappa
has elected 43 mathematics majors (nearly half of the 90 electees in
the entire school) from the Class of 2015 to become members. Phi
Beta Kappa is the nation's oldest academic honor society with a very
selective invitation process. Membership is awarded to students in
recognition of excellent academic records and commitment to the
objectives of a liberal education.
Congratulations Electees!
April 27:
Frank E. Perkins Award
Frank E. Perkins Award
Professor
Pavel Etingof
has been awarded the Frank E. Perkins award for Excellence in
Graduate Advising. Named in honor of Frank E. Perkins, Dean of the
Graduate School from 1983-85, this award is presented to a faculty
member who demonstrates unbounded compassion and dedication towards
students.
Congratulations Pavel!
April 24:
Graduate Woman of Excellence
Graduate Woman of Excellence
Isabel Vogt
, a first-year graduate student, was honored at a celebration on
April 23 as one of this year's
Graduate Women of Excellence
. Isabel, along with 50 other MIT women, was selected for this honor
by the Office of the Dean of Graduate Education (ODGE). The award
not only recognizes Isabel's mathematical achievements and research
potential, but also her contributions to mentoring others, including
her work with Girls' Angle, a math club for girls, and her years of
work as a mentor and this year as the program coordinator of MIT's
PRIMES Circle
, promoting mathematics for students of disadvantaged backgrounds in
Boston-area high schools. Thanks to Professor
Pavel Etingof
for nominating Isabel.
Congratulations, Isabel!
April 22:
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Professor
William Minicozzi
has been elected as a
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The American Academy has served the nation as a champion of
scholarship, civil dialogue, and useful knowledge since 1780 and its
members include many of the most accomplished scholars and
practitioners worldwide.
Human Resources Coordinator
Daniel Delgado
and Administrative Assistant
Jonathan Harmon
have been awarded School of Science Infinite Mile Awards. The
Infinite Mile award recognizes those individuals who have gone above
and beyond their required duties. This includes going beyond
expectation in mentoring, learning and skill building, innovation,
and community building.
Congratulations Dan and Jonathan!
April 1:
Putnam Competition
Putnam Competition
Our 1st Place Team:
Mitchell M. Lee, Zipei Nie, and David H. Yang
Our Putnam Fellows:
Zipei Nie, Mark A. Sellke, Bobby C. Shen, David H. Yang and Lingfu
Zhang
In addition to having the 1st place team and 5 of the 6 highest
ranking individuals, MIT has 5 of the next 10 top scorers, 6 of the
next 11, and 16 students who received honorable mention.
Professor
Bjorn Poonen
has been awarded a 2015
Simons Fellowship in Mathematics
. This award is granted to scientists with great potential for
research accomplishment based on their accomplishments within the
past five years.
March 11:
PRIMES/RSI Students Win Top Intel Prizes
PRIMES/RSI Students Win Top Intel Prizes
PRIMES
and
RSI
student
Noah Golowich
won the
First Place Medal of Distinction for Basic Research
($150,000), PRIMES-USA student
Brice Huang
won the Second Place ($75,000), and PRIMES/RSI student
Shashwat Kishore
the Third Place ($35,000), taking the three top prizes in all fields
of science and technology. Noah’s mentors were Laszlo Lovasz and
David Rolnick; Brice’s mentor was Wuttisak Trongsiriwat; Shashwat
was mentored by Gus Lonergan and Prof.
Pavel Etingof
.
February 23:
Sloan Research Fellowship - Jörn Dunkel
Sloan Research Fellowship - Jörn Dunkel
Assistant Professor
Jörn Dunkel
has been selected as a 2015 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. Dunkel
works on continuum theories with application to biology and soft
matter physics, most recently making breakthroughs in the study of
cell locomotion and formation of wrinkles on curved surfaces.
February 23:
Sloan Research Fellowship - Emmy Murphy
Sloan Research Fellowship - Emmy Murphy
Assistant Professor
Emmy Murphy
has been selected as a 2015 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow.
Murphy's work has transformed symplectic topology in particular the
understanding of high dimensional contact geometry.
MIT math senior
Daniel Kang
has won a prestigious
Churchill Scholarship
to pursue graduate studies at the University of Cambridge. This
scholarship is awarded to individuals with exceptional academic
talent and outstanding achievement.
