2016 Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in by an Undergraduate Student

Amol Aggarwal was Aggarwal has also been awarded the National awarded the 2016 Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Frank and Brennie and the National Defense Science and Engineering Morgan Prize for Out- Graduate Fellowship, and he was named a finalist standing Research in for the Hertz Foundation Fellowship. As a high Mathematics by an Un- school student, he was a finalist in the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search and a 2010 Siemens Research dergraduate Student Competition semifinalist. at the 122nd Annual Biographical Sketch Meeting of the AMS in Amol Aggarwal was born and raised in New York Seattle, Washington, in until the age of eleven. He then moved with his January 2016. family to California, where he went to middle Citation school and high school. It was in high school when Amol Aggarwal is the Amol was introduced to mathematical research, recipient of the 2016 after unwittingly working on an unsolved question AMS-MAA-SIAM Frank in combinatorial about convex point con- Amol Aggarwal and Brennie Morgan figurations. After graduating from Saratoga High Prize for Outstanding School in 2011, Amol attended the Massachusetts Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Institute of Technology, where he had the privilege Student for his outstanding research in combina- of learning a diverse selection of mathematical top- ics from experts in the field. As a student at MIT, torics. He has four published papers, which have Amol pursued several research projects in differ- appeared in Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Se- ent areas, including integrable probability, random ries A; European Journal of ; Discrete matrices and map enumeration, and simultaneous Mathematics; and Electronic Journal of Combinator- core partitions. Recently having graduated from ics. His numerous letters of support describe these MIT with a major in mathematics, Amol is currently papers as being of postdoctoral caliber. a doctoral student at , where he Aggarwal participated in the 2014 University is planning to focus on . of Minnesota–Duluth Research Experience for Response from Amol Aggarwal Undergraduates, in the 2013 MIT Undergraduate I am deeply honored to receive the 2016 Frank and Research Opportunities Program, and in the 2012 Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research MIT Summer Program for Undergraduate Research. in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student, The research Aggarwal conducted as a high school and I express my profound gratitude to Mrs. student under the direction of Professor János Frank Morgan and the AMS-MAA-SIAM commit- Pach has recently been published. tee, both for selecting me for this award and for inspiring young mathematicians to pursue research. The list of people who have influenced For permission to reprint this article, please contact: my perspective towards mathematics goes well be- [email protected]. yond the capacity of this response, but please per- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/noti1355 mit me to mention a few names regardless. First,

438 Notices of the AMS Volume 63, Number 4 I would like to thank my research advisors. These Vakil, Brian Conrad, Joe Gallian, Ken Ono, David include János Pach, who selflessly agreed to advise Zureick-Brown, Joe Harris, Benedict Gross, and me in my first research project when I was still in Noam Elkies. high school; Joe Gallian, who generously invited me About the Prize to participate in his REU; and Alexei Borodin, who The Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize is awarded an- has consistently offered me both practical advice nually for outstanding research in mathematics by and academic knowledge throughout my time at MIT. Second, I would like to thank several mathe- an undergraduate student (or students having sub- maticians who had the time and patience to talk mitted joint work). Students in Canada, Mexico, or to me about their fields of interest. These include the United States or its possessions are eligible for Victor Guillemin, Ivan Corwin, , Alan consideration for the prize. Established in 1995, Edelman, Rishi Nath, and Michael La Croix. Third, the prize was endowed by Mrs. Frank (Brennie) I thank my friends, whose kindness, creativity, and Morgan of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and carries joy for life continues to inspire me. Finally, my the name of her late husband. The prize is given deepest thanks go to my family, whose everlasting jointly by the AMS, the Mathematical Association support has shaped who I am today. of America (MAA), and the Society for Industrial Citation for Honorable Mention: Evan O’Dorney and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), and it carries a Evan O’Dorney is recognized with an Honorable cash award of US$1,200. Mention for the 2016 Frank and Brennie Morgan Recipients of the 2016 Frank and Brennie Mor- Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics gan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student. He has several by an Undergraduate Student are chosen by a joint published papers in the areas of number theory, AMS-MAA-SIAM selection committee. For the 2016 , and combinatorics, which have appeared in Integers, Linear Algebra and Its Applications, prize, the members of the selection committee Semigroup Forum, and Annals of Combinatorics. were the following individuals: O’Dorney has participated in REUs at Emory •Bela Bajnok University and the University of Minnesota–Duluth. •Jacob Fox He is a recipient of the Churchill Scholarship and •Johnny Guzman is a three-time Putnam Fellow. As a high-school Steven J. Leon student, he was a four-time medalist at the In- • Susan E. Martonosi (Chair) ternational Mathematical Olympiad, a three-time • winner of the U.S. Mathematical Olympiad, and •Sarah Dianne Olson the national champion of the 2011 Intel Science The complete list of recipients of the Frank and Talent Search. Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research Biographical Sketch in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student fol- Evan O’Dorney, a resident of Danville, Califor- lows. nia, was fascinated by numbers from an early 1995 age and gained an appreciation for mathematics 1996 from many popular books, especially the works 1998 Jade Vinson (1997) of Martin Gardner. Throughout high school, he 1999 enrolled in college-level math courses at the Uni- versity of California Berkeley. He received his BA 2000 Sean McLaughlin in mathematics summa cum laude from Harvard 2001 Jacob Lurie University in 2015. He is currently attending the 2002 one-year “Part III” program at Cambridge Univer- 2003 Joshua Greene sity, UK, after which he plans to pursue a PhD at 2004 under Manjul Bhargava. His 2005 Reid Barton nonmathematical pursuits include composing and improvising on the piano and organ and praying 2006 Jacob Fox the rosary. 2007 Daniel Kane Response from Evan O’Dorney 2008 Nathan Kaplan It is a privilege to be counted among the young 2009 mathematicians that AMS, MAA, and SIAM 2010 Scott Duke Kominers honor through the institution of the 2016 2011 Maria Monks Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstand- 2012 ing Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate 2013 Fan Wei Student. I thank the many advisors who made my undergraduate research career possible, especially 2014 Eric Larson Lek-Heng Lim (who introduced me to mathematical 2015 Levent Alpoge research in the tenth grade), Zvezda Stankova, Ravi 2016 Amol Aggarwal

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