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The Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry of the AWM
The Association for Women in Mathematics established the Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry in 2013. First presented in 2015, this prize is awarded every odd year to a woman early in her career who has published exceptional research in topology/geometry. The area topology/geometry is broadly interpreted to include topology, geometry, geometric group theory and related areas. Candidates must be women working at a US institution either within ten years of being awarded a Ph.D., or not being tenured at the time of application. The website of the Association for Women in Mathematics states:-
Winners of the Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry:
2015 Eli Grigsby, Boston College.
Citation: The inaugural 2015 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry is awarded to J Elisenda Grigsby in recognition of her pioneering and influential contributions to low-dimensional topology, particularly in the areas of knot theory and categorified invariants. Her research has centred on the interplay between the combinatorial theory of Khovanov homology and the more geometric Heegaard-Floer homology. World leaders in the field have praised her fundamental contributions, noting that her work both connects and unifies structures in geometric, symplectic, and contact topology, homological algebra, and representation theory. To single out just one of her many outstanding results, she and her collaborator Wehrli discovered that Khovanov's categorification of the -coloured Jones polynomial detects the unknot when . This work has generated a great amount of excitement and activity in the field and was described by a leading expert as "one for the history books". Eli Grigsby is a talented young mathematician who has established herself as a leader in a rapidly developing area that changed the landscape of low-dimensional topology. She was the recipient of an NSF postdoctoral fellowship and DMS research grant, and currently holds an NSF CAREER award. She has a track record of impressive results, and she has provided leadership in her field. Grigsby clearly merits the distinction of being the first mathematician to receive the Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry.
Response from Eli Grigsby: I am deeply honoured to be receiving this award, especially since Joan Birman is a personal hero of mine. Her work laid the foundations for much of my own; the field of low-dimensional topology would be far poorer without her contributions. Her mathematical accomplishments are particularly impressive in light of the fact that she received her PhD only after a 15-year detour in industry, during which she also had 3 children. She is without question one of the most amazing people I have ever known. Many thanks to the Association for Women in Mathematics, not only for establishing this award, but also for connecting me to a whole community of women whose mathematics and life-stories are similarly inspiring. I am profoundly grateful as well to Joan and Joseph Birman for the thoughtfulness and generosity they exhibited in endowing this award. Of course, I am forever in debt to my tirelessly supportive advisors, Rob Kirby and Peter Ozsváth, along with the rest of my extended mathematical "family." Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues at Boston College, both for their nomination and for making the BC math department such an exciting place to learn and do mathematics.
2017 Emmy Murphy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Citation: The 2017 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry is awarded to Emmy Murphy for major breakthroughs in symplectic geometry. Murphy has developed new techniques for the study of symplectic and contact structures on manifolds, uncovering a startling degree of flexibility in a branch of geometry that is ordinarily distinguished by rigidity. As a result, some geometric problems can now be reduced to homotopy theory; for example Murphy's methods have yielded answers to long-standing questions concerning the existence of contact structures on high-dimensional manifolds. She has shown great creativity in the delicate work of inventing powerful new -principle techniques. She has also masterfully combined these new tools with other tools, such as the method of pseudo-holomorphic curves, to explore the boundary between flexibility and rigidity. Murphy is a highly original thinker, and leading geometers will not be surprised if she goes on to make breakthroughs in very different areas of mathematics.
Response from Emmy Murphy: I am very honoured to be a recipient of the Joan & Joseph Birman Prize. My work would never have been possible without my many mentors, particularly Chris Herald, Alex Kumjian, Tom Mrowka, and Paul Seidel. I would also like to thank my collaborators for stimulating and inspiring ideas, particularly Strom Borman, Roger Casals, Baptiste Chantraine, Mike Freedman, and Fran Presas. Yasha Eliashberg deserves special mention, as a wonderful advisor, collaborator, and friend. I'd like to thank Joan and Joseph Birman for being so generous and supportive of the women in mathematics community. Joan Birman is certainly an inspiration to me.