The Corporation Executive Committee has approved faculty promotions
for faculty members
Clark Barwick
and
Steven Johnson
. Clark has been promoted to Associate Professor and Steven has been
promoted to Full Professor.
Congratulations Clark and Steven!
January 5:
Richard D. Schafer 1918-2014
Richard D. Schafer 1918-2014
Photo Credit: MIT Museum
Emeritus Professor Richard Schafer passed away at Brookhaven in
Lexington on Dec 28. A specialist in non-associative algebras, he
joined our faculty as Professor in 1959, serving as Deputy Head
under Ted Martin from 1959-68. Previously, he was Department Head of
Mathematics at the University of Connecticut, 1953-59. He retired
from MIT in 1988.
PRIMES-USA
and
RSI
student
Peter Tian
has won the
1st Prize
($100,000) and MIT PRIMES student
Joseph Zurier
has won the
2nd Prize
($50,000) in the Siemens Competition, taking the two top prizes
among all fields of science and technology. Peter's project was
suggested and mentored by
Jesse Geneson
; Joe's project was suggested by Professor
Larry Guth
and mentored by
Ben Yang
.
Congratulations, Peter and Joe!
December 4:
George Lusztig PRIMES Mentorships
George Lusztig PRIMES Mentorships
The first
George Lusztig PRIMES
mentors are
Jesse Geneson
,
Darij Grinberg
, and
Yufei Zhao.
These positions will be awarded annually to continuing PRIMES
mathematics mentors for exceptional mentor service in past years.
Congratulations Jesse, Darij and Yufei!
November 20:
AMS Steele Prize
AMS Steele Prize
Professor
Victor Kac
will be honored with the
AMS Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement
at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in January, "for his
groundbreaking contributions to Lie Theory and its applications to
Mathematics and Mathematical Physics." He is the 5th faculty member
to be so honored in the 23 years that the prize has been awarded.
Congratulations Victor!
November 14:
Alice T. Schafer Prize
Alice T. Schafer Prize
Undergraduate student,
Sheela Devadas
has won the
2015 Alice T. Schafer Prize for Undergraduate Women in
Mathematics
. Sheela began work on a
PRIMES
Project with graduate mentor Steven Sam in the 10th grade. The
project continued for 1.5 years, resulting in a joint publication.
She entered MIT early after the 11th grade.
Sheela is our 5th winner in the 9th consecutive year, in which one
of our students won at least Honorable Mention in the Schafer Prize.
Thanks to Pavel Etingof for nominating Sheela, and to
Mike Artin
,
David Jerison
, Ronitt Rubinfeld (EECS), and Steven Sam (Miller Fellow, Berkeley)
who wrote supporting letters.
Congratulations Sheela!
October 27:
Moscow Math Society Prize
Moscow Math Society Prize
Instructor
Vadim Gorin
has been awarded the
Moscow Mathematical Society Prize
. This prize is awarded to young scientists for work or series of
works on mathematics with substantial scientific interest. Gorin was
awarded this prize for a cycle of works entitled "Asymptotic
problems in combinatorics and representation theory."
PRIMES
student
Ravi Jagadeesan
became a
Davidson Fellow Laureate
($50,000 scholarship), and
PRIMES-USA
student
Ritesh Ragavender
became a
Davidson Fellow
($25,000). Among the 20 national fellowships only two were awarded
for mathematical projects, and both went to PRIMES students.
Congratulations, Ravi and Ritesh!
August 7:
Rogers Family Prize
Rogers Family Prize
Undergraduate student
Saarik Kalia
and his mentor, graduate student
Ben Yang
, have been awarded the Hartley Rogers Jr. Family Prize for the best
SPUR
paper. The project, "Generalizations of the Szemeredi-Trotter
Theorem," was suggested by
Larry Guth
.
Instructor
Vladislav Voroninski
has been awarded a
SIAM Outstanding Paper Prize
for his paper "Phase Retrieval via Matrix Completion", co-authored
with Emmanuel Candes, Thomas Strohmer and Yonina Eldar. This prize
is awarded to authors of papers that exhibit orginiality by offering
a fresh look at an existing field or opening up new areas of applied
mathematics.
Congratulations Vlad!
June 12:
Simons Investigator
Simons Investigator
The
Simons Foundation
has named Professor
Larry Guth
to be a Simons Investigator. This award is given to outstanding
theoretical scientists to support long-term investigations of
fundamental questions.
Congratulations Larry!
