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Award for Mentorship of Undergrad- 2019 AWM Awards uate Women in Mathematics “for her exceptional track record of support, The Association for Women in Mathematics presented guidance, unvarnished feedback, several awards at the Joint Mathematics Meetings held in and inspiration.” The prize citation Baltimore, Maryland, in January 2019. notes that “Weekes is a founding Jacqueline Dewar of Loyola Mary- director and has offered a strong mount University in Los Angeles has shaping hand in the deeply impact- been named the recipient of the 2019 ful MSRI-UP [Mathematical Sciences Louise Hay Award for Contributions Suzanne Weekes Research Institute Undergraduate to Mathematics Education “in rec- Program] program, devoted to ‘cul- ognition of her many achievements tivating heretofore untapped mathematical talent’ with as a professor, a leader in outreach, a focus on communities traditionally underrepresented and a contributor to the scholarship in mathematics. Over her tenure at MSRI-UP, over eighty of teaching and learning.” She has women, including more than fifty women of color, have Jacqueline Dewar been an advocate for active learning, passed through the program, with the majority continuing initiated a biomathematics program, to graduate programs after college.” She received her PhD and developed courses in computer literacy, the history of in mathematics and scientific computing from the Univer- women in mathematics, and mathematics in civic engage- sity of Michigan in 1995. Her research involves dynamic ment. She was a cofounder of the Math Science Interchange materials, numerical methods, and computational fluid in Los Angeles, which still provides an annual career day, dynamics. She chairs the Education Committee of the “Expanding Your Horizons—LA”, for K–12 students and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). teachers. Thousands of girls and their teachers have at- Kathryn Mann of Brown Uni- tended these events. She continues to lead workshops and versity has been awarded the 2019 train other leaders. Dewar tells the Notices: “My interest in Joan and Joseph Birman Research mathematics goes back to my wonderful freshman algebra Prize in Topology and Geometry teacher, Mr. Kramer, followed by being selected as one of “for breakthrough work in the the- forty students (thirty-six boys and four girls) to attend a ory of dynamics of group actions on four-week NSF summer program for talented high school manifolds.” The prize citation reads: students at St. Louis University. That hooked me on math- “Mann uses a broad array of mathe- ematics! As a university faculty member for forty years, matical tools to obtain results at the some of the most eye-opening experiences I have had in Kathryn Mann juncture of topology, group theory, mathematics education occurred inside K–12 schools doing geometry, and dynamics, and she things like talking about math careers, coaching junior high finds new connections between them. She has discovered students for math competitions, leading a ‘math for girls’ new phenomena, built general theory, and has solved after-school program, and visiting the classrooms of my long-open problems. As an example, in a solo paper she former students who became K–12 teachers, and conversing introduced a new method to study the topology of the with them, professional to professional. I heard from the space of surface group representations in the space of teachers about their successes and the challenges they faced. orientation-preserving circle homeomorphisms and to My wish is that many more of us in the higher education prove a rigidity result about geometric such representa- mathematics community could find ways to have K–12 tions. Building on this paper, jointly with M. Wolff, Mann mathematics education experiences.” Outside of her pro- proved that conversely this rigidity property characterizes fessional work, Dewar loves gardening and swing dancing. the geometric surface group actions on the circle. A leading Suzanne Weekes of Worcester Polytechnic Institute has expert describes this as one of the best results obtained in been honored with the 2019 M. Gweneth Humphreys

