Mathematics People

Lim Wins Vannevar Bush Fellowship

Lek-Heng Lim, University of Chicago professor, has received a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from the US Department of Defense.

An AMS member, Lim is one of 10 faculty scientists in the 2023 cohort; each will receive up to $3 million over the five-year fellowship term to pursue cutting-edge fundamental research projects. The goal of Lim’s project is to build a complete picture of deep neural networks by piecing together current insights from algebraic, geometric, and topological studies.

More information about the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship is available on the Basic Research Office website: https://basicresearch.defense.gov/.

—US Department of Defense

Yu, Zhou Named Davidson Fellows

The Davidson Fellows Scholarship Program has announced the 2023 scholarship winners. Among the honorees is 18-year-old Edward Yu of Bellevue, WA, who won a $50,000 scholarship for his project, Turán Problems for Mixed Graphs. He is one of only two students nationwide to be recognized as a Davidson Fellows Laureate and one of only 21 scholarship winners in the 2023 Fellows class. Also among the 21 scholarship winners is 18-year-old Ethan Zhou of Vienna, VA, who won a $25,000 scholarship for his project, Online Learning of Smooth Functions.

—Davidson Institute

MoMath Awards Math Communication Honors to Students

The National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) has awarded first place in the 2023 Steven H. Strogatz Prizes for Math Communication to the following high-school students: Alex Rosenzweig (art), Isabelle Schwartz (art), and Akilan Sankaran (social media). Runners-up included Griffin Hon (video), Jaemin Kim (video), Zoë Nadal (performance), and Anaya Willibus (writing). Honorable mention winners are Rohan Mehta (writing), Parth Patel (writing), and Sohil Wrath (writing).

Eligible submissions in the categories of art, audio, performance, social media, video, and writing included podcasts, articles, school newspaper columns, art exhibits, YouTube videos, websites, Instagram accounts, songs, plays, and other modes of public communication. Projects should be designed to be suitable to share with a general audience and should inspire an interest in or appreciation of mathematics. They are judged on content, creativity, and communication, and cash prizes are awarded. For more information or to see the winning entries, consult https://momath.org/the-steven-h-strogatz-prize-for-math-communication/strogatz-prize-2023-winners/.

—National Museum of Mathematics

Cadilhac Receives Zemánek Prize

The 2023 Jaroslav and Barbara Zemánek Prize in functional analysis with emphasis on operator theory was awarded to Léonard Cadilhac, Sorbonne University, France, for his fundamental contributions to noncommutative analysis centered around ergodic theory, harmonic analysis, and free probability.

The annual Zemánek Prize was founded in 2018 by the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IM PAN), Warsaw, to promote mathematicians younger than 35 years of age who have made important contributions to functional analysis, operator theory, and related topics. For more information, visit https://www.impan.pl/en/events/awards/b-and-j-zemanek-prize.

—Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences

AWM Presents Service Awards to Franklin, Pershell

The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) has announced recipients of the 2024 AWM Service Awards.

Johanna Franklin, associate professor of mathematics, Hofstra University, is recognized for her exceptional leadership as coordinator of the AWM-MfA Student Essay Contest, as chair of the Essay Contest Committee, and as chair of the Education and Outreach Portfolio Committee.

Karoline Pershell, chief operating officer and director of strategy and evaluation for Service Robotics and Technologies Labs, is recognized for her service as AWM executive director, “for the meaningful AWM programs she initiated and improved; for creating a warm, welcoming, and inclusive environment; and for continuing to generously share her time, her energy, her enthusiasm, and her wisdom as a volunteer.”

—Association for Women in Mathematics