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Mathematics People that fundamentally improved the performance of com- 2007–2008 AMS Centennial puter programs in solving problems, and accelerated the Fellowship Awarded use of high performance computing.” According to the prize citation, Allen has “made funda- The AMS has awarded a Centennial Fellowship for 2007– mental contributions to the theory and practice of program 2008 to MARTIN KASSABOV of Cornell University. The fellow- optimization, which translates the users’ problem-solving ship carries a stipend of US$66,000, an expense allowance language statements into more efficient sequences of com- of US$3,500, and a complimentary Society membership puter instructions. Her contributions also greatly extended for one year. earlier work in automatic program parallelization, which Martin Kassabov received his Ph.D. in 2003 from enables programs to use multiple processors simultane- Yale University under the su- ously in order to obtain faster results. These techniques pervision of Efim Zelmanov. have made it possible to achieve high performance from He was a postdoctoral fellow computers while programming them in languages suitable at the University of Alberta to applications. They have contributed to advances in the (2003–2004) and an H. C. Wang use of high-performance computers for solving problems Assistant Professor at Cornell such as weather forecasting, DNA matching, and national University (2004–2006). He is security functions.” currently an assistant profes- Allen is the first woman to be honored with the Turing sor at Cornell University. Award, named for British mathematician Alan M. Turing. Kassabov’s main interests The award is considered the “Nobel Prize in Computing”. are in combinatorial algebra It carries a US$100,000 prize, with financial support pro- and its applications to group vided by Intel Corporation. theory. A big part of his work Martin Kassabov involves studying representa- —From an ACM news release tion theory of finite groups and constructions of expander graphs. His work also has applications to geometric group theory. Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Prize Kassabov plans to use the fellowship to visit his col- Awarded laborators at Imperial College London, Hebrew University Jerusalem, and Alfréd Rényi Mathematics Institute in The Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Foundation has awarded the Budapest. Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Prize for 2007 to ROSA M. MIRÓ- Please note: Information about the competition for the ROIG of the University of Barcelona for her monograph 2008–2009 AMS Centennial Fellowships will be published Lectures on Determinantal Ideals. According to the prize in the “Mathematics Opportunities” section of an upcom- citation, the monograph “solves three central problems ing issue of the Notices. in the theory of determinantal ideals: the determination of the CI-liaison class and G-liaison determinantal ideals, —Allyn Jackson the conjecture of multiplicity for determinantal ideals, and the non-obstruction and dimension of families of determinantal ideals.” Allen Receives ACM Turing The Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Foundation (http:// www.crm.es/FerranSunyerBalaguer/ffsb.htm) of Award the Institut d’Estudis Catalans awards this international prize every year to honor the memory of Ferran Sunyer FRANCES E. ALLEN, fellow emerita of the T. J. Watson Re- i Balaguer (1912–1967), a self-taught Catalan mathemati- search Center, has been named the recipient of the 2006 cian who gained international recognition for his research A. M. Turing Award, given by the Association for Comput- in mathematical analysis despite the serious physical dis- ing Machinery (ACM). She was honored for “contributions abilities with which he was born. The prize carries a cash JUNE/JULY 2007 NOTICES OF THE AMS 755 Mathematics People award of x12,000 (approximately US$16,300). The winning of outstanding research contributions to the development monographs are published by Birkhäuser-Verlag. and use of mathematical and computational tools and methods for the solution of science and engineering prob- —From a Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Foundation lems. The prize consists of a hand-calligraphed certificate announcement with the citation and a cash prize of US$5,000. On the selection committee were John B. Bell (chair), Anthony Ralston, and Mary F. Wheeler. Phùng Awarded von Kaven Prize —From a SIAM/ACM announcement HÔ HAI PHÙNG of the University of Duisburg-Essen has been awarded the von Kaven Prize in Mathematics “in 2006 John von Neumann recognition of his outstanding work on quantum groups.” The prize carries a cash award of x10,000 (approximately Theory Prize Awarded US$13,600). The von Kaven Foundation was founded in The 2006 John von Neumann Theory Prize, the highest 2004 by Herbert