762 Notices of the American Mathematical Society Volume 66, Number 5 Mathematics People NEWS the area in the last couple of decades and another math- ematician describes Mann as ‘that once-in-a-generation 2019 MAA Awards thinker who opens significant new directions for research.’” The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) awarded Mann received her PhD from the University of Chicago in several prizes at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Balti- 2014, working under Benson Farb. She has received a Sloan more, Maryland, in January 2019. Research Fellowship for 2019. Mann tells the Notices: “I've Tom Leinster of the University of always enjoyed the outdoors, and like to spend as much Edinburgh was awarded the Chau- of my non-mathematical time outside as I can, hiking, venet Prize for his article “Rethinking biking, and with the recent move to Providence I've even Set Theory,” American Mathemati- taken up rowing.” cal Monthly 121 (2014), no. 5. The –From AWM announcements prize citation reads in part: “Every mathematician knows that modern mathematics is an axiomatic system Daubechies and Voisin based on a theory of sets defined by Tom Leinster the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms plus Receive International Awards the (ZFC). But how many of us can recite these axioms? Even after looking them for Women in Science up, are they in accord with our working understanding of sets? Or is the ZFC conception of sets necessarily nonintu- Ingrid Daubechies of Duke Univer- itive as a result of having to rectify the difficulties of naive sity and Claire Voisin of the Collège set theory discovered by Russell? In this paper, Tom Leinster de France have been awarded 2019 tackles this issue with clarity and finesse.” Leinster studied L’Oréal-UNESCO International in Oxford and Cambridge, doing a PhD on higher category Awards for Women in Science. theory with Martin Hyland, followed by postdoctoral posi- Daubechies, representing North tions in Cambridge and Paris and a stint at the University America, was recognized “for her of Glasgow before joining the faculty at Edinburgh. His exceptional contribution to the nu- interests lie mainly in applications of category theory, re- merical treatment of images and cently focusing on applications to geometry, analysis, and Ingrid Daubechies signal processing, providing stan- dard and flexible algorithms for the quantification of biological diversity. He is the author of data compression. Her innovative three books: Higher Operads, Higher Categories (Cambridge research on wavelet theory has led University Presss, 2004), Basic Category Theory (Cambridge to the development of treatment University Press, 2014), and Entropy and Diversity: The Ax- and image filtration methods used in iomatic Approach (in press). He has also written about the technologies from medical imaging role played by mathematicians in the mass suspicionless equipment to wireless communica- surveillance of citizens by governments and is a contribu- tion.” Voisin, representing Europe, tor to the research blog The n-Category Café. Leinster tells was honored “for her outstanding the Notices: “I spend much of my free time campaigning work in algebraic geometry. Her pi- for democratic rights in Catalonia, and am donating the Claire Voisin oneering discoveries have allowed money to the legal fund of the Catalan [mathematicians and scientists] to resolve fundamental prisoners on trial for holding a referendum.” questions on topology and Hodge structures of complex Cathy O’Neil of ORCAA was awarded the Euler Book algebraic varieties.” Each award is worth 100,000 euros Prize for Weapons of Math Destruction (Crown, 2016). Ac- (about US$113,000). The L’Oréal-UNESCO Women in cording to the prize citation, this is “a singularly import- Science program annually honors five outstanding women ant book especially at this current historical juncture. It scientists from five regions—the Arab and African States, is well-written, engaging, and tackles an important issue, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, Latin America, and North ‘the dark side of data science,’ in a thoughtful way. O’Neil America—for their contributions to the sciences, including convincingly and passionately argues that math is not just mathematics, computer science, chemistry, physics, and for solving the world’s problems; it is responsible also materials science. for fueling some of them. Her discussion of ethical issues and how mathematical models, data, and algorithms are —From a L’Oréal-UNESCO announcement used to manipulate society is important both socially and politically.” O’Neil received her PhD in mathematics from and taught at Barnard College before

