Semyon Dyatlov Awarded Mikhail Gordin Prize

Semyon Dyatlov will receive the inaugural 2022 Mikhail Gordin Prize at the 2022 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle.

The Mikhail Gordin prize, offered jointly by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the European Mathematical Society (EMS), is awarded to a mathematician working in probability or dynamical systems, with preference given to early career mathematicians from or professionally connected to an Eastern European country.

Semyon is recognized for his work on quantum chaos, scattering theory and, in particular, differentiable dynamical systems.

Congratulations Semyon!

Lisa Sauermann Awarded European Prize in Combinatorics

Lisa Sauermann, who recently joined our department as assistant professor, has been selected as one of the recipients of the 2021 European Prize in Combinatorics, which was awarded at Eurocomb in September. The prize is for research in combinatorics and is awarded every two years.

She was cited for her "profound contribution to combinatorics, particularly for results on the growth rate of algebraically defined classes, for the solution of an old Erdös, Faudree, Rousseau, and Schelp and for the solution of edge-statistics conjecture."

Congratulations Lisa!

Carina Hong and Alexandra Hoey Receive 2022 Alice T. Schafer Honors

The Association for Women in Mathematics announced that Letong "Carina" Hong, a math and physics double major, won the 2022 Alice T. Schafer Mathematics Prize for excellence in mathematics by an undergraduate woman. In addition, Mathematics major Alexandra Hoey was awarded honorable mention.

Carina participated in REUs at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and the University of Virginia that led to a number of papers, including three accepted for publication. She also participated in the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics and the IAS Women and Mathematics program. Carina was recently selected for a Rhodes Scholarship. Carina also serves as President of MIT's Undergraduate Mathematics Association (UMA).

Alexandra participated in the MIT Summer Program in Undergraduate Research and spent two summers at the University of Virginia REU, focusing on arithmetic statistics. Her work has led to two papers – one of which will appear in Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. She has also served as a PRIMES Circle mentor.

The Schafer Prize Winners will be presented at the January 2022 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle.

Congratulations Carina and Alexandra!

Four PRIMES/RSI Students Receive Davidson Honors

From Left: Sean Li, Andrei Mandelstam, Espen Slettnes, Kenta Suzuki

PRIMES student Sean Li won the $10,000 Davidson Fellowship for his project "On Group-Theoretic Extensions of Penney's Game," mentored by Tanya Khovanova, who he says "provided high-level insight and gave myriads of advice on exposition." Sean is attending MIT as a prospective math major.

Honorable mentions went to PRIMES students Espen Slettnes and Kenta Suzuki (now an MIT student). RSI student Andrei Mandelstam also received an honorable mention. Of the six math projects receiving Davidson honors this year, four were completed in our PRIMES or RSI programs.

Congratulations and thanks to Pavel Etingof, Slava Gerovitch, David Jerison, Tanya Khovanova, and Ankur Moitra for running PRIMES and RSI, and to the PRIMES/RSI mentors: our PhDs Jesse Geneson and Daniil Kalinov, and Prof. Michael Zieve of the University of Michigan!