May 29:
Shaw Prize
Shaw Prize
Abdun-Nur Professor
George Lusztig
has has won the
Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences
"for his fundamental contributions to algebra, algebraic geometry,
and representation theory, and for weaving these subjects together
to solve old problems and reveal beautiful new connections."
Congratulations George!
May 23:
Intel International Science and Engineering Fair
Ritesh Ragavender
has won the First Prize for his
PRIMES-USA
project,
Odd Dunkl Operators and nilHecke Algebras
, suggested and mentored by Alex Ellis.
Rumen Dangovski
has won the Second Prize for his
RSI
project,
On the Lower Central Series of PI-algebras
, suggested by
Pavel Etingof
and mentored by
Nathan Harman
.
Congratulations to all contestants, mentors, staff, and faculty!
May 20:
Endowed Chairs
Endowed Chairs
Professors Paul Seidel and David Vogan will be appointed to endowed
chairs effective July 2014.
Paul Seidel
will be the Norman Levinson Professor of Mathematics
David Vogan
will be the Norbert Wiener Professor of Mathematics
The Norman Levinson chair is supported by a generous gift from James
and Marilyn Simons.
Finding algebraic structure in combinatorial problems
Lecture 1:
May 14, Room 54-100
Approximate groups and applications
Lecture 2:
May 15, Room 3-270
Linear equations and higher-order Fourier analysis
Lecture 3:
May 16, Room 3-270
Incidence geometry and cubic curves
May 6:
Bucsela Prize
Bucsela Prize
Dennis Tseng
has received the Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics for
distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise, and
enthusiam for mathematics.
Congratulations Dennis!
May 6:
Undergraduate Distinctions
Undergraduate Distinctions
On May 5, 2014,
Steven Johnson
presented the following distinctions at the Math Majors Senior
Dinner:
Math faculty members
Jacob Fox
and
Jonathan Kelner
have been promoted to tenure as approved by the MIT Corporation
Executive Committee.
Congratulations Jacob and Jon!
April 30:
NAS - Jim Simons
NAS - Jim Simons
Math Department alumnus and friend
Jim Simons
has been elected to the
National Academy of Sciences.
Academy membership is a widely accepted mark of excellence in
science and is considered one of the highest honors that a scientist
can receive.
Gigliola Staffilani
and
Paul Seidel
have been elected Fellows of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
. The American Academy has served the nation as a champion of
scholarship, civil dialogue, and useful knowledge since 1780 and its
members include many of the most accomplished scholars and
practitioners worldwide.
Academic Administrator
Barbara Peskin
has been awarded the School of Science Infinite Mile Award. This
award honors exceptional employees whose accomplishments so often go
far beyond their assigned roles and duties.
In addition to having the 1st place team and 4 of the 5 highest
ranking individuals, MIT has 11 of the next top 20 scorers and 20 of
the 56 students with Honorable Mentions.
Math majors
Carl Lian
and
Daniel Kang
have won Goldwater Scholarships. This prestigious award is
merit-based and highly competive, with only 300 scholarships awarded
nationally. Thanks to Professor
Pavel Etingof
for nominating Carl and EECS for nominating Daniel.
PRIMES students
Jin-Woo Oh
,
Ritesh Ragavender
,
Uma Roy
, and
Junho Won
and RSI student
Jessica Shi
have won Outstanding Presentation Awards at the
2014 MAA Undergraduate Poster Session
.
Ramanujan graphs and the solution of the Kadison-Singer problem
Lecture 1:
March 12, Room E25-111
Sparsification of graphs and matrices
Lecture 2:
March 13, Room 3-270
The solution of the Kadison-Singer problem
Lecture 3:
March 14, Room 3-270
Ramanujan graphs of every degree
February 20:
Sloan Research Fellowships
Sloan Research Fellowships
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has announced that Assistant
Professors
Charles Smart
and
Jared Speck
are among the nine MIT faculty members receiving 2014 Sloan Research
Fellowships. These two-year fellowships are awarded to researchers
in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential
to make substantial contributions to their field.
MIT/Microsoft Schramm Fellow
Ivan Corwin
has won the
Rollo Davidson Prize
for outstanding achievements in the area of stochastic growth
processes and their relation to integrable systems.
Congratulations Ivan!
February 13:
Salem Prize
Salem Prize
Mathematics Professor
Larry Guth
has been awarded the
Salem Prize
for outstanding contributions in the field of analysis.