May 2019 Notices of the American Mathematical Society 763 Mathematics People NEWS entering the private sector with the hedge fund D. E. Shaw writing. She chaired the national Curriculum Renewal and for the software company RiskMetrics. In 2011 she Across the First Two Years (CRAFTY) committee and pro- began working as a data scientist. She is the founder of posed, organized, coordinated, and assisted in rewrites of ORCAA, an algorithmic auditing company. a series of articles in MAA Focus highlighting mathematics Philip Uri Treisman of the University of Texas at Austin curriculum renewal projects throughout the United States. was honored with the 2019 Gung and Hu Award for Dis- Dorée received her PhD from the University of Wiscon- tinguished Service to Mathematics “for his extraordinary sin–Madison. Her research interests include curriculum leadership in strengthening mathematics and science and materials development and directing undergraduate education throughout the K–20 spectrum, supporting research in combinatorics. mathematics achievement and equity for historically disen- Lee was recognized “for his outstanding contributions franchised groups, and promoting innovation, productive to teaching and learning in the mathematical sciences and partnerships, and community service.” He “may be best particularly in statistics. He is an innovative and engaging known for his seminal research on factors that support high teacher and an inspired mentor” who “has successfully achievement for students historically disenfranchised in worked to develop and promote statistics programs at both mathematics,” having created, with collaborators, Emerging undergraduate and graduate levels.” With NSF support, Scholars Programs to help eliminate barriers to success, he developed the Real-Time Online Hands-on Activities particularly for ethnic minority students. Throughout his Database, through which students can mimic statistical career he has worked to improve mathematics education in practices. He is one of the founding members of the Con- the United States and has received numerous awards and sortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics recognition for his leadership and research. He received his Education (CAUSE), founded in 2003. He founded the PhD from the University of California Los Angeles under Undergraduate Statistics Project Competition (USPROC) the direction of Leon Henkin. He has been on the faculty at in 2006 and chaired the competition committee from UT Austin since 1991 and is director of the Charles A. Dana 2006 to 2013. Lee was raised in a small mountain village Center for Mathematics and Science Education. in southern Taiwan and received his PhD in statistics from The Deborah and Franklin Tepper Iowa State University in 1984. He is the cofounder and Haimo Awards for Distinguished co-chief editor of the Journal of Statistical Distributions and College or University Teaching of Applications. He is a true believer that “teaching is to give Mathematics were awarded to Su- people hope and learning is by doing.” zanne Dorée of Augsburg University, Switkes “is recognized for bringing her educational core Minneapolis; Carl Lee of Central values of excellence, honor, integrity, love, and purpose to Michigan University; and Jennifer all students, and specifically to traditionally underserved Switkes of California State Polytech- students.” She is an officially designated teacher-scholar nic University Pomona. who has directed thirteen master’s theses and twelve un- Suzanne Dorée Dorée was recognized “for her dergraduate research projects in the past thirteen years. She exemplary teaching innovation and is also a dedicated volunteer in working with underserved leadership, not only at Augsburg Uni- populations. She teaches prison inmates through the versity, but also nationally through Prison Education Project and spent a sabbatical teach- her work with the MAA, the Charles ing in Uganda, both at the university level and and with A. Dana Center, and numerous pre- prison inmates. She created a Math/Science Forum at the sentations and workshops on cam- California Rehabilitation Center, and she has invited STEM puses throughout the United States.” faculty from Cal Poly Pomona to give guest lectures there She “takes great care in the design during several terms. She received her PhD from Claremont of classes, authentic assessments, Graduate University in 2000 and has been on the faculty Carl Lee and highly interactive classrooms, at Cal Poly Pomona since 2001. Her primary mathematical creating an environment where the interests are in mathematical modeling and operations students build routines that sup- research. She serves as a volunteer pastor at a church fo- port a high-level of effort, time on cusing on community service and mentoring of leaders. task, and success.” She developed the In her spare time, she loves hiking and camping. She tells university’s developmental algebra the Notices: “I love visiting prisons, because some inmates course, which focuses on learning in never receive a visitor. In addition to doing mathematics applied contexts, and also a discrete with the inmates, I want the inmates to know that there is mathematics course, which includes hope for their lives.” transitioning to the ideas of math- Jennifer Switkes ematical logic, axioms, and proof —From MAA announcements

