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The Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize of the AWM
The Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize of the Association for Women in Mathematics is awarded annually to a woman recently promoted to Associate Professor or an equivalent position in the mathematical sciences. The prize provides a fellowship for the awardee to spend a semester in the Mathematics Department of Cornell University without teaching obligations. It was first awarded so that the prize could be taken in the academic year 2007-2008. The website of the Association for Women in Mathematics states:-
Winners of the Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize:
2007-2008
The Association for Women in Mathematics and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Rebecca Goldin, George Mason University, will receive the first annual Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize is unique - it grants a mid-career woman in academe a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell. The high quality of proposals submitted this first year attests to the need for such opportunities.
Rebecca Goldin was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her past achievements and future promise. After earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics with honours from Harvard University, Goldin spent a year in France at the Ecole Normale Superieure collaborating with Bernard Teissier on toric varieties. She then returned to Cambridge to pursue her doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she investigated the cohomology ring of weight varieties under the direction of Victor Guillemin. A two and a half year NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Maryland was followed by a tenure track appointment to the mathematics department at George Mason University. In 2004, Goldin assumed the role of Director of Research for Statistical Assessment Services, a nonprofit organisation affiliated with George Mason University in addition to her responsibilities as a professor in mathematics. In 2006, she was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor.
Goldin's research investigates sympletic geometry - a field that arose from the study of geometric structures underlying classical and quantum physics, but has become of great importance in modern differential geometry. She is a leader in work centred on Hamiltonian group actions and the study of topology and geometry of symplectic quotients. Her work has been called "influential," "elegant," "precise," and has been funded by two separate NSF research grants.
At Cornell, Goldin plans to collaborate with Tara Holm, Reyer Sjamaar, and Ed Swartz on questions involving equivariant cohomology, generalised Schubert Calculus, orbifold cohomology, K-theory, and even the relationship between the geometry of hypertoric varieties and oriented matroids. The Cornell mathematics department is planning a dedication in the fall of 2007 when Goldin will be in residence. Ruth Michler's parents hope to attend.
2008-2009
The Association for Women in Mathematics and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Irina Mitrea, University of Virginia, will receive the second annual Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize is unique - it grants a mid-career woman in academe a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Irina Mitrea was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her past achievements and future promise. Mitrea earned an M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Bucharest in 1993. She carried out her doctoral work at the University of Minnesota, where she investigated the spectral properties of elliptic layer potentials under the direction of Carlos Kenig and Mikhail Safonov. A postdoctoral membership at the Insitute for Advanced Study, Princeton in 2000-2001 was followed by her appointment as an H C Wang Assistant Professor at Cornell University. In 2004, Mitrea began a tenure track appointment in the mathematics department at the University of Virginia. In 2007, she was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor.
Mitrea has organised several mathematics programs for girls, including Sofia Kovalevskaya Days for high school girls and the Girls and Mathematics summer programme for middle school girls. She serves as a mathematics consultant for the Young Women Leaders Program at the University of Virginia.
Mitrea's area of expertise is at the interface between Real and Harmonic Analysis and Partial Differential Equations. In particular, combining harmonic analysis techniques and partial differential equations methods, she studies second and higher order elliptic boundary value problems in non-smooth domains. She is highly regarded for "her excellent taste in research problems, her depth and her technical power." Mitrea is a recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER Award.
2009-2010
The Association for Women in Mathematics and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Maria Gordina, University of Connecticut, will receive the third annual Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize is unique - it grants a mid-career woman in academe a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Maria Gordina was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her talent as mathematician and her international reputation. Gordina earned a Diploma in Mathematics and Education from Leningrad State University in 1990. She carried out her doctoral work at Cornell University, where she investigated holomorphic functions and the heat kernel measure under the direction of Leonard Gross. She was a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University and then an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Diego with Bruce Driver. In 2003, Gordina began a tenure track appointment in the mathematics department at the University of Connecticut. She was awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship in 2005 to work with Michael Röckner. In 2007, she was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut.
Maria Gordina's work has been funded by the National Science Foundation. She is highly regarded for her "significant body of high quality work" and her "excellent reputation both here and abroad." Gordina's primary interests involve heat kernel measures and their properties in the context of infinite dimensional non-linear spaces. The construction of these heat kernel measures and their quasi-invariance properties have applications in mathematical physics and involve techniques at the interface between stochastic analysis, differential geometry, and functional analysis.
At Cornell, Gordina plans to collaborate with Leonard Gross (Cornell), Laurent Saloff-Coste (Cornell) and S Rajeev (Rochester) on problems connecting infinite-dimensional Lie groups, Lie algebras and Laplacians in infinite dimensions with applications in quantum field theory and hydrodynamics.