This continues the amazing 8 year streak of Math Department students
winning at least Honorable Mention in the Schafer prize. Thanks to
Mike Artin
for nominating Jessie and to
Pavel Etingof
,
Mark Behrens
and Jenny Hoffman (Harvard Physics).
One of the thirty-four
Marshall Scholarships
awarded nationwide has been granted to senior
Kirin Sinha
. This scholarship will support two years of graduate study in the
United Kingdom.
The Rhodes Trust has selected recent MIT graduate
John Mikhael
as one of thirty-two
Rhodes Scholarship
winners nation wide. This scholarship will support his study next
year at Oxford University.
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has awarded
Jacob Fox
the Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, recognizing him
as one in sixteen of the nation's most innovative young scientists
and engineers. Congratulations Jacob!
Toby Colding
has been appointed as the Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished
Professor of Mathematics.
September 18:
Davidson Competition Results
Davidson Competition Results
William Kuszmaul and Joshua Brakensiek
Three out of the four awards in mathematics went to RSI and PRIMES
students.
William Kuszmaul
of
PRIMES
received a $10,000 scholarship for the project,
"Equivalence Classes of Permutations Created Under
Pattern-Replacement Relations" (mentor Darij Grinberg).
Joshua Brakensiek
of
RSI
2012 received a $10,000 scholarship for the project,
"Bounds on the Size of Sound Monotone Switching Networks
Accepting Permutation Sets of Directed Trees" (mentor Aaron
Potechin).
Jacob McNamara
of
RSI
2012 received an honorable mention for the project, "A Bound
on the Norm of Shortest Vectors in Lattices Arising from CM Number
Fields" (mentor Mitka Vaintrob).
Debbie Bower, Shirley Entzminger, Susan Moura, Avisha Lalla
Debbie Bower, Shirley Entzminger, Susan Fontes Moura and Avisha
Lalla received the Infinite Mile Award of the School of Science for
their tremendous contributions to the Mathematics Department. The
Award recognizes those individuals who have gone
Above and Beyond
in their work.
June 26:
Career Development Chairs
Career Development Chairs
Clark Barwick and Laurent Demanet
Clark Barwick is the new Cecil and Ida Green Career Development
Assistant Professor of Mathematics.
Laurent Demanet is the new Class of 1954 Career Development
Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics.
June 5:
Graduate Awards
Graduate Awards
Left: Nan Li, Ailsa Keating and John Lesieutre, Right: Yin Tat Lee,
Paul Seidel and Eric Marberg
The Department of Mathematics recently held its annual awards
ceremony to honor the accomplishments of our graduate students.
Nan Li, Ailsa Keating and John Lesieutre received the Charles and
Holly Housman Award for Undergraduate Teaching.
Paul Seidel presents the Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize to
Yin Tat Lee and Eric Marberg, for their outstanding papers accepted
for publication in a major journal.
June 4:
Undergraduate Awards
Undergraduate Awards
Lee Holden ((Photo courtesy of Lee Holden), Yangzhou Hu (Photo by
Beata Shuster, MIT Economics Dept.), Noam Angrist (Photo by Allegra
Boverman)
Holden Lee received the Mathematics Department's Jon A. Bucsela
Prize for distinguished scholastic achievement. He also recevied a
Gates Scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge.
Yangzhou Hu was an Honorable Mention Awardee of the Alice T. Schafer
Prize for Excellence in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Woman.
Noam Angrist, a math and economics major, received a Fulbright
Scholarship to work in Botswana next year on educational reform.
Results of the 2012 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
are in: MIT has 3 of the 5 Putnam Fellows and 12 of the top 25
scorers. We also have 34 of the 84 students with Honorable Mention
or above; thus over 40% of the high-scorers are our students!
MIT Putnam Fellows:
Benjamin Gunby
Mitchell Lee
Zipei Nie
Other MIT students in top 25:
Whan Ghang, Sung Gi Park, Szu-Po Wang, Tianyou Zhou, Alex Zhu,
Joshua Alman, Holden Lee Jeffrey Shen, Ka Yu Tam
MIT Honorable Mentions:
Robi Bhattacharjee, Justin Brereton, Lucas Camelo Sa, Kevin Chen,
Alexander Cole, Michael Cohen, Zheng Fan, Brian Hamrick, Jiaoyang
Huang, Hyun Sub Hwang, Kuan-Yu Lin, Eric Mannes, Ofir Nachum,
Jonathan Schneider, Brandon Tran, Mark Velednitsky, Anderson Wang,
Anthony Wang, Michael Wu, George Xing, Kerry Xing, Dai Yang
Jacob Fox and Sug Woo Shin are among the six MIT faculty members
receiving Sloan Research Fellowships this year.
