NEWS Mathematics People combinatorics, with his efforts espe- Ulcigrai Awarded Brin Prize cially focused in the design theory community. He was instrumental in Corinna Ulcigrai of the University of the founding of the Journal of Combi- Zürich has been awarded the ninth natorial Designs, which filled a void Michael Brin Prize in Dynamical Sys- that had existed in the journal land- tems for her “fundamental work on scape prior to its inception. He has the ergodic theory of locally Hamilto- served as one of the editors-in-chief nian flows on surfaces, of translation of JCD since 1993 and has promoted flows on periodic surfaces and wind- it to be the flagship journal of design tree models, and her seminal work Charles Colbourn theory and a highly respected journal on higher genus generalizations of throughout the mathematics community. He also serves Corinna Ulcigrai Markov and Lagrange spectra.” The in an editorial role on a large number of other journals in work for which she was honored combinatorics and related fields. He was the coeditor (with includes the articles “Absence of Mixing in Area-Preserv- Jeff Dinitz) of the first (1996) and second (2006) editions ing Flows on Surfaces,” Annals of Mathematics 173 (2011), of the Handbook of Combinatorial Designs, now widely con- “Non-ergodic Z-Periodic Billiards and Infinite Translation sidered to be an indispensable reference by researchers in Surfaces,” Inventiones Mathematicae 197 (2014) (with K. design theory. Dr. Colbourn is a great advocate for design Fraçzek), and “Lagrange Spectra in Teichmüller Dynamics theory and combinatorics. He attends a huge number of via Renormalization,” Geometric and Functional Analysis 25 conferences in a wide variety of fields, very often as an (2015). Ulcigrai received her PhD in 2007 from Princeton invited speaker, and always makes a compelling case for University under the direction of Yakov Sinai. She held a the importance of design theory to the relevant field. He position at the University of Bristol (2007–2019) and has has provided invaluable mentoring for a great many young been at the University of Zürich since 2018. Her honors combinatorialists who have developed into active members include the European Mathematical Society Prize in 2012 of the combinatorics community. He chaired the Medals and the Whitehead Prize in 2013. Committee of the ICA from 2016 to 2019.” Colbourn The Brin Prize was endowed in 2008 by Michael Brin of received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1980. the University of Maryland to recognize mathematicians He was awarded the ICA Euler Medal for Lifetime Research who have made substantial impact in dynamical systems Achievement in 2003. When not engaged in mathematics and related fields at an early stage of their careers. The prize and computing, his favorite pastime is reading history, is awarded for specific contributions and currently carries general science, and nineteenth-century English novels. a cash award of US$18,000. Koen Thas of Ghent University was awarded a 2019 Hall Medal, —Giovanni Forni, Chair, Prize Selection Committee which recognizes extensive quality research with substantial interna- tional impact by Fellows of the ICA ICA Medals Awarded in midcareer. The citation reads in The Institute of Combinatorics and Its Applications (ICA) part: “Koen Thas has made significant has awarded medals to the following mathematicians. contributions in the areas of finite geometry and absolute geometry and Charles Colbourn of Arizona State University was has addressed important problems in awarded the 2019 Stanton Medal for significant lifetime Koen Thas mathematical physics and quantum contributions to promoting the discipline of combinator- information theory using geometric and group-theoretic ics. The prize citation reads in part: “Dr. Charles Colbourn methods. He has solved a number of fundamental open has been a tireless lifelong champion for the discipline of AUGUST 2020 NOTICES OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY 1051 Mathematics People NEWS problems by eminent researchers. In his work linking alge- and hard-working researcher,’ and attest that ‘the depth braic geometry over F1 and combinatorics, he was one of and breadth of Tao Zhang’s research are very impressive.’” the first in almost forty years to contribute new substantial results to infinite Singer theory.” Thas received his PhD in —From ICA announcements 2002 and was awarded an ICA Kirkman Medal in 2006 and the Triennial Prize of the Flemish Science Foundation for Exact Sciences in 2009. Thas tells the Notices: “I was born in Clay Research Ghent, and lived in Nazareth—of all places—till I moved to Ghent again, and stayed in its surroundings. I was a drawing Awards Presented prodigy as a very young child, and once caused a ‘visitor The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) has presented its jam’ in the Galleria dell’Accademia, drawing variations of Research Awards for 2019 to four mathematical scientists. Michelangelo’s David as a ten-year-old. My thirst for cre- The awards celebrate outstanding