2010-2011
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Patricia Hersh, North Carolina State University, will receive the fourth annual Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Patricia Hersh was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents. In 1994, she was named by AWM as a runner-up for the Alice T Shafer Prize. Hersh received her diploma in Mathematics and Computer Science at Harvard University in 1995, completing a senior thesis under the direction of Persi Diaconis. She carried out her doctoral degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied enumerative properties as well as decomposition in partially ordered sets with Richard Stanley.
In 2000, Hersh was awarded an AWM Mentoring Travel Grant to work with Phil Hanlon. She was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Washington and MSRI. In 2004, Hersh began a tenure track appointment in the department of mathematics at Indiana University-Bloomington. She is currently at North Carolina State University where she holds a position as an Associate Professor in the department of mathematics.
Hersh's primary interests are in algebraic and topological combinatorics, particularly the interactions between combinatorics and such fields as topology, commutative algebra, representation theory and theoretical computer science. Her work is funded by the National Science Foundation.
At Cornell, Hersh plans to study topology and combinatorics of stratified spaces from Schubert calculus, combinatorial representation theory and total positivity theory with Allen Knutson. She will also collaborate with Irena Peeza on combinatorial commutative algebra and cellular resolutions, and Ed Swartz on rings of graph colourings
2011-2012
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Anna Mazzucato, Pennsylvania State University, will receive the 2011-12 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid- career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Anna Mazzucato was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents. In 1994, she earned her Laurea (BS/MS) in Mathematical Physics at Universitá degli Studi di Milano. Mazzucato received her Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 2000. She studied the Navier-Stokes and other nonlinear evolution equations under the direction of Michael Taylor.
In 2000, Mazzucato was a Clay Mathematics Institute Liftoff Mathematician. She has been a Gibbs Instructor at Yale University, a postdoctoral fellow at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and a postdoctoral associate at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications. She has been at the Pennsylvania State University since 2003 where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics.
Mazzucato's research involves the analysis of partial differential equations, particularly those arising from continuum mechanics of deformable solids and incompressible fluids, and associated inverse problems. Her work is partially funded by the National Science Foundation.
At Cornell, Mazzucato plans to continue her work on the analysis of weak solutions of the Navier-Stokes and Euler equations, related questions on transport by irregular vector fields, and the analysis of boundary value/interface problems for elliptic systems in singular domains with applications to the finite element method. She is looking forward to her time at Cornell and her potential collaborations with Timothy Healey, Camil Muscalu, Alfred Schatz, Robert Strichartz and Lars Wahlbin..
2012-2013
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Ling Long, Iowa State University, will receive the 2012-13 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Ling Long was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents. In 1997 she earned a B.Sc. from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, majoring in mathematics with a minor in computer science and engineering. Long received her Ph.D. in mathematics from the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) in 2002. She studied modularity of elliptic surfaces under the direction of Wen-Ching Winnie Li from PSU and Noriko Yui from Queen's University. Before coming to the Iowa State University in 2003, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Long spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies.
Long's research involves modular forms for finite index subgroups of the modular group. These groups play an important role in Grothendieck's program of dessins d'enfants (children's drawings). Her work is partially funded by the National Science Foundation.
At Cornell, Long plans to work with Ravi Ramakishna on Galois representations attached to noncongruence modular forms based on the pioneering work of Anthony Scholl and her joint work with Oliver Atkin, Winnie Li, and Tong Liu. The Langlands philosophy predicts that the -functions of these Galois representations should be expressible in terms of -functions of automorphic forms. Such a connection has far-reaching impacts on the arithmetic of modular forms. Long also looks forward to potential collaborations with other faculty members at Cornell.
2013-2014
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Megumi Harada, McMaster University, Canada, will receive the 2013-14 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Megumi Harada was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents and her many connections with mathematics faculty at Cornell. In 1996 she earned an A.B. from Harvard University, majoring in mathematics. Harada received her Ph.D. in mathematics from University of California Berkeley in 2003. She studied equivariant symplectic geometry and equivariant topology under the direction of Allen Knutson. Before coming to McMaster University in 2006, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Harada spent three years as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Toronto. She has held research visiting positions at Hausdorff Research Institute for Mathematics, Mathematical Science Research Institute and Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics. Harada's research involves the interface of symplectic geometry, algebraic geometry, geometric representation theory and algebraic combinatorics. In particular she studies classes of varieties such as toric varieties, Kac-Moody flag varieties , and Hessenber varieties. Her work is partially funded by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. At Cornell, Harada plans to work with her longterm collaborators Reyer Sjamar on divided difference operators in equivariant K-theory and a K-theoretic Martin theorem and Tara Holm on the equivariant K-theory of orbifold toric varieties.
