Mathematics People

NEWS Mathematics People currently holds a Packard Fellowship and an NSF CAREER Wood Receives NSF grant. In high school, Wood won silver medals at the 1998 and 1999 International Mathematical Olympiad as the first Waterman Award US female in the competition. In 2001, she was awarded the Melanie Matchett Wood of Harvard Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize in the Putnam Mathemati- University has been named a co- cal Competition; in 2002 she became a Putnam Fellow. Her recipient of the 2021 National Science honors include the Alice T. Schafer Prize of the Association Foundation (NSF) Alan T. Waterman for Women in Mathematics (2002), the AMS–MAA–SIAM Award for “fundamental contribu- Morgan Prize (2003), a Clay Mathematics Institute Liftoff tions in number theory, algebraic Fellowship (2009), and the AWM–Microsoft Research Prize geometry, topology, and probability.” in Algebra and Number Theory (2018). She was named an She is the first woman mathemati- Inaugural Fellow of the AMS in 2012. cian to receive the honor. The Waterman Award annually recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering Melanie Matchett The NSF statement reads in part: Wood “Throughout her scientific career, supported by NSF. Researchers forty years of age or younger, Wood has worked on some of the or up to ten years post-PhD, are eligible. Awardees receive most difficult problems in mathematics and has developed US$1 million distributed over five years. methods that combine ideas from across mathematics. Wood studies the statistical behavior of how factorization —Elaine Kehoe, from NSF and Harvard University announcements works in different systems of numbers, aiming to answer questions posed 200 years ago by Gauss.” Her work is aimed at understanding the distribution of number fields Akhtari Awarded and their fundamental structures, including class groups, p-class tower groups, and the Galois groups of their max- Michler Memorial Prize imal unramified extensions. It involves such questions as counting number fields, finding the average number of Shabnam Akhtari of the University unramified G-extensions that they have, bounding the sizes of Oregon has been awarded the of class groups, and function field analogs of all of these 2021–2022 Ruth I. Michler Memorial questions (which then leads to questions in topology about Prize of the Association for Women certain moduli spaces of curves). To understand the distri- in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell bution of class groups and Galois groups of unramified University. The prize citation states: extensions, she studies random abelian and non-abelian “Shabnam Akhtari was selected to groups to construct the random groups that are relevant for receive the Michler Prize to pursue number theory and understand their properties. She also her proposed research on classical works on developing tools in probability theory to study Shabnam Akhtari Diophantine equations, in particular randomly arising finite groups, such as the Jacobians of to study index form equations and random graphs and cokernels of random matrices. their applications to understanding the structure of rings Wood received her PhD from Princeton University in in algebraic number fields. Awarding this opportunity to 2009, supervised by Manjul Bhargava. She has held posi- Akhtari adds to the distinguished history of the Michler tions at Stanford University (2009–2011), the University Prize. She is a stellar researcher who will have lasting impact of Wisconsin, Madison (2011–2019), and the University of in number theory and in mathematics.” California, Berkeley (2019–present). She was named Min- Akhtari earned her PhD at the University of British Co- erva Distinguished Visitor at Princeton University in 2018. lumbia, advised by Michael Bennett. She has been a post- She has been an AIM Five-Year Fellow (2009–2017) and doctoral fellow at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario; at AUGUST 2021 NOTICES OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY 1223 Mathematics People NEWS the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, Bonn; and at the mathematics, he is probably playing with his two-year-old Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, Montreal. In 2012 son Bruno and dog Milo, a Puerto Rican stray dog rescued she joined the faculty in the Department of Mathematics during the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017. at the University of Oregon, where she is currently associ- The Karen EDGE Fellowships are designed to support ate professor. She has been awarded two single-researcher and enhance the research programs and collaborations National Science Foundation grants, as well as two Simons of midcareer mathematicians who are members of an Foundation fellowships, and has held a number of visiting underrepresented minority group. The 2021 Fellows were positions. selected on the basis of their excellent research programs and their plans to use the funds for enhancing those pro- —From an AWM announcement grams through collaboration and travel. Lawrence and Rivera —From an EDGE Foundation announcement Awarded