764 Notices of the American Mathematical Society Volume 66, Number 5 Mathematics People NEWS

women extra research support during their mid-career Pierce Awarded Birman years. The first three Fellowships are also being supported by the Stephen and Margaret Gill Family Foundation, in Fellowship memory of Hilda Geiringer von Mises. The primary selec- Lillian Pierce of Duke University has tion criterion for the Birman Fellowship, which carries a been awarded the AMS Joan and Jo- stipend of US$50,000, is the excellence of the candidate's seph Birman Fellowship for Women research. Scholars for the academic year 2019– Read an interview (www.ams.org/giving/honoring 2020. Pierce’s research is in analytic /the-line-newsletter-fall2017-PDF.pdf) with Joan number theory and harmonic anal- Birman about her decision to create the Fellowship with the ysis. Her work in number theory goal of “helping more women mathematicians to develop involves counting integral points on their creative voices.” varieties and studying properties of The recipient of the inaugural Birman Fellowship in 2018 Lillian Pierce class groups of number fields, for was Margaret Beck. For more information about the Fel- which problems she has developed lowship see: www.ams.org/profession/prizes-awards new methods involving the circle method, sieves, and /Birman-Fellowship. character sums. Her work in analysis focuses on oscillatory integral operators, Radon transforms, and Carleson oper- —Elaine Kehoe ators, as well as their discrete analogues, which have deep ties to number theoretic questions. Pierce grew up in a small town in California and was Przytycki Awarded 2019– primarily home-schooled as a child. She began playing the violin at age four and was performing professionally by age 2020 Centennial Fellowship eleven. She entered as a mathematics The AMS has awarded its Centennial major but also completed a premed curriculum. Under the Fellowship for the academic year mentorship of Elias Stein and others, her interest turned 2019–2020 to Piotr Przytycki of to pure mathematics. She was valedictorian of the 2002 McGill University. He will use the class of Princeton and a Rhodes Scholar. After two years Fellowship for full support for the studying at Oxford University with Roger Heath-Brown, academic year and to travel to visit she returned to Princeton for her PhD, which she received collaborators in the United King- in 2009 under the direction of Stein. She did postdoctoral dom, France, Poland, and the United work at Oxford, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics as a Bonn Junior Fellow. Piotr Przytycki States. She joined the faculty at Duke in 2014, where she is cur- Przytycki told Notices: “My re- rently the Nicholas J. and Theresa M. Leonardy Associate search interests are geometric group theory and low di- Professor of Mathematics. mensional topology. In one of my research directions, I am Pierce has received a Marie Curie Fellowship, an NSF studying arcs systems on surfaces. With Hensel and Webb Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, we found a simple proof of the uniform hyperbolicity of the an NSF CAREER award, a von Neumann Fellowship at the arc graph, using arcs that are unicorns, and unicorn paths. Institute for Advanced Study, and a Sloan Research Fellow- With Hensel and Osajda we discovered that dismantlable ship. She was awarded the AWM Sadosky Research Prize in graphs are omnipresent in low dimensional topology and 2018 and gave an AMS Invited Address at the 2019 Joint in particular give a uniform understanding of arc graphs, Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore, Maryland, a Bourbaki sphere graphs, and hyperbolic groups. In another direc- Seminar in 2017, and an MAA Invited Address at the 2017 tion, we studied with Wise separability in 3-dimensional JMM in Atlanta, Georgia. Pierce plans to use the Fellowship manifolds. We proved in particular that the fundamental funding to buy out teaching and to bring one or more col- groups of all knot complements in the 3-sphere have faith- laborators to her home institution, thus reducing the effect ful representations in SL(n,Z). of travel on her three young children. Pierce is particularly “I received my PhD at the Polish Academy of Sciences grateful to the Joan and Joseph Birman Fellowship for the in 2008 under the supervision of Jacek Świątkowski in purposeful flexibility of the funding it provides. Wrocław. I stayed at the Academy until I joined McGill The Joan and Joseph Birman Fellowship for Women University in 2014. I also spent a year at University of Illi- Scholars, established in 2017 with a generous gift from Joan nois at Urbana–Champaign UIUC in 2011 and at Paris Sud and Joseph Birman, seeks to give exceptionally talented Orsay in 2013–2014.