Allen Knutson, her former Ph.D. supervisor, is a Cornell faculty member and is active in nearly every research area of interest to Harada, most particularly in relation to her recent work with Kiumars Kaveh on Okounkov bodies, toric degenerations, and integrable systems. Harada looks forward to many conversations and potential collaborations with Knutson and his graduate students. She is also expects fruitful interactions with Mike Stillman and Irena Peeva.
2014-2015
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Sema Salur, University of Rochester will receive the 2014-15 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Sema Salur was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents. In 1993 she earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Bogazici University, Turkey. Salur received her PhD in mathematics, under the direction of Gang Tian, from Michigan State University in 2000.
Before coming to University of Rochester in 2006, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Salur spent time as a visiting assistant professor at both Cornell University and Northwestern University. She has been a research fellow at Princeton University, the Mathematical Science Research Institute (MSRI) and the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM). In spring 2003 and spring 2004 she visited her collaborator Dominic Joyce at Oxford with the support from an AWM Mentoring grant. She will be spending the Spring 2015 semester at Cornell University.
Salur's research is in the area of manifolds with special holonomy and calibrations. In particular she studies geometry and topology of the moduli spaces of calibrated submanifolds inside Calabi-Yau, and manifolds. Her work is partially funded by a research grant from the National Science Foundation.
At Cornell Salur will continue her work on manifolds with special holonomy and Ricci flat metrics. She plans to collaborate with Xiaodong Cao and Yuri Berest on projects related to the geometric flows on and manifolds. Understanding these flows will have many applications in mathematical physics and algebraic geometry. She also plans to work with Tara Holm and Reyer Sjamaar on calibrated submanifolds and special vector fields on manifolds with special holonomy. These are similar to Hamiltonian vector fields which play an important role in symplectic geometry.
2015-2016
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Malabika Pramanik, University of British Columbia will receive the 2015-16 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid- career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Malabika Pramanik was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talent and the close connection of her work with the research of the analysis group at Cornell. She earned a B.Stat. in Statistics from Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta in 1993 and an M.Stats from the same institution in 1995. Malabika received her PhD in mathematics, under the direction of F Michael Christ, from University of California, Berkeley in 2001.
Before coming to the University of British Columbia in 2006, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Pramanik spent time as a Fairchild Senior Research Fellow at California Institute of Technology, Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Rochester, and Van Vleck Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin Madison. She is currently an adjunct visiting faculty member (2014-2017), Centre for Applicable Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India. In 2005 she was a US Junior Oberwolfach Fellow (awarded by NSF). She will be spending the spring 2016 semester at Cornell University.
Pramanik's research spans several areas including Euclidean harmonic analysis, geometric measure theory, several complex variables, partial differential equations, and inverse problems. Her work is partially funded by research grants from the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
About her upcoming semester at Cornell Pramanik says: "I look forward to this unique opportunity of interacting with Professors Camil Muscalu and Robert Strichartz. Their research in harmonic analysis, specifically the theory of multilinear singular integrals and convergence of Fourier series (Prof Muscalu) and spectral analysis of fractal sets (Prof Strichartz) are of great interest to me. In general, I hope to benefit from the inspiring environment of Cornell's mathematics department, with its many distinguished faculty and myriad academic events."
2016-2017
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Pallavi Dani, Louisiana State University will receive the 2016 -17 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid- career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Pallavi Dani was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents and the close connection of her work with the research of several mathematics faculty at Cornell. She earned a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Mumbai, Mumbai India in 1999 and an MS in Mathematics from the University of Chicago, in 2001. Dani received her PhD in mathematics, under the direction of Benson Farb, from the University of Chicago in 2005.
Before coming to Louisiana State University in 2008, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Dani spent time as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma. In 2008 - 09 she was a Visiting Research Associate at Emory University. She will be spending the spring 2017 semester at Cornell University.
Dani's research is in the area of geometric group theory. In particular, she studies quasi-isometry invariants of groups, such as Dehn functions and divergence, with a special interest in hyperbolic groups and CAT(0) groups. More recently she has been working on the quasi-isometry and commensurability classification of right-angled Coxeter groups. Her work is partially funded by a research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
About her upcoming semester at Cornell Dani says: "I am honoured to have been given the opportunity to participate in the vibrant research atmosphere at Cornell University. While there I will work with Tim Riley on questions related to subgroup distortion in hyperbolic groups, and filling invariants in subgroups of non-positively curved groups. I hope to learn more about the theory of special cube complexes from Jason Manning. I also expect to have fruitful interactions with Martin Kassabov and Justin Moore. I feel confident that this experience will help me forge new directions in my research. "
2017-2018
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Julia Gordon, University of British Columbia, Canada will receive the 2017-2018 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Julia Gordon was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents and the connection of her work with the research of Cornell faculty members Nicolas Templier and Birgit Speh. She earned a Diploma (MS equivalent) from St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia in 1998. Gordon received her PhD in mathematics, under the direction of Thomas C Hales, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2003.