There are many people in mathematics who deserve my warmest thanks, but cannot be listed here. And of course, I'd like to thank my family and friends for their love and support. Finally, I'm grateful to the selection committee for the recognition of my work, and the kind words. I have always had an appreciation for highly visual and geometric questions, and I'm very happy to find places where this kind of thinking is useful. Symplectic and contact geometry, though very fashionable, are still very young fields. And though we've developed a lot of machinery in recent years, there are still many basic questions we don't know the answer to, and I believe many deep theorems can still be proven from first principles. I'm very excited to see where the field will go in upcoming years.
2019 Kathryn Mann, Brown University.
Citation: The 2019 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry is awarded to Kathryn Mann for breakthrough work in the theory of dynamics of group actions on manifolds.
Mann uses a broad array of mathematical tools to obtain results at the juncture of topology, group theory, geometry and dynamics, and she finds new connections between them. She has discovered new phenomena, built general theory, and has solved long-open problems.
As an example, in a solo paper she introduced a new method to study the topology of the space of surface group representations in the space of orientation-preserving circle homeomorphisms and to prove a rigidity result about geometric such representations. Building on this paper, jointly with M Wolff, Mann proved that conversely this rigidity property characterises the geometric surface group actions on the circle. A leading expert describes this as one of the best results obtained in the area in the last couple of decades and another mathematician describes Mann as "that once-in-a-generation thinker who opens significant new directions for research".
Kathryn Mann received her PhD in 2014 from the University of Chicago. During 2014-2017 she was a Morrey Visiting Assistant Professor and an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. She now holds a Manning Assistant Professorship of Mathematics at Brown University.
Response by Kathryn Mann: I am very honoured to be selected for the Birman research prize, and deeply grateful to Joan and Joseph Birman for their support in establishing the award with the AWM. I had the pleasure of meeting Joan last fall, after many years of knowing her work. I realise now how fortunate I was to "grow up" mathematically in a field in which Joan Birman was a household name.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the many mentors I have had - first and foremost my advisor Benson Farb, and the surrounding community at the University of Chicago. It was there that I first encountered the kind of questions in geometry and dynamics that continue to fascinate me. Though too many to list here, I am indebted to all those I have looked up to and who serve as a continuing source of inspiration: mentors, collaborators, and mathematical friends. I'm very grateful also to my current colleagues at Brown for giving me such a warm welcome and an immediate show of support.
2021 Emily Riehl, Johns Hopkins University.
Citation: The 2021 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry is awarded to Emily Riehl for her deep and foundational work in category theory and homotopy theory.
Riehl has proved many fundamental theorems in category theory and its relations to homotopy theory and has produced a large body of exceptional research as well as expository and pedagogical work. Her work is transforming the ways we work with higher categorical objects, drawing on classical category-theory tools and constructions to illustrate and simplify higher categorical constructions. Riehl's theorems and machinery beautifully showcase how these higher categorical constructions can often be viewed as intuitive generalisations of the ordinary ones. Her books on category theory and on homotopical category theory have become the standard references, and her draft book on ∞-categories is already finding immediate use by researchers.
Riehl is an internationally recognised scholar for her important research works in category theory and her innovative ideas about mentorship and communication of mathematics.
Riehl received her PhD in 2011 from the University of Chicago and was a Benjamin Peirce Postdoctoral Fellow and an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University from 2011 to 2015. Riehl is currently an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and is spending the spring term of 2020 as a Chern Professor at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley where she co-organises a semester-long program on Higher Categories and Categorification.
Response by Emily Riehl: I am deeply honoured to have been selected for the 2021 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry and acutely grateful to the selection committee for recognising higher category theory and abstract homotopy theory as topology metamorphosed.
