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Mathematics People NEWS Mathematics People him to work in other areas, such as incidence geometry and Simons Foundation additive combinatorics. Jointly with Larry Guth, he solved Investigators Named (up to logarithmic factors) the Erdos” distinct distances problem, in the process introducing polynomial partition- The Simons Foundation has named the Simons Founda- ing, which is now having an impact on Kakeya. tion Investigators for 2019. Following are the investigators whose work involves the mathematical sciences. Elchanan Mossel of the Massachu- setts Institute of Technology works Mathematics primarily in the fields of probability theory, combinatorics, theoretical Bhargav Bhatt of the University of Michigan works in arithmetic alge- computer science, and statistical in- braic geometry, with an emphasis ference. Mossel is broad and collab- on questions in positive and mixed orative in his research. Much of his characteristic. His research, which work spans different areas of math- often draws on ideas derived from Elchanan Mossel ematics or bridges between math- algebraic geometry, has also contrib- ematics and other sciences. With uted to the solution of long-standing collaborators, he made fundamental contributions to problems in commutative algebra discrete Fourier analysis and its applications to computa- and algebraic topology. Bhargav Bhatt tional complexity and voting theory. In the area he named “combinatorial statistics,” his collaborative work includes Xiuxiong Chen of Stony Brook Uni- versity is a leading figure in com- important discoveries on tree broadcast models and asso- plex geometry with fundamental ciated reconstruction problems, detection of block models, contributions to the field. He and the inference of evolutionary histories, and, more recently, his collaborators have made major deep inference. breakthroughs and finally settled several long-standing problems. With S. K. Donaldson and S. Sun, Theoretical Computer Science Chen proved the stability conjecture David Blei of Columbia University Xiuxiong Chen (which goes back to Yau) on Fano Kähler manifolds. With B. Wang, studies probabilistic machine learn- Chen confirmed the Hamilton–Tian conjecture on the ing, including its theory, algorithms, Kähler–Ricci flow on Fano manifolds. With J. R. Cheng, and application. He has made con- Chen found a groundbreaking a priori estimate for Kähler tributions to unsupervised machine metrics, under assumptions on the scalar curvature, which learning for text analysis, approxi- involved a fourth-order differential equation and verified mate Bayesian inference with vari- the fundamental Donaldson geodesic stability conjecture ational methods, flexible modeling and the properness conjecture. David Blei with Bayesian nonparametrics, and Nets Katz of the California Institute of Technology is a many applications to the sciences harmonic analyst. Much of his work has been focused on and humanities. Blei tells the Notices: “Many years ago I the Kakeya problem. Because that problem has such broad played accordion in an indie rock band in San Francisco.” connections with different parts of mathematics, it has led OCTOBER 2019 NOTICES OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY 1517 Mathematics People NEWS Oded Regev of New York University the energetic needs of small thermodynamic systems. He works on mathematical and compu- has also sought to understand how cells exploit the subtle tational aspects of point lattices. A physics near critical points to sense and respond to their main focus of his research is in the environment. area of lattice-based cryptography, where he introduced the Learning Caroline Uhler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- with Errors (LWE) problem. This ogy has made major contributions to the development of problem is used as the basis for a methods in statistics and machine learning for applications wide variety of cryptographic proto- in genomics. Her work to date has broken new ground Oded Regev cols, including some of the leading on providing a systematic approach to studying graphical candidates for postquantum secure models. In particular, she uncovered statistical and com- cryptographic standards. He is also interested in quantum putational limitations for causal inference and developed computation, theoretical computer science, and, more a novel framework for causal structure discovery from a recently, molecular biology. mix of observational and interventional data. This led to new models and algorithms for inferring gene regulatory Brent Waters of the University of networks and for disease diagnostics by integrating gene Texas at Austin is a leader in the expression data with the 3-D organization of the genome. field of cryptography. His pioneer- ing work introduced the concepts of The Simons Investigators