Immediately before coming to the University of British Columbia in 2006, where she is currently an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics, Gordon was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. Before that she spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton and a semester as a postdoctoral fellow at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, Canada.
Gordon's research is in the areas of representation theory of p-adic groups and of motivic integration. Her research is partially funded by a series of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grants which she has had since 2006.
About her upcoming semester at Cornell, Gordon says: "In 2011, Nicolas Templier and Sug Woo Shin asked about the possibility of making a uniform bound for orbital integrals, which was needed for their work on low-lying zeroes of L-functions. Raf Cluckers, I Halupczok and I were able to develop this bound, and while at Cornell, I plan to work with Templier on further applications of such bounds. Separately, I have been working with J Achter and S Ali Altuğ on a different project of counting the number of abelian varieties in an isogeny class. Some of the calculations done in this project are related to the trace formula and Templier's area of expertise. I am hoping to learn more about this from him during the term at Cornell. I also hope to talk to Birgit Speh about real Lie groups and mysterious analogies between harmonic analysis on real and on -adic reductive groups."
2018-2019
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Julie Bergner, University of Virginia, will receive the 2018-2019 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Julie Bergner was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her proposed project to connect some of her recent work with the research of Cornell faculty member Inna Zakharevich, including simultaneous developments by both women (and their respective coauthors) on algebraic K-theory constructions. Bergner earned her Master's (2002) and Ph.D. (2005) from the University of Notre Dame under the direction of William Dwyer.
Bergner has been at the University of Virginia since 2016, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics. Prior to that, Bergner was an Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside from 2008-2016.
Bergner's research has been in the areas of homotopy theory. Her proposed research will bring together several facets of her work: the theoretical framework of homotopical categories and generalisations, the realisation of 2-Segal spaces as a form of algebraic K-theory, and looking at derived Hall algebras as algebraic homotopical categories.
About her upcoming semester at Cornell, Bergner says: "While my past research has focused on homotopical categories and algebraic applications, this research project will require me to gain a much deeper knowledge of algebraic K-theory and topological Hochschild homology. Being able to collaborate on these ideas with Inna Zakharevich, who is an expert in both these areas, would be an excellent opportunity to expand my understanding of these problems and ultimately to make progress on their solutions. I am particularly eager to learn about the closely related research she is doing with Jonathan Campbell, and I fully expect that the interplay between the two will be critical in solving these problems."
2019-2020
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Anna Skripka, University of New Mexico, will receive the 2019-2021 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Anna Skripka was selected to receive the Michler Prize to persue proposed project to connect some of her recent work in noncommutative analysis with the research of Cornell faculty member Prof Michael Nussbaum on statistical problems of estimation, regression, and asymptotic analysis. Skripka earned her B.S. degrees from Kharkiv National University, Ukraine (2001) and her Ph.D. (2007) from the University of Missouri under the direction of Konstantin A Makarov. She has been at the University of New Mexico since 2012, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics. Prior to that, Skripka was an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Texas A&M. She held invited positions at the University of California, Berkeley; Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon; and the University of New South Wales. She has been awarded 4 single-investigator NSF awards including a CAREER award.
Skripka has been working primarily in the areas of noncommutative analysis and operator theory on problems that emerged from quantum theory. Her proposed research will expand to noncommutative aspects of probability and statistics and combine function analytic and probabilistic methods.
About her upcoming semester at Cornell, Skripka says: "I look forward to this unique opportunity for participating in the dynamic research life at Cornell's mathematics department and interacting with Cornell experts in probability and analysis. I plan to collaborate with Prof Michael Nussbaum on problems of quantum statistics and asymptotically efficient estimation.
The existing partial results suggest that these problems should be approached by both analytic and statistical methods in their subtle combination, which we hope to find by joining our expertise. I also hope to advance on noncommutative approximation theory with help of consultations on combinatorial and multilinear harmonic analysis methods. I am eager to explore new techniques and directions in probability and analysis at the departmental seminars."
2020-2021
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Shabnam Akhtari (University of Oregon) has been awarded the 2021-2022 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
Shabnam Akhtari was selected to receive the Michler Prize to pursue her proposed research on classical Diophantine equations, in particular to study index form equations and their applications to understanding the structure of rings in algebraic number fields. Awarding this opportunity to Akhtari distinguishes the history of the Ruth Michler Prize. She is a stellar researcher who will for sure have lasting impact in number theory and in mathematics.