I am lucky to have fallen in love with mathematics at an early age and even more fortunate to have received such fantastic mentorship at every step along the way. I am particularly grateful to Benedict Gross, who inspired and then catalysed my undergraduate forays into teaching; Martin Hyland, who roused my aspirations to think categorically; Peter May, my PhD advisor and preeminent editor, who showed me what it takes to write well; Mike Hopkins, who initiated me into the profession and moves me with the kindness he shows to so many who look up to him; and especially to my colleagues at Johns Hopkins who have gone above and beyond time and time again to support me in every conceivable way: Nitu Kitchloo, Jack Morava, David Savitt, and Steve Wilson. Finally, I'd like to acknowledge the generosity of the algebraic topology community, who have drawn me in from the periphery and made me feel as if we were all a part of a common enterprise. For instance, though the wonderful Women in Topology network, I and many others can count the senior luminaries in the field - Kathryn Hess, Brooke Shipley, Kristine Bauer, and Brenda Johnson - among my treasured collaborators and friends.
I am excited to be one of many contributors to a field of mathematics that is undergoing a rapid evolution. I like to daydream about what infinite-dimensional category theory will look like from the other side, perhaps where a univalent foundation system allows us to treat equivalence as equality and recognise sets as one layer of an infinite hierarchy of homotopy types, recording the higher structures that may be borne by these equivalences.
2023 Kristen Hendricks, Rutgers University.
Citation: The 2023 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry was awarded to Kristen Hendricks, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston, MA in January 2023. Hendricks is being honoured for highly influential work on equivariant aspects of Floer homology theories.
Professor Kristen Hendricks' work in low-dimensional and symplectic topology has revolutionized the understanding of equivariant aspects of Floer theories, allowing powerful equivariant techniques to be used to solve classical, non-equivariant problems. Hendricks' pioneering work on involutive Heegaard Floer homology has had wide-ranging applications, particularly to questions that straddle the border between 3- and 4-dimensional topology. The impact of her contributions to the understanding of homology cobordism groups, and to the closely related subject of knot concordance, has been profound. Hendricks' work has also opened new doors in the realm of symplectic topology, where her work with collaborators introduced one of the first general constructions of equivariant Floer homology.
Kristen Hendricks received her PhD in 2013 from Columbia University. She was a Hedrick Assistant Adjunct Professor at UCLA from 2013 to 2016, and an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University from 2016 to 2019 before joining the faculty at Rutgers University, where she is currently an associate professor. Hendricks is the recipient of both an NSF CAREER award and a Sloan Research Fellowship.
Response by Kristen Hendricks: I am very honoured to be selected for the Birman Prize. Joan Birman was a great inspiration to me while I was fortunate enough to interact with her as a graduate student at Columbia, and my appreciation and respect for her achievements has only increased as my perspective has matured. I'm also delighted to have my name on the same list as the previous prize winners, all of whom I hold in great esteem.
I am greatly indebted to many excellent mentors, most especially my first undergraduate professor Tom Coates, my primary graduate adviser Robert Lipshitz, and my postdoctoral supervisor Ciprian Manolescu. I am also grateful to both my former colleagues at Michigan State and my current colleagues at Rutgers for their unfailing supportiveness. I appreciate deeply the tremendous number of intellectually stimulating relationships I've been fortunate enough to have with my many excellent collaborators and other mathematical friends, far too many to name here; the topology and geometry community has been extremely good to me, and I hope to live up to its high standards of mathematical generosity and collegiality. The past years have been very exciting in our corner of mathematics and I'm enthusiastic to find out what comes next with all of you.
2025 Mona Merling, University of Pennsylvania.
Citation: The AWM presented the sixth AWM Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry to Mona Merling, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle, WA in January 2025. Merling recognized for innovative and impactful research in algebraic K-theory, equivariant homotopy theory, and their applications to manifold theory.
Merling is an exceptional researcher whose work in algebraic topology has both depth and breadth. She is a recognised authority on equivariant homotopy theory and its applications to equivariant manifolds. Her recent work generalises and reinterprets results in differential topology in the equivariant context. Her work is the first progress seen in decades on certain foundational questions about equivariant manifolds.
Merling is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining Penn, she was a J J Sylvester Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University. She received her Ph.D. in Mathematics at The University of Chicago in 2014.
