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Mathematics People
Oveis Gharan Wins 2023 Stephen Smale Prize
The fifth Stephen Smale Prize was awarded to Shayan Oveis Gharan, University of Washington, for his breakthrough results on the applications of algebraic and spectral methods to the design of algorithms and to combinatorial optimization.
Oveis Gharan received his PhD in 2013 from the Management Science and Engineering department at Stanford University and completed a postdoctoral Miller Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, before joining UW, where he is associate professor in the Paul Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering.
“In the decade since his PhD, [Oveis Gharan] has been the architect of surprising and profound discoveries on foundational problems in computing,” the prize citation noted. These include “the Traveling Salesman Problem, graph partitioning, the combinatorial structure of matroids, and the analysis of Markov chains. … His beautiful and groundbreaking results connect pure mathematics and computational algorithms, and are thus very much in the spirit of the Smale prize.”
The Stephen Smale Prize is awarded by the Society for the Foundations of Computational Mathematics (FoCM), an international nonprofit organization that supports and promotes research at the interface of mathematics and computation.
Robeva, Shlapentokh-Rothman Awarded Aisenstadt Prize
The Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM) has awarded the 2023 André Aisenstadt Prize to Elina Robeva (University of British Columbia) and Yakov Shlapentokh-Rothman (University of Toronto).
Created in 1991 by the CRM, the Aisenstadt Prize recognizes outstanding research results in pure or applied mathematics by a young Canadian mathematician and includes a scholarship and a medal.
Robeva received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2016 under the direction of Bernd Sturmfels, working in algebraic geometry, and is now working to apply algebra, geometry, and combinatorics to problems in data science and machine learning. Her thesis was honored by Berkeley’s Bernard Friedman Prize in Applied Mathematics. After an NSF postdoctoral fellowship at MIT (2016–2019), she joined the Department of Mathematics of the University of British Columbia in 2019. Robeva’s work connects statistics, geometry, Lie theory, and non-commutative algebra. She has won the SIAM Early Career Prize in Algebraic Geometry, the CAIMS Early Career Award, and the UBC/PIMS Mathematical Sciences Young Faculty Award.
Shlapentokh-Rothman received his PhD from MIT in 2015 under the supervision of Igor Rodnianski. After an NSF postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University (2015–2018), he continued there as assistant professor before joining the mathematics faculty at the University of Toronto in 2021. He works primarily on the mathematics of general relativity, in particular the dynamical development of singularities associated to black holes; the decay of scalar and higher spin waves on black hole backgrounds; the existence of time-periodic “breather” solutions; and the understanding of weak null singularities in black hole interiors with matter present. He was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2021.
Hounkonnou Wins 2023 Tate Medal
The American Institute of Physics awarded mathematical physicist Mahouton Norbert Hounkonnou with the 2023 John Torrence Tate Medal for International Leadership in Physics: for Hounkonnou’s efforts to build and maintain an enduring transnational African mathematical physics research and education community.
Named for the American physicist and established in 1959, the Tate Medal is awarded to non-US citizens for leadership, research contributions, and service to the physics community. The award includes a certificate of recognition, bronze medal, and $10,000 prize.
“I feel great pride to be one of the eminent personalities who have won this prestigious Tate Medal,” Hounkonnou said in a press release. “This is a recognition of the fruits of my team’s tireless efforts over the last nearly four decades. Hard work always pays off.”
Malagon, Singer Honored by Election Society
At its 2023 annual meeting, the Election Verification Network recognized mathematicians Audrey Malagon (of Virginia Wesleyan University) and Stephanie Singer (of Campaign Scientific).
Malagon received the Advocacy Award for her work promoting the use of risk-limiting audits to increase confidence in election results. Singer received the Product Innovation Award for her tools to help data scientists analyze election data.
The Election Verification Network is a professional society of more than 200 election officials, researchers, and advocates. Its mission is twofold: to support and maintain voting that is accessible, private, reliable, and secure; and elections that are transparent, accurate, and verifiable.
—AMS Communications