News Archive

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).

Located on the second floor near room 2-242, the statue was created by sculptor Jayaprakash Shirgaonkar and last year was donated by Agastya to MIT. Speakers at the event were Indiaspora’s Executive Director Sanjeev Joshipura, founder MR Rangaswami, and Board Member Priya Natarajan '90, '91, SM '11; MIT Corporation member Dr. Desh Deshpande, Padma Vibushan, Dr. Vasudev Aatre, MIT South Asian Alumni Association member Ranu Boppana ’87, and Department Head Michel Goemans PhD ’90.

The event was followed by a tour of MIT’s “South Asia and the Institute: Transformative Connections” exhibit, and a screening of “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” a 2015 film about Ramanujan that was written by Robert Kanigel, the former director of MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing.

Congratulations, Wei!

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.

Seating is limited. Please register here.

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.

This medal and lecture is sponsored by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences through its Nobel Committee for Physics.

Congratulations, Peter!

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!

Jeremy Hahn '13 PD'18, who recently joined our faculty in 2021, was awarded the prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship.

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.

Read more in the MIT News.

Congratulations everyone!

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

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.

MIT News Obituary

Several members of the Department of Mathematics community were recognized for their achievements at the recent Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston.

Collecting prizes at the annual conference included professors Tom Mrowka, Bjorn Poonen, and Scott Sheffield, CLE Moore instructor Jia Shi, seniors Anqi Li and Ilani Axelrod-Freed, and alums Letong Carina Hong ’22 and Nataša Šešum PhD ’04.

Congratulations to all!

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!

Four graduate students received the 2023 named PRIMES mentorships for exceptional mentor service.

Three receiving the 2023 George Lusztig Mentorships:

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!

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!

Tom Mrowka and his longtime Harvard collaborator Peter Kronheimer will receive the American Mathematical Society’s 2023 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research for their joint paper Gauge Theory for Embedded Surfaces.

“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.

They will be recognized for their achievement at the upcoming Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston.

Congratulations, Tom!

Professor Scott Sheffield and former MIT postdoc and instructor Jason P. Miller, now at the University of Cambridge, have been awarded the American Mathematical Society's 2023 Leonard Eisenbud Prize in Mathematics and Physics.

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!

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!

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!

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."

Carina will be receiving her award at the Joint Mathematical meeting in January in Boston.

Congratulations Carina!

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.

Read more at the MIT News.

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."

Read more in the AMS News release.

Peter Shor, Morss Professor and a PhD alum (’85) of our department, has been named the co-recipient of the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics!

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.

Read more in the MIT News.

Congratulations to Peter, Dan, and Maggie!

SPUR/SPUR+ (Summer Program in Undergraduate Research) culminated with two teams sharing the 2022 Hartley Rogers Jr. Family Prize for the best SPUR paper.

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.

This summer's RSI (Research Science Institute) Symposium also saw 10 outstanding high school students from around the world present their math research projects, mentored by graduate students from our department.

The SPUR/SPUR+ and RSI math programs were run by faculty advisors David Jerison and Ankur Moitra, program director Slava Gerovitch, and RSI head mentor Tanya Khovanova.

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!

Professor Wei Zhang was selected to receive a 2022 Simons Investigator award in Mathematics.

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!

The 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) hosted its virtual conference July 6-14, 2022. Department faculty members who spoke at ICM 2022 included:

Plenary Speakers

• Tobias Holck Colding, "Geometry of PDEs"
• Larry Guth, "Decoupling Estimates in Fourier Analysis"
• Scott Sheffield, "What Is a Random Surface?"

Sectional Speakers

• Semyon Dyatlov, "Fractal Uncertainty Principle and Quantum Chaos" (PDEs)
• Elchanan Mossel, "Combinatorial Statistics and the Sciences" (Probability)

Their lectures are available on IMU's YouTube channel.

Daniel Álvarez Gavela became our newest assistant professor as of July 1.

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!

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!

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!

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.

Complete List of 2022 Awards Convocation honorees

Congratulations to Ananya, Omomayowa, and Ben!

Fifth-year PhD candidate Juncal Arbelaiz has been named a 2022 Schmidt Science Fellow .

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!

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!

Congratulations!

Junior Ariana Park received the Community Building Award for her work in developing the peer mentoring program.

Congratulations, Ariana!

Congratulations to Abe, Keita, Paige, Quinn, and Eva!

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.

Full list of Mathematics Inductees

Congratulations to our newest members of Phi Beta Kappa!

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!

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.

Read more in the MIT News .

Congratulations, Roman!

Peter Shor PhD '85 has been named the recipient of MIT's 2022-2023 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award , the highest honor the Institute faculty can bestow upon one of its members each academic year.

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."

Only two other Math Dept. members have received this honor: Isadore Singer and Gian-Carlo Rota .

Read more in the MIT News.

Congratulations, Peter!

With the International Congress of Mathematicians 2022 (ICM 2022) now a fully virtual event from July 6-14, 2022, the Department of Mathematics will host two afternoons of in-person presentations of ICM plenary and invited lectures by MIT and Harvard researchers, on June 13 and 14.

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.

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!

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!

Congratulations, Ashwin and Mehtaab!

Professor Steven Johnson '95, PhD '01 is among 15 winners of the Teaching with Digital Technology Awards for using digital technology to enhance on-campus and remote teaching at MIT.

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.

Nominated by students, these awards are co-sponsored by MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor .

Congratulations Steven!

The MIT Women in Mathematics hosts two screenings to celebrate May 12's International Women in Math Day:

• Friday, May 6, 2022 : "Math Circles Around the World," a documentary presented by its director Ekaterina Eremenko , in 2-190 at 5pm.
• Monday, May 9, 2022 : "Secrets of the Surface: The Mathematical Vision of Maryam Mirzakhani," starting with a reception in 2-290 at 4pm, and the documentary in 2-190 at 4:30pm.

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!

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!

The Department of Mathematics ranked first in the math subject area of the QS World University Rankings for 2022 . ( MIT also earned No. 1 spots in 11 other subject areas .)

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).