Response by Mona Merling: I am honoured to receive the Birman prize and humbled to have my name added to the list of previous winners. I sincerely thank Joan and Joseph Birman for their support of the mathematical community and their generosity in endowing this award. I am lucky to be part of an extensive mathematical family whose generosity and kindness I have often benefited from. I first want to thank my PhD advisor Peter May for having lured me into the wonderful world of algebraic topology and for his continuous support. I also want to thank Andrew Blumberg, Mike Hill, and my postdoc mentor Jack Morava, who time and time again have generously offered their guidance, both mathematical and professional. I have had the privilege to work with many extraordinary collaborators and am grateful for each of these stimulating relationships. I want to single out Cary Malkiewich, who over the years has become one of my closest collaborators and friends. I am touched by the support that my colleagues at UPenn have given me since I joined the department and I want to genuinely thank them for it. I am also very grateful for the incredible students I have had the honour to teach and mentor.
I would not be here today without the many amazing women I was lucky to have as role models at every step of the way: from my math teacher back in Romania, Mihaela Flamaropol, who ignited my passion for math competitions; to my undergraduate mentor at Bard College, Lauren Rose, who early on inspired me about both research and teaching; to some of the senior leaders in my field who initiated and fostered the Women in Topology Network, Maria Basterra, Kristine Bauer, Kathryn Hess, and Brenda Johnson, who I was very privileged to be able to collaborate with as part of these workshops and who have always served as a huge inspiration and a source of endless support to me and other younger women in homotopy theory.
More than a decade ago, Mike Hill, Mike Hopkins, and Doug Ravenel set our field on fire by solving the Kervaire invariant one problem through use of sophisticated tools in equivariant stable homotopy theory. I was lucky to enter the field of equivariant homotopy theory at this exhilarating time. I am grateful that they created such a welcoming and inviting community for young people to join this exciting area and thrive.
As for the future, I am very enthusiastic about the connections between stable homotopy theory and low dimensional topology and I am very excited about the growing interactions between these fields.
The Association for Women in Mathematics Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry serves to highlight to the community outstanding contributions by women in the field and to advance the careers of the prize recipients. The award is made possible by a generous contribution from Joan Birman whose work has been in low dimensional topology and her husband Joseph who is a theoretical physicist whose specialty is applications of group theory to solid state physics.We give below winners of the prize and also the citation and the reply from the winner.
Winners of the Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry:
2015 Eli Grigsby, Boston College.
Citation: The inaugural 2015 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry is awarded to J Elisenda Grigsby in recognition of her pioneering and influential contributions to low-dimensional topology, particularly in the areas of knot theory and categorified invariants. Her research has centred on the interplay between the combinatorial theory of Khovanov homology and the more geometric Heegaard-Floer homology. World leaders in the field have praised her fundamental contributions, noting that her work both connects and unifies structures in geometric, symplectic, and contact topology, homological algebra, and representation theory. To single out just one of her many outstanding results, she and her collaborator Wehrli discovered that Khovanov's categorification of the -coloured Jones polynomial detects the unknot when . This work has generated a great amount of excitement and activity in the field and was described by a leading expert as "one for the history books". Eli Grigsby is a talented young mathematician who has established herself as a leader in a rapidly developing area that changed the landscape of low-dimensional topology. She was the recipient of an NSF postdoctoral fellowship and DMS research grant, and currently holds an NSF CAREER award. She has a track record of impressive results, and she has provided leadership in her field. Grigsby clearly merits the distinction of being the first mathematician to receive the Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry.