Program provides a stable attribute-based encryption and func- base of support for outstanding scientists, enabling them tional encryption. He is known for to undertake long-term study of fundamental questions. developing novel proof techniques, including lossy trapdoor functions, —From a Simons Foundation announcement dual system encryption, and punc- Brent Waters tured programming analysis in cryp- tographic code obfuscation. Waters Troyer Awarded Hamburg tells the Notices: “I grew up in Thousand Oaks, California, and did many Southern California things growing up, like Prize going to Dodger games or boogie boarding at the beach. Over the summer that I turned sixteen I had my first job at Matthias Troyer of Microsoft Quantum has been awarded an Orange Julius/Dairy Queen store in the mall. On break the 2019 Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics for his we were allowed free food, and I would manage to gulp contributions to the development of quantum Monte Carlo down a chili cheese dog, churro, julius drink, and blizzard algorithms. According to the prize announcement, “Using ran- over a twenty-minute break. The following summer my dom numbers, these algorithms can predict how tiny particles parents wanted me to get a similar job (to the Orange Julius will interact within quantum mechanical many-body systems one). However, I instead chose to attend a C programming such as atoms and molecules. As a result, Troyer is playing a course at a local community college. This ended up being key role in basic research and the ongoing development of a good decision for the long term. I try to keep active by quantum computers and superconductive materials. He is playing basketball once a week. I have also done waterski- one of just a handful of leading international researchers in ing and took a hang gliding training class. About ten years this field.” Troyer received his PhD in 1994 from ETH Zurich. ago I broke my wrist kind of badly playing basketball. I He was a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of still play, but have cut back on the risk taking since then.” Science at the University of Tokyo, then joined the faculty at ETH Zurich in 1998. He is currently principal researcher at Mathematical Modeling of Living Microsoft Quantum. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a trustee of the Aspen Center for Physics. He was Systems awarded the Aneesur Rahman Prize in 2016. The Hamburg Prize is awarded by the Joachim Herz Benjamin Machta of Yale University examines how phys- Stiftung in partnership with the Wolfgang Pauli Centre of the ical laws constrain the design principles of biological University of Hamburg, the German Electron Synchrotron systems. His research uses statistical physics, information DESY, and the Cluster Excellence “CUI: Advanced Imaging theory, and Riemannian geometry to understand how the of Matter” at the University of Hamburg. The prize carries a need to coordinate and process information constrains cash award of 137,036 euros (approximately US$154,000). function. He has worked to understand how simple mod- els emerge from complex molecular details and to bound —From a Joachim Herz Stiftung announcement 1518 NOTICES OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY VOLUME 66, NUMBER 9 Mathematics People NEWS Pavel Pevzner of the University of California, San Diego, Wright Awarded von has been named the 2018 ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award recipient for pioneering contributions to the Neumann Prize theory, design, and implementation of algorithms for string Margaret H. Wright of the Courant Institute of Mathemat- reconstruction and to their applications in the assembly of ical Sciences, New York University, has been awarded the genomes. The prize carries a cash award of US$10,000. John von Neumann Prize of the Society for Industrial and —From an ACM announcement Applied Mathematics (SIAM). She was honored for her “pioneering contributions to the numerical solution of optimization problems and to the exposition of the sub- Prizes of the London ject.” She delivered the Prize Lecture, titled “A Hungarian Feast of Applied Mathematics,” at the ICIAM in Valencia, Mathematical Society Spain, in July 2019. Wright received her PhD in computer science from Stanford University. Her work has been highly The London Mathematical Society (LMS) has awarded a influential in the theory and practice of optimization and number of prizes for 2019. includes coauthorship of the books Practical Optimization Sir Andrew Wiles, FRS, of the University of Oxford was and Numerical Linear Algebra and Optimization, both with awarded a De Morgan Medal for his seminal contributions Philip E. Gill and Walter Murray. She is the fifth woman to number theory and for his resolution of Fermat’s Last to receive
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