February 12:
Jon Kelner awarded School of Science Teaching Prize
Jon Kelner awarded School of Science Teaching Prize
The School of Science has announced that Jon has received the
Teaching Prize for Undergraduate Education.
January 22:
Chelsea Walton Awarded 2013 Infinite Kilometer
Chelsea Walton Awarded 2013 Infinite Kilometer
Chelsea Walton is Awarded a 2013 Infinite Kilometer.
This honor is in recognition of Chelsea's hard work and leadership
in PRIMES Circle, a new program established for mathematically
talented students with underprivileged backgrounds. PRIMES Circle
owes much of its success to her enthusiasm and dedication.
January 22:
Cesar Duarte to Receive MIT Excellence Award
Cesar Duarte to Receive MIT Excellence Award
Cesar Duarte is to Receive the MIT Excellence Award. President
Rafael Reif will present the award, in the category of "Innovative
Solutions" to Cesar this spring. Cesar has contributed to many of
the Department's design projects and has been a valuable resource in
the planning process of the upcoming renovations.
January 14:
Chia-Chiao Lin, 1916-2013
Chia-Chiao Lin, 1916-2013
Institute Professor Emeritus Chia-Chiao Lin passed away Sunday
morning in Beijing. He joined the Mathematics Faculty in 1947 and
retired in 1987. He was a seminal figure in applied mathematics.
MIT news
January 9:
David Jerison wins Bergman Prize
David Jerison wins Bergman Prize
David Jerison is a co-winner, with his collaborator Jack Lee
(University of Washington), of the 2012 Bergman Prize.
January 3:
Mike Artin Receives Wolf Prize
Mike Artin Receives Wolf Prize
The Wolf Foundation has recently announced that Mike Artin will
receive the Wolf Prize in Mathematics. Israel's President Shimon
Peres will officially award the prizes this spring.
Mathematics Senior Yangzhou Hu won Honorable Mention for the 2013
Alice T. Schafer Prize
for undergraduate women demonstrating excellence in mathematics,
marking the seventh year in a row that an MIT student has won
Honorable Mention or more in the Schafer Prize.
Congratulations Yangzhou!
October 23:
PRIMES and RSI successes
PRIMES and RSI successes
All eight regional finalist awards in the 2012 Siemens Competition
in Massachusetts and New Hampshire in all fields went to
PRIMES students
. Also, two PRIMES students and five
RSI students
are Siemens semifinalists.
Congratulations to the winners and to PRIMES and RSI mentors and
staff!
September 6:
Davidson Fellow Laureates
Davidson Fellow Laureates
Among the 22 nationally selected high school student laureates,
three of the prizes were awarded for projects in mathematics, and
all three went to students mentored at MIT's Department of
Mathematics, two at
PRIMES
and one at
RSI
.
The laureates are:
PRIMES Student David Ding received first prize for the project,
"Infinitesimal Cherednik Algebras of gl_n" (mentor Sasha
Tsymbaliuk);
RSI Student Sitan Chen , for the project, "On the Rank Number of
Grid Graphs" (mentor Jesse Geneson);
PRIMES Student Xiaoyu He , for the project, "On the
Classification of Universal Rotor-Routers" (mentor Dr. Tanya
Khovanova).
August 10:
Lewis and Zhang Win Best Student Paper Award
The 2012 Hartley Rogers Jr. Prize for the best SPUR paper has been
awarded to Sophomore Amol Aggarwal and his mentor, Graduate Student
Gouzhen Wang, for the project, "Using Difference Operators to
Determine the Correlation Functions of the Schur Process," suggested
by Alexei Borodin.
July 13:
Sutherland Receives Selfridge Prize
Sutherland Receives Selfridge Prize
Principal Research Scientist Andrew Sutherland has been awarded the
Selfridge Prize for his paper, "On the Evaluation of Modular
Polynomials." This distinction is given in recognition of the
best paper presented at the biennial Algorithmic Number Theory
Symposium.