The Cornell number theory group is thriving, thanks to recent hires which led to a boom of graduate students in the field. More broadly in upstate NY, there is a vibrant number theory community of over a dozen mathematicians who jointly run the Upstate Number Theory Conference. Akhtari will find a natural fit within this group, allowing her to share her research and possibly begin new collaborations. She is a natural role model for the many upstate number theory graduate students and postdocs.
About her upcoming semester at Cornell, Akhtari says: "I am looking forward to spending a semester at Cornell focusing on my research. The opportunity to work with Professor Ravi Ramakrishna and other number theorists at Cornell and in the area is particularly exciting."
Professor Akhtari earned her B.S. at Sharif University of Technology (Tehran), her M.S. at Simon Fraser University (Canada) and her Ph.D. at The University of British Columbia (Canada). She has been a postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University, Kingston; at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, Bonn, and at the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, Montreal. Since then she has been faculty at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018. She has been awarded two single-researcher NSF grants, as well as two Simons Foundation fellowships.
2021-2022
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Shabnam Akhtari (University of Oregon) has been awarded the 2021-2022 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
Shabnam Akhtari was selected to receive the Michler Prize to pursue her proposed research on classical Diophantine equations, in particular to study index form equations and their applications to understanding the structure of rings in algebraic number fields. Awarding this opportunity to Akhtari distinguishes the history of the Ruth Michler Prize. She is a stellar researcher who will for sure have lasting impact in number theory and in mathematics.
The Cornell number theory group is thriving, thanks to recent hires which led to a boom of graduate students in the field. More broadly in upstate NY, there is a vibrant number theory community of over a dozen mathematicians who jointly run the Upstate Number Theory Conference. Akhtari will find a natural fit within this group, allowing her to share her research and possibly begin new collaborations. She is a natural role model for the many upstate number theory graduate students and postdocs.
About her upcoming semester at Cornell, Akhtari says: "I am looking forward to spending a semester at Cornell focusing on my research. The opportunity to work with Professor Ravi Ramakrishna and other number theorists at Cornell and in the area is particularly exciting."
Professor Akhtari earned her B.S. at Sharif University of Technology (Tehran), her M.S. at Simon Fraser University (Canada) and her Ph.D. at The University of British Columbia (Canada). She has been a postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University, Kingston; at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, Bonn, and at the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, Montreal. Since then she has been faculty at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018. She has been awarded two single-researcher NSF grants, as well as two Simons Foundation fellowships.
2022-2023
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Emily E Witt, University of Kansas, has been awarded the 2022-2023 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
Citation: Emily E Witt has been selected to receive the Michler Prize for her research accomplishments in commutative algebra. Her results on local cohomology modules based on applications of invariant theory have been groundbreaking, striking, and unexpected. Her techniques are innovative and broadly applicable. Witt will use the award to pursue a research project at the intersection of commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, and singularity theory. The project's title, Invariants of Singular Plane Curves, is a tribute to the paper with the same title published by Ruth I Michler posthumously.
Cornell's Mathematics Department has a large and active research group in algebra, geometry, and combinatorics, and in particular, Professor Witt will interact with experts in commutative algebra such as Irena Peeva and Mike Stillman.
Witt was awarded her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2011. Subsequently, she was a Dunham Jackson Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Utah. Since 2015, she has been a faculty member at the University of Kansas, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020. She currently holds the institution's Keeler Intra-University Professorship, under which she is collaborating with computer science faculty on the use of proof assistant software to develop formal proofs.
Professor Witt's achievements have been recognised by awards from her current institution, the National Science Foundation, the Simons Foundation, and the National Security Agency. In particular, she currently holds an NSF CAREER Award.
In addition to her research achievements, Witt is involved in a number of initiatives promoting diversity in the mathematical community. For example, she co-organized the first Women in Commutative Algebra research collaboration workshop, and co-directed, with Daniel Hernández, an REU program in algebra and cryptography serving students from underrepresented groups. One of Witt's goals while visiting Cornell's Mathematics Department is to learn more about their successful programs that address diversity and inclusion in STEM.
Response from Witt: It is an honour to receive the Michler Memorial Prize; Ruth Michler's work in the field of algebra makes the award especially meaningful to me. I am grateful to the AWM and the Michler family for the opportunity to interact with Cornell's fantastic researchers in algebra and geometry, and related fields.
2023-2024
The Association for Women in Mathematics and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Lauren M. Childs (Virginia Tech) has been awarded the 2023-2024 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
Citation: Professor Childs was selected to receive the Michler Prize to pursue a research project advancing mathematical theory and methods for trait-based models of infectious disease, including integral projection models. Such models will also be used to study the spread of infectious disease, in particular malaria, and associated population dynamics.