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“I come from a family of mathematicians. My mother Fellow for a term of four years beginning July 1, 2019. He Jolanta Słomin’ska is an algebraic topologist, and my father will be based at the University of Cambridge. Feliks Przytycki does dynamical systems. My husband, Mar- Antoine Song will receive his PhD in 2019 from Prince- cin Sabok, is also a matemathician, a logician. ton University, where he has been working under the “My great passion is theatre. In particular, in 2010 I guidance of Fernando Codá Marques. Song has already directed David Auburn's Proof in amateur theatre, 'Kontra- established himself as an expert in geometric analysis, solv- punkt,' in Warsaw—created and directed by a professional ing long-standing problems of fundamental importance actor and director Zbigniew Bogdan’ski.” concerning the nature of minimal hypersurfaces in compact The Centennial Fellowship carries a stipend of Riemannian manifolds. First he proved that in dimensions US$93,000, a travel expense allowance of US$9,300, and 3 to 7 the closed minimal hypersurface of least area in a complimentary Society membership for one year. The such a manifold is always embedded. Then, in joint work award was made at the recommendation of the Centennial with Codá Marques and Neves, he showed that for generic Fellows Selection Committee. The primary selection crite- metrics on closed manifolds in these dimensions, one can rion is the excellence of the candidate’s research. always find a sequence of minimal embedded hypersurfaces Please note: Information about the competition for the that become equidistributed in the sense that the average 2020–2021 AMS Centennial Fellowship will be published of the induced measures on the first n hypersurfaces in the in the Mathematics Opportunities section of an upcoming sequence converges to the normalized volume measure issue of the Notices. on the ambient manifold as n tends to infinity. This was a dramatic improvement in the state of the art concerning a —Elaine Kehoe circle of problems inspired by Yau’s 1982 conjecture that every closed 3-dimensional Riemannian manifold contains infinitely many closed minimal surfaces. Building on work Gwynne and Song Awarded of Codá Marques and Neves, in 2018 Song proved Yau’s conjecture in complete generality. Song has been appointed Clay Research Fellowships as a Clay Research Fellow for a term of five years beginning July 1, 2019. He will be based at the University of California Ewain Gwynne of the University at Berkeley. of Cambridge and Antoine Song Clay Research Fellowships are awarded on the basis of of Princeton University have been the exceptional quality of candidates' research and their awarded Clay Research Fellowships promise to become mathematical leaders. by the Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI). —CMI announcement Ewain Gwynne obtained his PhD in 2018 from the Massachusetts Insti- Ewain Gwynne tute of Technology under the supervi- Aslanyan Awarded Emil sion of Scott Sheffield. Since then he has held the Herschel Smith Fellow- Artin Junior Prize ship at the University of Cambridge Vahagn Aslanyan of Carnegie Mellon University has been and is a Junior Research Fellow at awarded the 2019 Emil Artin Junior Prize in Mathematics. Trinity College Cambridge. Gwynne Aslanyan was chosen for his paper “Definability of Deriva- is a remarkably productive and inge- tions in the Reducts of Differentially Closed Fields,” Journal nious researcher with broad interests of Symbolic Logic 82 (2017). across probability, especially confor- Established in 2001, the Emil Artin Junior Prize in mal probability, Schramm-Loewner Mathematics, now under the auspices of the Armenian evolution, Liouville quantum gravity, Antoine Song Mathematical Union, carries a cash award of US$1,000 and random geometry in dimension and is presented usually every year to a student or former 2. He has already made landmark student of an Armenian educational institution under the contributions to these areas, often developing collabora- age of thirty-five for outstanding contributions to algebra, tions with other leading talents in the field. For example, geometry, topology, and number theory—the fields in he made breakthroughs with Ding on the fractal dimension which Emil Artin made major contributions. The prize of Liouville quantum gravity, with Miller on self-avoiding committee consisted of A. Basmajian, Y. Movsisyan, and walks and percolation interfaces on random planar maps, V. Pambuccian. and with Sun on the Fortuin-Kaseleyn model on random planar maps. Ewain has been appointed as a Clay Research —Victor Pambuccian New College, Arizona State University 766 Notices of the American Mathematical Society Volume 66, Number 5 Mathematics People NEWS Winternitz Awarded 2018 Compositio Mathematica Wigner Medal Prize Awarded