Response from Eli Grigsby: I am deeply honoured to be receiving this award, especially since Joan Birman is a personal hero of mine. Her work laid the foundations for much of my own; the field of low-dimensional topology would be far poorer without her contributions. Her mathematical accomplishments are particularly impressive in light of the fact that she received her PhD only after a 15-year detour in industry, during which she also had 3 children. She is without question one of the most amazing people I have ever known. Many thanks to the Association for Women in Mathematics, not only for establishing this award, but also for connecting me to a whole community of women whose mathematics and life-stories are similarly inspiring. I am profoundly grateful as well to Joan and Joseph Birman for the thoughtfulness and generosity they exhibited in endowing this award. Of course, I am forever in debt to my tirelessly supportive advisors, Rob Kirby and Peter Ozsváth, along with the rest of my extended mathematical "family." Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues at Boston College, both for their nomination and for making the BC math department such an exciting place to learn and do mathematics.
2017 Emmy Murphy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Citation: The 2017 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry is awarded to Emmy Murphy for major breakthroughs in symplectic geometry. Murphy has developed new techniques for the study of symplectic and contact structures on manifolds, uncovering a startling degree of flexibility in a branch of geometry that is ordinarily distinguished by rigidity. As a result, some geometric problems can now be reduced to homotopy theory; for example Murphy's methods have yielded answers to long-standing questions concerning the existence of contact structures on high-dimensional manifolds. She has shown great creativity in the delicate work of inventing powerful new -principle techniques. She has also masterfully combined these new tools with other tools, such as the method of pseudo-holomorphic curves, to explore the boundary between flexibility and rigidity. Murphy is a highly original thinker, and leading geometers will not be surprised if she goes on to make breakthroughs in very different areas of mathematics.
Response from Emmy Murphy: I am very honoured to be a recipient of the Joan & Joseph Birman Prize. My work would never have been possible without my many mentors, particularly Chris Herald, Alex Kumjian, Tom Mrowka, and Paul Seidel. I would also like to thank my collaborators for stimulating and inspiring ideas, particularly Strom Borman, Roger Casals, Baptiste Chantraine, Mike Freedman, and Fran Presas. Yasha Eliashberg deserves special mention, as a wonderful advisor, collaborator, and friend. I'd like to thank Joan and Joseph Birman for being so generous and supportive of the women in mathematics community. Joan Birman is certainly an inspiration to me.
There are many people in mathematics who deserve my warmest thanks, but cannot be listed here. And of course, I'd like to thank my family and friends for their love and support. Finally, I'm grateful to the selection committee for the recognition of my work, and the kind words. I have always had an appreciation for highly visual and geometric questions, and I'm very happy to find places where this kind of thinking is useful. Symplectic and contact geometry, though very fashionable, are still very young fields. And though we've developed a lot of machinery in recent years, there are still many basic questions we don't know the answer to, and I believe many deep theorems can still be proven from first principles. I'm very excited to see where the field will go in upcoming years.
2019 Kathryn Mann, Brown University.
Citation: The 2019 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry is awarded to Kathryn Mann for breakthrough work in the theory of dynamics of group actions on manifolds.
Mann uses a broad array of mathematical tools to obtain results at the juncture of topology, group theory, geometry and dynamics, and she finds new connections between them. She has discovered new phenomena, built general theory, and has solved long-open problems.
As an example, in a solo paper she introduced a new method to study the topology of the space of surface group representations in the space of orientation-preserving circle homeomorphisms and to prove a rigidity result about geometric such representations. Building on this paper, jointly with M Wolff, Mann proved that conversely this rigidity property characterises the geometric surface group actions on the circle. A leading expert describes this as one of the best results obtained in the area in the last couple of decades and another mathematician describes Mann as "that once-in-a-generation thinker who opens significant new directions for research".
Kathryn Mann received her PhD in 2014 from the University of Chicago. During 2014-2017 she was a Morrey Visiting Assistant Professor and an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. She now holds a Manning Assistant Professorship of Mathematics at Brown University.
Response by Kathryn Mann: I am very honoured to be selected for the Birman research prize, and deeply grateful to Joan and Joseph Birman for their support in establishing the award with the AWM. I had the pleasure of meeting Joan last fall, after many years of knowing her work. I realise now how fortunate I was to "grow up" mathematically in a field in which Joan Birman was a household name.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the many mentors I have had - first and foremost my advisor Benson Farb, and the surrounding community at the University of Chicago. It was there that I first encountered the kind of questions in geometry and dynamics that continue to fascinate me. Though too many to list here, I am indebted to all those I have looked up to and who serve as a continuing source of inspiration: mentors, collaborators, and mathematical friends. I'm very grateful also to my current colleagues at Brown for giving me such a warm welcome and an immediate show of support.