Cornell's Mathematics Department has faculty with a wide range of expertise related to this work, in areas such as dynamical systems, differential equations, and stochastic dynamics. While visiting Cornell, Professor Childs plans to interact with Steven Strogatz, Tim Healey, Alex Townsend, and Alexander Vladimirsky in that department, as well as Stephen Ellner and Megan Greischar from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Lauren M Childs was awarded a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2010. She went on to do postdoctoral work at the Georgia Institute of Technology and at the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health, and spent a semester at Williams College. Since 2016, she has been on the faculty at Virginia Tech, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2022. Professor Childs has published more than 40 publications, including articles in Nature, Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Journal of Theoretical Biology, and she has an impressive record of high profile invited talks. Her achievements have been recognised by awards from Virginia Tech, NIH, NSF, and the Simons Foundation. In 2022, she was awarded an NSF Career Award.
In addition to her research achievements, Professor Childs also has a strong track record of mentoring and outreach at all levels. She has supervised a number of research projects ranging at the undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels and co-organised an AMS Mathematics Research Community program. She has also guest lectured at the Stanford Mathematics Camp, presented in Math Circles, and mentored a high school science fair project.
Response from Childs: I am honoured to receive the 2023-2024 Michler Memorial Prize and am greatly looking forward to returning to my alma mater Cornell to spend a semester focused on research. Many thanks to the Michler family, the AWM, and the Cornell Mathematics Department for the opportunity to interact with the outstanding mathematicians within the department, such as Dr Strogatz, as well as with those involved with quantitative applications to infectious disease across the university such as Dr Greischar and Dr Ellner.
2024-2025 Alexandra Seceleanu, University of Nebraska.
Citation: Dr Seceleanu works widely in commutative algebra with interests in both theoretical and computational aspects. Among her many interests are free resolutions of modules over Noetherian commutative rings and ordinary and symbolic powers of ideals, especially those ideals of interest in algebraic geometry. In addition to more conventional research contributions she has also made significant contributions to the computer algebra system Macaulay2, providing a further boost to this area. With this fellowship at Cornell University, Dr Seceleanu plans to collaborate with Irena Peeva. Her work also has significant overlap with that of Mike Stillman.
Dr Seceleanu received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011. She was then a postdoc and Edith T Hitz Research Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. She participated in the special semester at MSRI in 2012 as a Postdoctoral Research Member. In 2015 she joined the faculty of University of Nebraska as an Assistant professor and she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2021. Her work has been recognised with NSF grants.
In addition to her very impressive research contributions, Seceleanu has significant undergraduate research mentoring experience. Since 2020 she has served as a mentor for the Polymath REU supervising large groups of 20-23 undergraduates each summer on collaborative research.
Response from Seceleanu: I am deeply honoured to be the recipient of the Ruth I Michler Memorial Award. This recognition is not only a testament to my individual contributions, but also a reflection of the support and encouragement I have received from mentors, colleagues, and the mathematical community at large. I am excited about the opportunities this award presents for future collaborations with colleagues at Cornell University and look forward to the contributions this will bring to my research field, commutative algebra. I extend my sincere appreciation to the selection committee for their acknowledgment. I am also grateful to the Michler family, the AWM, and the Cornell Mathematics Department for providing this opportunity.
Recently promoted associate professors face many challenges as they prepare to take on greater leadership in research and in the profession. The Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize will honour outstanding women at this stage of their careers and enable them to focus on their research in the stimulating environment of the Cornell University Mathematics Department.Before listing winners of the Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize we should say a little about Ruth Ingrid Michler (1967-2000). Born in New York, United States, she was brought up in Tübingen, Giessen, and Essen in Germany before studying for her first degree in Oxford, England. There she was awarded the Jenkyns prize for her essay "Black Holes" advised by Roger Penrose. Returning to the United States she was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993 for her thesis Hodge components of cyclic homology of affine hypersurfaces. Appointed to the University of North Texas in Denton she began to earn an excellent international reputation with a series of outstanding papers. An enthusiastic runner she completed over 23 marathons in 6 years. Tragically, she was killed by a construction vehicle while waiting to cross a busy intersection near the Northeastern University campus where she was a visiting scholar.
Winners of the Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize:
2007-2008
The Association for Women in Mathematics and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Rebecca Goldin, George Mason University, will receive the first annual Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize is unique - it grants a mid-career woman in academe a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell. The high quality of proposals submitted this first year attests to the need for such opportunities.