Pavel Winternitz of the University of Montreal has been James Maynard of Oxford University has been awarded the named the recipient of the 2018 Wigner Medal “for his Compositio Mathematica Prize for the best paper for the pe- fundamental contribution to the determination and ap- riod 2014–2016 for “Dense Clusters of Primes in Subsets,” plication of symmetries in the resolution of differential 152 (2016). The prize is awarded every third year by the equations and (super-) integrable systems.” He works in Foundation Compositio Mathematica for an outstanding mathematical physics, symmetries, and nonlinear phenom- piece of research published in the journal during that ena, particularly Lie groups and Lie algebras. The medal period. is administered by the Group Theory and Fundamental Physics Foundation. —From a Foundation Compositio Mathematica announcement —Elaine Kehoe 2019 Sloan Fellows Announced 2019 NAS Awards Announced The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has announced the names of 126 recipients of the 2019 Sloan Research Fellowships. Two researchers whose work involves the mathematical Each year the foundation awards fellowships in the fields of sciences have been honored with National Academy of mathematics, chemistry, computational and evolutionary Sciences awards for 2019. molecular biology, computer science, economics, neurosci- Ola Svensson of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lau- ence, physics, and ocean sciences. Grants of US$70,000 for sanne received the Michael and Sheila Held Prize for “a a two-year period are administered by each Fellow’s insti- series of groundbreaking new algorithms for the traveling tution. Once chosen, Fellows are free to pursue whatever salesman problem, one of the most heavily studied and lines of inquiry most interest them, and they are permitted important questions in theoretical computer science.” The to employ fellowship funds in a wide variety of ways to prize honors outstanding, innovative, creative, and influ- further their research aims. ential research in the areas of combinatorial and discrete Following are the names and institutions of the 2019 optimization, or related parts of computer science, such awardees in the mathematical sciences. as the design and analysis of algorithms and complexity •• Xiuyuan Cheng, Duke University theory. It carries a cash award of US$100,000. •• Florian Frick, Carnegie Mellon University Tom Griffiths of Princeton University received a 2019 •• Shirshendu Ganguly, University of California Berkeley Troland Research Award for his “pioneering work bringing •• Kristen Hendricks, Michigan State University the methods of Bayesian inference to bear on understand- •• Mihaela Ifrim, University of Wisconsin, Madison ing a broad range of cognitive functions, from perception •• Philip Isett, California Institute of Technology to language, decision making, reasoning, and cognitive •• Junehyuk Jung, Texas A&M University control, and for bringing formal rigor to the notion of •• Andrew W. Lawrie, Massachusetts Institute of Technology bounded rationality, explaining apparent irrationalities of •• Bao Le Hung, Northwestern University behavior in rational terms.” Griffiths is the author of the •• John Lesieutre, Pennsylvania State University book Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human •• Francesco Lin, Princeton University Decisions. The award is given annually to recognize unusual •• Kathryn Mann, Brown University achievement by young investigators (defined as no older •• Davi Maximo, University of Pennsylvania than forty) and to further empirical research within the •• Barna Saha, University of Massachusetts, Amherst broad spectrum of experimental psychology. It carries a •• Mahdi Soltanolkotabi, University of Southern California cash award of US$75,000. •• Konstantin Tikhomirov, Georgia Institute of Technology •• Botong Wang, University of Wisconsin, Madison —From an NAS announcement •• Yufei Zhao, Massachusetts Institute of Technology •• Tianyi Zheng, University of California San Diego •• Xin Zhou, University of California Santa Barbara

—From a Sloan Foundation announcement

May 2019 Notices of the American Mathematical Society 767 Mathematics People NEWS

Credits Photo of Piotr Przytycki is by Kinga Osajda. Photo of Lillian Pierce is courtesy of Duke Photography. Photo of Ewain Gwynne is courtesy of Ewain Gwynne. Photo of Antoine Song is courtesy of Antoine Song. Photo of Suzanne Dorée is courtesy of Augsburg University. Photo of Carl Lee is courtesy of Carl Lee. Photo of Jennifer Switkes is by Josh Switkes. Photo of Jacqueline Dewar is courtesy of AWM. Photo of Tom Leinster is courtesy of Tom Leinster. Photo of Suzanne Weekes is courtesy of Worcester Polytech- nic Institute. Photo of Kathryn Mann is by J. Paleczny. Photo of Ingrid Daubechies is courtesy of Les Todd: Duke Photography. Photo of Claire Voisin is ©Patrick Imbert, Collége de France.

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