Karen EDGE Manolescu and Remenik Fellowships Awarded Davidson Prize Emille Davie Lawrence of the Uni- Ioan Manolescu of the Université versity of San Francisco and Manuel de Fribourg and Daniel Remenik Rivera of Purdue University have of Universidad de Chile have been been selected the recipients of 2021 awarded the 2021 Rollo Davidson Karen EDGE Fellowships. The Fellow- Prize. Manolescu was recognized ship Program was established with a for his “outstanding work on critical generous gift from Karen Uhlenbeck physical systems in two dimensions, on the occasion of her 2019 Abel particularly the random cluster and Prize. Potts models.” He received his PhD Manuel Rivera Lawrence received her PhD in Ioan Manolescu in 2012 from the University of Cam- mathematics from the University of bridge under the supervision of Geof- Georgia in 2007, under the direction of Will Kazez and frey Grimmett. From 2012 to 2015 Clint McCrory. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Univer- he held a postdoctoral position at sity of California, Santa Barbara, and assistant professor at the University of Geneva, working in California State Polytechnic University. In 2011 she joined the group of Stanislav Smirnov and the faculty of the University of San Francisco, where she is Hugo Duminil-Copin. He joined currently a term associate professor and department chair. the Université de Fribourg in 2015, Her research is in spatial graph theory, a branch of geomet- where he is a professor. In his free ric topology in the intersection of knot theory and graph time he enjoys hiking, skiing, and theory. She is also an advocate for broadening participation playing rugby. in the mathematical sciences through outreach and mentor- Daniel Remenik Remenik was honored for his ing. She is editor-in-chief of the AMS blog “Math Mamas” “transformative contributions to the and associate editor of the College Mathematics Journal and understanding of the KPZ fixed point.” He received his has been active in service to the Association for Women in PhD from Cornell University in 2009. His major research Mathematics (AWM) and the Mathematical Association of interest is probability theory, particularly problems related America (MAA), among other organizations. to the KPZ universality class. He was awarded the 2021 Rivera received his PhD from the City University of New MCA Prize of the Mathematical Council of the Americas York in 2015 under the direction of Dennis Sullivan. He was for work on this topic. a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu Paris-Rive Gauche (2015–2016) and a joint re- —From a Davidson Prize announcement search assistant professor at the University of Miami and CINVESTAV in Mexico City (2016–2019) and is currently assistant professor at Purdue University. The overarching goal of Rivera’s research is to understand the algebraic nature of geometric space using the ideas and tools of algebraic topology. He tells the Notices that, when he is not doing 1224 NOTICES OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY VOLUME 68, NUMBER 7 Mathematics People NEWS Dunham received his PhD in probability theory from the Polyakov Awarded University of London. He held positions at the University Max Planck Medal of Nottingham and the University of Derby before joining the faculty at British Columbia. He tells the Notices that, Alexander M. Polyakov of Princeton University has been outside of his work, he enjoys running, is an avid fan of awarded the Max Planck Medal for his work in quantum soccer (both playing and watching), and plays ping-pong field theory and statistical mechanics, especially on mono- and pickleball with his family. His more leisurely pursuits pole and instanton solutions in Yang–Mills theory, on the include playing board games and enjoying movies, music, conformal bootstrap, and on the duality of strings and and theatre. gauge fields. The PIMS Education Prize is awarded to a member of the Polyakov received his doctorate in 1969 from the Lan- PIMS community who has made a significant contribution dau Institute of Theoretical Physics. He was head of the to education in the mathematical sciences. Department of Quantum Field Theory at Landau, then moved to Princeton University in 1990. Since 1999 he has —From a PIMS announcement been Joseph Henry Professor of Physics at Princeton. His honors include the Dirac Medal of the ICTP (1986), the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics (1986), ICA Medals Awarded the Lorentz Medal (1994), the Harvey Prize (2010), the Lars Onsager Prize (2011), and the Fundamental Physics The Institute of Combinatorics and Its Applications (ICA) Prize (2013). He is a member of the National Academy of has awarded several medals for the year 2020. Sciences (NAS), the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and the Marston Conder of the Univer- French Academy of Sciences. sity of Auckland was awarded the Euler Medal, which recognizes distin- —Elaine Kehoe guished lifetime career contributions to combinatorial research by Fellows of the ICA, including those who re- Dunham Awarded PIMS main active in research.

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