Rebecca Goldin was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her past achievements and future promise. After earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics with honours from Harvard University, Goldin spent a year in France at the Ecole Normale Superieure collaborating with Bernard Teissier on toric varieties. She then returned to Cambridge to pursue her doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she investigated the cohomology ring of weight varieties under the direction of Victor Guillemin. A two and a half year NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Maryland was followed by a tenure track appointment to the mathematics department at George Mason University. In 2004, Goldin assumed the role of Director of Research for Statistical Assessment Services, a nonprofit organisation affiliated with George Mason University in addition to her responsibilities as a professor in mathematics. In 2006, she was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor.
Goldin's research investigates sympletic geometry - a field that arose from the study of geometric structures underlying classical and quantum physics, but has become of great importance in modern differential geometry. She is a leader in work centred on Hamiltonian group actions and the study of topology and geometry of symplectic quotients. Her work has been called "influential," "elegant," "precise," and has been funded by two separate NSF research grants.
At Cornell, Goldin plans to collaborate with Tara Holm, Reyer Sjamaar, and Ed Swartz on questions involving equivariant cohomology, generalised Schubert Calculus, orbifold cohomology, K-theory, and even the relationship between the geometry of hypertoric varieties and oriented matroids. The Cornell mathematics department is planning a dedication in the fall of 2007 when Goldin will be in residence. Ruth Michler's parents hope to attend.
2008-2009
The Association for Women in Mathematics and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Irina Mitrea, University of Virginia, will receive the second annual Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize is unique - it grants a mid-career woman in academe a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Irina Mitrea was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her past achievements and future promise. Mitrea earned an M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Bucharest in 1993. She carried out her doctoral work at the University of Minnesota, where she investigated the spectral properties of elliptic layer potentials under the direction of Carlos Kenig and Mikhail Safonov. A postdoctoral membership at the Insitute for Advanced Study, Princeton in 2000-2001 was followed by her appointment as an H C Wang Assistant Professor at Cornell University. In 2004, Mitrea began a tenure track appointment in the mathematics department at the University of Virginia. In 2007, she was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor.
Mitrea has organised several mathematics programs for girls, including Sofia Kovalevskaya Days for high school girls and the Girls and Mathematics summer programme for middle school girls. She serves as a mathematics consultant for the Young Women Leaders Program at the University of Virginia.
Mitrea's area of expertise is at the interface between Real and Harmonic Analysis and Partial Differential Equations. In particular, combining harmonic analysis techniques and partial differential equations methods, she studies second and higher order elliptic boundary value problems in non-smooth domains. She is highly regarded for "her excellent taste in research problems, her depth and her technical power." Mitrea is a recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER Award.
2009-2010
The Association for Women in Mathematics and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Maria Gordina, University of Connecticut, will receive the third annual Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize is unique - it grants a mid-career woman in academe a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Maria Gordina was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her talent as mathematician and her international reputation. Gordina earned a Diploma in Mathematics and Education from Leningrad State University in 1990. She carried out her doctoral work at Cornell University, where she investigated holomorphic functions and the heat kernel measure under the direction of Leonard Gross. She was a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University and then an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Diego with Bruce Driver. In 2003, Gordina began a tenure track appointment in the mathematics department at the University of Connecticut. She was awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship in 2005 to work with Michael Röckner. In 2007, she was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut.
Maria Gordina's work has been funded by the National Science Foundation. She is highly regarded for her "significant body of high quality work" and her "excellent reputation both here and abroad." Gordina's primary interests involve heat kernel measures and their properties in the context of infinite dimensional non-linear spaces. The construction of these heat kernel measures and their quasi-invariance properties have applications in mathematical physics and involve techniques at the interface between stochastic analysis, differential geometry, and functional analysis.
At Cornell, Gordina plans to collaborate with Leonard Gross (Cornell), Laurent Saloff-Coste (Cornell) and S Rajeev (Rochester) on problems connecting infinite-dimensional Lie groups, Lie algebras and Laplacians in infinite dimensions with applications in quantum field theory and hydrodynamics.
2010-2011
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Patricia Hersh, North Carolina State University, will receive the fourth annual Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Patricia Hersh was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents. In 1994, she was named by AWM as a runner-up for the Alice T Shafer Prize. Hersh received her diploma in Mathematics and Computer Science at Harvard University in 1995, completing a senior thesis under the direction of Persi Diaconis. She carried out her doctoral degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied enumerative properties as well as decomposition in partially ordered sets with Richard Stanley.
In 2000, Hersh was awarded an AWM Mentoring Travel Grant to work with Phil Hanlon. She was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Washington and MSRI. In 2004, Hersh began a tenure track appointment in the department of mathematics at Indiana University-Bloomington. She is currently at North Carolina State University where she holds a position as an Associate Professor in the department of mathematics.