2021 Emily Riehl, Johns Hopkins University.
Citation: The 2021 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry is awarded to Emily Riehl for her deep and foundational work in category theory and homotopy theory.
Riehl has proved many fundamental theorems in category theory and its relations to homotopy theory and has produced a large body of exceptional research as well as expository and pedagogical work. Her work is transforming the ways we work with higher categorical objects, drawing on classical category-theory tools and constructions to illustrate and simplify higher categorical constructions. Riehl's theorems and machinery beautifully showcase how these higher categorical constructions can often be viewed as intuitive generalisations of the ordinary ones. Her books on category theory and on homotopical category theory have become the standard references, and her draft book on ∞-categories is already finding immediate use by researchers.
Riehl is an internationally recognised scholar for her important research works in category theory and her innovative ideas about mentorship and communication of mathematics.
Riehl received her PhD in 2011 from the University of Chicago and was a Benjamin Peirce Postdoctoral Fellow and an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University from 2011 to 2015. Riehl is currently an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and is spending the spring term of 2020 as a Chern Professor at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley where she co-organises a semester-long program on Higher Categories and Categorification.
Response by Emily Riehl: I am deeply honoured to have been selected for the 2021 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry and acutely grateful to the selection committee for recognising higher category theory and abstract homotopy theory as topology metamorphosed.
I am lucky to have fallen in love with mathematics at an early age and even more fortunate to have received such fantastic mentorship at every step along the way. I am particularly grateful to Benedict Gross, who inspired and then catalysed my undergraduate forays into teaching; Martin Hyland, who roused my aspirations to think categorically; Peter May, my PhD advisor and preeminent editor, who showed me what it takes to write well; Mike Hopkins, who initiated me into the profession and moves me with the kindness he shows to so many who look up to him; and especially to my colleagues at Johns Hopkins who have gone above and beyond time and time again to support me in every conceivable way: Nitu Kitchloo, Jack Morava, David Savitt, and Steve Wilson. Finally, I'd like to acknowledge the generosity of the algebraic topology community, who have drawn me in from the periphery and made me feel as if we were all a part of a common enterprise. For instance, though the wonderful Women in Topology network, I and many others can count the senior luminaries in the field - Kathryn Hess, Brooke Shipley, Kristine Bauer, and Brenda Johnson - among my treasured collaborators and friends.
I am excited to be one of many contributors to a field of mathematics that is undergoing a rapid evolution. I like to daydream about what infinite-dimensional category theory will look like from the other side, perhaps where a univalent foundation system allows us to treat equivalence as equality and recognise sets as one layer of an infinite hierarchy of homotopy types, recording the higher structures that may be borne by these equivalences.
2023 Kristen Hendricks, Rutgers University.
Citation: The 2023 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry was awarded to Kristen Hendricks, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston, MA in January 2023. Hendricks is being honoured for highly influential work on equivariant aspects of Floer homology theories.
Professor Kristen Hendricks' work in low-dimensional and symplectic topology has revolutionized the understanding of equivariant aspects of Floer theories, allowing powerful equivariant techniques to be used to solve classical, non-equivariant problems. Hendricks' pioneering work on involutive Heegaard Floer homology has had wide-ranging applications, particularly to questions that straddle the border between 3- and 4-dimensional topology. The impact of her contributions to the understanding of homology cobordism groups, and to the closely related subject of knot concordance, has been profound. Hendricks' work has also opened new doors in the realm of symplectic topology, where her work with collaborators introduced one of the first general constructions of equivariant Floer homology.