achievement in the ation in both the visual arts and writing never left me. But mathematical sciences. mathematics entered my space as well, and introduced new Wei Zhang of the Massachusetts textures to my general sketch.” Institute of Technology was selected of the Uni- Jeroen Schillewaert “in recognition of his groundbreak- versity of Auckland also was honored ing work in arithmetic geometry with a Hall Medal for 2019.The cita- and arithmetic aspects of automor- tion reads: “Jeroen Schillewaert has phic forms.” The prize citation reads, made significant contributions to a “His landmark contributions include broad range of topics in combinator- a proof of the global Gan–Gross– ics and finite geometry, combining Prasad Conjecture for a wide class techniques from extremal and proba- of automorphic representations of bilistic combinatorics, linear algebra, Wei Zhang unitary groups, a proof with Zhiwei and group theory. He is a world ex- Jeroen Schillewaert Yun of a higher-order generalization of the Gross–Zagier pert on buildings, the combinatorial formula over function fields, and a proof of Kolyvagin’s and geometric structures introduced by Jacques Tits. His conjecture on the structure of Selmer groups for a large class work has applications in coding theory and cryptography.” of elliptic curves over Q. He has formulated an arithmetic He received his PhD from the University of Ghent in 2009, version of the Gan–Gross–Prasad Conjecture—a vision for and he was awarded an Oberwolfach Leibniz Fellowship, a a far-reaching generalization of the Gross–Zagier formula Marie Curie Fellowship, and an Alexander von Humboldt over number fields—and pioneered a relative trace formula Fellowship. Schillewaert tells the Notices: “I grew up in De approach to its proof. He recently achieved a major step Haan, Belgium and still live near a beach with my fiancee in this program by proving the Arithmetic Fundamental Emma in Takapuna, New Zealand. I like a wide variety of Lemma.” Zhang received his PhD from Columbia Univer- sports, including tennis and soccer. These tend to make me sity in 2009. His honors include the 2010 SASTRA Ramanu- hungry and thirsty.” jan Prize and the 2018 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize. of Guangzhou University was awarded the Tao Zhang He is a Fellow of the AMS. He tells the Notices: “I grew up 2019 Kirkman Medal, which recognizes excellent research in Sichuan, China, and thus I am a big fan of spicy food by Fellows or Associate Fellows of the ICA early in their re- owing to my hometown cuisine. Aside from math, I enjoy search careers. The citation reads: “Dr. Tao Zhang has made spending time with my family, practicing Chinese calligra- deep contributions to lattice tilings and their applications, phy, and playing tennis.” algebraic coding theory, and design theory. His notable Tristan Buckmaster of Princeton research achievements include a significant advance on University, Philip Isett of the Cali- the Golomb–Welch conjecture on lattice tilings and the fornia Institute of Technology, and construction of new classes of quantum error-correcting Vlad Vicol of the Courant Institute codes with large minimum distance. Dr. Zhang’s research of Mathematical Sciences were jointly has resulted in more than twenty published papers in honored with a Clay Research Award top-ranked discrete mathematics and electrical engineer- “in recognition of the profound con- ing journals. He has given ten conference and workshop tributions that each of them has talks, including a plenary address and an invited talk. The made to the analysis of partial dif- excellence of his doctoral dissertation was recognized with ferential equations, particularly the awards from Zhejiang University and Zhejiang Province. Tristan Buckmaster Navier–Stokes and Euler equations.” His nominators describe him as ‘a very original, passionate, The citation continues: “Buckmaster and Vicol changed 1052 NOTICES OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY VOLUME 67, NUMBER 7 Mathematics People NEWS perceptions of the nature of weak contributions to the field of quantum computation and solutions to the Navier–Stokes equa- communication, involving work in mathematics, physics, tions by proving that such solutions and computer science. can be remarkably wild—severely Artur Ekert of the Centre for nonsmooth and highly nonunique. Quantum Technologies, National With a series of breakthroughs, Isett University of Singapore, and the Uni- finally settled Onsager’s 1949 Con- versity of Oxford was selected “for his jecture that, in turbulent regimes, inventions of entanglement-based below a specific regularity threshold, quantum key distribution, entangle- Vlad Vicol solutions to Euler’s equations can ment swapping, and entanglement be energy dissipative. Both works purification.” He received his PhD solve long-standing problems of fundamental importance. from the University of Oxford and In the course of doing so, they introduce novel ideas in Artur Ekert is a Fellow of the Royal Society of hard analysis, building on the program of De Lellis and London.