von Kaven and the German Research prize given in the field of operations research and man- Foundation (DFG). agement science, has been awarded to MARTIN GRÖTSCHEL of the Technical University of Berlin, LÁSZLÓ LOVÁSZ of Eötvös —From a DFG news release Loránd University (Budapest), and ALEXANDER SCHRIJVER of the University of Amsterdam and CWI, the national math- ematics and computer science institute in the Netherlands, Polchinski and Maldacena “for their fundamental path-breaking work in combinato- rial optimization.” The award, which is presented by the Awarded Heineman Prize Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), carries a cash award of US$5,000. JOSEph POLCHINSKI of the University of California, Santa The prize citation reads in part: “jointly and individu- Barbara, and JUAN MALDACENA of the Institute for Advanced ally, they have made basic contributions to the analysis Study have been awarded the 2007 Dannie Heineman Prize and solution of hard discrete optimization problems. In for Mathematical Physics “for profound developments in particular, their joint work on geometric algorithms based mathematical physics that have illuminated interconnec- on the ellipsoid method of Yudin-Nemirovski and Shor tions and launched major research areas in quantum field showed the great power of cutting-plane approaches to theory, string theory, and gravity.” such problems and provided a theoretical justification for The prize carries a cash award of US$7,500 and is pre- the very active field of polyhedral combinatorics.” sented in recognition of outstanding publications in the field of mathematical physics. The prize was established —From an INFORMS announcement in 1959 by the Heineman Foundation for Research, Edu- cational, Charitable, and Scientific Purposes, Inc., and is administered jointly by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and the American Physical Society (APS). The prize Lynch Awarded ACM Knuth is presented annually. Prize —From an APS announcement NANCY LYNCH of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been awarded the Knuth Prize by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Shu Receives Computational Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT). Lynch was selected “for her influential contributions to the theory Science and Engineering of distributed systems, which solve problems using mul- tiple processes or computers connected through a shared Award memory or network” and for her “seminal impact on the CHI WANG SHU of Brown University has been named the reliability of distributed computing systems, which are recipient of the 2007 SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational used to power traditional wired networks, modern mobile Science and Engineering. According to the prize citation, communications systems, and systems with embedded Shu was honored “for the development of numerical computers, including factory machinery, vehicles, robots, methods that have had a great impact on scientific com- and other real-world devices.” She is the first woman to puting, including TVD temporal discretizations, ENO and receive the award. WENO finite difference schemes, discontinuous Galerkin The Knuth Prize is named in honor of Donald Knuth, methods, and spectral methods.” professor emeritus at Stanford University, who is best The prize is awarded every two years by the Society for known for his ongoing multivolume series The Art of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and the As- Computer Programming, which played a critical role in sociation for Computing Machinery (ACM) in recognition establishing and defining computer science as a rigorous 756 NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUME 54, NUMBER 6 Mathematics People intellectual discipline. The prize carries a cash award of information organization, machine learning, spectral US$5,000 and is given by ACM SIGACT and the Institute graph theory, image analysis, and medical diagnostics.” of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Technical The Popov Prize honors the memory of Vasil A. Popov Committee on the Mathematical Foundations of Computer (1942–1990), the Bulgarian analyst best known for his Science. work in nonlinear approximation. The prize is awarded every three years to a young mathematician who has made —From an ACM announcement outstanding research contributions in approximation theory and/or related areas. Avila and Petermichl Awarded —From a Popov Prize Committee announcement Salem Prize ARTUR AVILA of Centre National de la Recherche Scienti- 2007 Clay Research Awards fique/Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada Announced (CNRS/IMPA) and STEphANIE PETERMICHL of the University of Texas, Austin, have been awarded the Salem Prize for The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) has announced the 2006. recipients of the 2007 Clay Research Awards.