July 3:
Seidel and Guionnet Chosen as Simons Investigators
Seidel and Guionnet Chosen as Simons Investigators
Paul Seidel and Alice Guionnet have been included among the 21
mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and theoretical computer
scientists who have been selected as Simons Investigators in this
inaugural year for the Simons Investigators program.
Undergraduate student Fan Wei has received the Jon A. Bucsela Prize
for distinguished scholastic achievement.
May 21:
Undergraduate Awards
Undergraduate Awards
Steven Sam, Hoeskuldur Halldorsson, and Alejandro Morales
The Department of Mathematics recently held its annual awards
ceremony to honor the accomplishments of the student body. This year
the Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize was awarded to Steven
Sam for his outstanding paper. Sheel Ganatra, Hoeskuldur
Halldorsson, and Alejandro Morales received the Charles and Holly
Housman Award for Excellence in Teaching.
April 26:
Jacob Fox receives the Edmund F. Kelly Research Award
Jacob Fox receives the Edmund F. Kelly Research Award
Jacob Fox has been selected to receive the Edmund F. Kelly Research
Award.
Congratulations Jacob!
April 26:
Pavel Etingof is appointed a Robert E. Collins Distinguished Scholar
Pavel Etingof is appointed a Robert E. Collins Distinguished Scholar
Pavel Etingof has been appointed a Robert E. Collins Distinguished
Scholar.
Congratulations Pavel!
April 18:
Victor Kac receives a Simons Fellows in Mathematics.
Victor Kac receives a Simons Fellows in Mathematics.
February 17:
Alejandro Rodriguez-Wong receives an Infinite Kilometer Award
Alejandro Rodriguez-Wong receives an Infinite Kilometer Award
Alejandro Rodriguez-Wong received an Infinite Kilometer Award for
his commitment to outreach in the larger community, especially to
underrepresented minorities and for many other deeds and
accomplishments.
Congratulations Alejandro!
February 17:
Andrew Sutherland receives an Infinite Kilometer Awardh
Andrew Sutherland receives an Infinite Kilometer Awardh
Andrew Sutherland received an Infinite Kilometer Award for his
outstanding contributions to UROP, freshman advising, SPLASH and
HSSP.
Congratulations Andrew!
February 17:
Erin McGrath receives a 2012 MIT Excellence Award
Erin McGrath receives a 2012 MIT Excellence Award
Erin McGrath, Director of Development for Math and Physics, received
a 2012 MIT Excellence Award, the highest award given to MIT staff.
Congratulations Erin!
2011
November 28:
David Vogan elected AMS President
David Vogan elected AMS President
David Vogan has been elected to be the next
AMS President
starting 2013.
Faculty, Instructors, and graduate students interested in mentoring
or proposing projects for PRIMES in the future are encouraged to
attend.
April 28:
Jon Kelner Receives MIT's Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award
Jon Kelner Receives MIT's Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award
Jon Kelner
received MIT's Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award which
recognizes a junior faculty member for exceptional distinction in
teaching and research.
Congratulations Jon!
April 28:
Bonnie Berger to give the Margaret Pittman Lecture
Bonnie Berger to give the Margaret Pittman Lecture
Bonnie Berger
has been invited to give the prestigious Margaret Pittman Lecture,
sponsored annually by the National Institute of Health.
Congratulations Bonnie!
April 20:
Simons Lectures in Mathematics
Simons Lectures in Mathematics
April 20 - April 27
Steven Strogatz
(Cornell University)
Title: Sync, Balance, and Blog
Manjul Bhargava
(Princeton University)
Title: Orbits of Group Representations and Arithmetic
April 20:
Peter Shor elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Peter Shor elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Peter Shor
was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Our new Assistant Professor
and Simons Fellow Jacob Fox was awarded SIAM's Dénes König Prize for work in Discrete Mathematics.
Congratulations Jacob Fox
June 29:
New Faculty Chairs
New Faculty Chairs
Toby Colding and Ben Brubaker are appointed as the Levinson Professor of Mathematics and the Green Career Development Assistant Professor of Mathematics.
May 10:
Sarah Smith wins Infinite Mile Award
Sarah Smith wins Infinite Mile Award
A huge Thank You to Sarah Smith for doing a wonderful job as our Administrative Officer.
May 10:
Charmaine Sia wins AMITA Senior Academic Award