Kristen Hendricks received her PhD in 2013 from Columbia University. She was a Hedrick Assistant Adjunct Professor at UCLA from 2013 to 2016, and an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University from 2016 to 2019 before joining the faculty at Rutgers University, where she is currently an associate professor. Hendricks is the recipient of both an NSF CAREER award and a Sloan Research Fellowship.
Response by Kristen Hendricks: I am very honoured to be selected for the Birman Prize. Joan Birman was a great inspiration to me while I was fortunate enough to interact with her as a graduate student at Columbia, and my appreciation and respect for her achievements has only increased as my perspective has matured. I'm also delighted to have my name on the same list as the previous prize winners, all of whom I hold in great esteem.
I am greatly indebted to many excellent mentors, most especially my first undergraduate professor Tom Coates, my primary graduate adviser Robert Lipshitz, and my postdoctoral supervisor Ciprian Manolescu. I am also grateful to both my former colleagues at Michigan State and my current colleagues at Rutgers for their unfailing supportiveness. I appreciate deeply the tremendous number of intellectually stimulating relationships I've been fortunate enough to have with my many excellent collaborators and other mathematical friends, far too many to name here; the topology and geometry community has been extremely good to me, and I hope to live up to its high standards of mathematical generosity and collegiality. The past years have been very exciting in our corner of mathematics and I'm enthusiastic to find out what comes next with all of you.
2025 Mona Merling, University of Pennsylvania.
Citation: The AWM presented the sixth AWM Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry to Mona Merling, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle, WA in January 2025. Merling recognized for innovative and impactful research in algebraic K-theory, equivariant homotopy theory, and their applications to manifold theory.
Merling is an exceptional researcher whose work in algebraic topology has both depth and breadth. She is a recognised authority on equivariant homotopy theory and its applications to equivariant manifolds. Her recent work generalises and reinterprets results in differential topology in the equivariant context. Her work is the first progress seen in decades on certain foundational questions about equivariant manifolds.
Merling is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining Penn, she was a J J Sylvester Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University. She received her Ph.D. in Mathematics at The University of Chicago in 2014.
Response by Mona Merling: I am honoured to receive the Birman prize and humbled to have my name added to the list of previous winners. I sincerely thank Joan and Joseph Birman for their support of the mathematical community and their generosity in endowing this award. I am lucky to be part of an extensive mathematical family whose generosity and kindness I have often benefited from. I first want to thank my PhD advisor Peter May for having lured me into the wonderful world of algebraic topology and for his continuous support. I also want to thank Andrew Blumberg, Mike Hill, and my postdoc mentor Jack Morava, who time and time again have generously offered their guidance, both mathematical and professional. I have had the privilege to work with many extraordinary collaborators and am grateful for each of these stimulating relationships. I want to single out Cary Malkiewich, who over the years has become one of my closest collaborators and friends. I am touched by the support that my colleagues at UPenn have given me since I joined the department and I want to genuinely thank them for it. I am also very grateful for the incredible students I have had the honour to teach and mentor.
I would not be here today without the many amazing women I was lucky to have as role models at every step of the way: from my math teacher back in Romania, Mihaela Flamaropol, who ignited my passion for math competitions; to my undergraduate mentor at Bard College, Lauren Rose, who early on inspired me about both research and teaching; to some of the senior leaders in my field who initiated and fostered the Women in Topology Network, Maria Basterra, Kristine Bauer, Kathryn Hess, and Brenda Johnson, who I was very privileged to be able to collaborate with as part of these workshops and who have always served as a huge inspiration and a source of endless support to me and other younger women in homotopy theory.
More than a decade ago, Mike Hill, Mike Hopkins, and Doug Ravenel set our field on fire by solving the Kervaire invariant one problem through use of sophisticated tools in equivariant stable homotopy theory. I was lucky to enter the field of equivariant homotopy theory at this exhilarating time. I am grateful that they created such a welcoming and inviting community for young people to join this exciting area and thrive.
As for the future, I am very enthusiastic about the connections between stable homotopy theory and low dimensional topology and I am very excited about the growing interactions between these fields.