Hersh's primary interests are in algebraic and topological combinatorics, particularly the interactions between combinatorics and such fields as topology, commutative algebra, representation theory and theoretical computer science. Her work is funded by the National Science Foundation.
At Cornell, Hersh plans to study topology and combinatorics of stratified spaces from Schubert calculus, combinatorial representation theory and total positivity theory with Allen Knutson. She will also collaborate with Irena Peeza on combinatorial commutative algebra and cellular resolutions, and Ed Swartz on rings of graph colourings
2011-2012
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Anna Mazzucato, Pennsylvania State University, will receive the 2011-12 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid- career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Anna Mazzucato was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents. In 1994, she earned her Laurea (BS/MS) in Mathematical Physics at Universitá degli Studi di Milano. Mazzucato received her Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 2000. She studied the Navier-Stokes and other nonlinear evolution equations under the direction of Michael Taylor.
In 2000, Mazzucato was a Clay Mathematics Institute Liftoff Mathematician. She has been a Gibbs Instructor at Yale University, a postdoctoral fellow at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and a postdoctoral associate at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications. She has been at the Pennsylvania State University since 2003 where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics.
Mazzucato's research involves the analysis of partial differential equations, particularly those arising from continuum mechanics of deformable solids and incompressible fluids, and associated inverse problems. Her work is partially funded by the National Science Foundation.
At Cornell, Mazzucato plans to continue her work on the analysis of weak solutions of the Navier-Stokes and Euler equations, related questions on transport by irregular vector fields, and the analysis of boundary value/interface problems for elliptic systems in singular domains with applications to the finite element method. She is looking forward to her time at Cornell and her potential collaborations with Timothy Healey, Camil Muscalu, Alfred Schatz, Robert Strichartz and Lars Wahlbin..
2012-2013
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Ling Long, Iowa State University, will receive the 2012-13 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Ling Long was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents. In 1997 she earned a B.Sc. from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, majoring in mathematics with a minor in computer science and engineering. Long received her Ph.D. in mathematics from the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) in 2002. She studied modularity of elliptic surfaces under the direction of Wen-Ching Winnie Li from PSU and Noriko Yui from Queen's University. Before coming to the Iowa State University in 2003, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Long spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies.
Long's research involves modular forms for finite index subgroups of the modular group. These groups play an important role in Grothendieck's program of dessins d'enfants (children's drawings). Her work is partially funded by the National Science Foundation.
At Cornell, Long plans to work with Ravi Ramakishna on Galois representations attached to noncongruence modular forms based on the pioneering work of Anthony Scholl and her joint work with Oliver Atkin, Winnie Li, and Tong Liu. The Langlands philosophy predicts that the -functions of these Galois representations should be expressible in terms of -functions of automorphic forms. Such a connection has far-reaching impacts on the arithmetic of modular forms. Long also looks forward to potential collaborations with other faculty members at Cornell.
2013-2014
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Megumi Harada, McMaster University, Canada, will receive the 2013-14 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Megumi Harada was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents and her many connections with mathematics faculty at Cornell. In 1996 she earned an A.B. from Harvard University, majoring in mathematics. Harada received her Ph.D. in mathematics from University of California Berkeley in 2003. She studied equivariant symplectic geometry and equivariant topology under the direction of Allen Knutson. Before coming to McMaster University in 2006, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Harada spent three years as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Toronto. She has held research visiting positions at Hausdorff Research Institute for Mathematics, Mathematical Science Research Institute and Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics. Harada's research involves the interface of symplectic geometry, algebraic geometry, geometric representation theory and algebraic combinatorics. In particular she studies classes of varieties such as toric varieties, Kac-Moody flag varieties , and Hessenber varieties. Her work is partially funded by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. At Cornell, Harada plans to work with her longterm collaborators Reyer Sjamar on divided difference operators in equivariant K-theory and a K-theoretic Martin theorem and Tara Holm on the equivariant K-theory of orbifold toric varieties.
Allen Knutson, her former Ph.D. supervisor, is a Cornell faculty member and is active in nearly every research area of interest to Harada, most particularly in relation to her recent work with Kiumars Kaveh on Okounkov bodies, toric degenerations, and integrable systems. Harada looks forward to many conversations and potential collaborations with Knutson and his graduate students. She is also expects fruitful interactions with Mike Stillman and Irena Peeva.
2014-2015
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Sema Salur, University of Rochester will receive the 2014-15 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Sema Salur was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents. In 1993 she earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Bogazici University, Turkey. Salur received her PhD in mathematics, under the direction of Gang Tian, from Michigan State University in 2000.
Before coming to University of Rochester in 2006, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Salur spent time as a visiting assistant professor at both Cornell University and Northwestern University. She has been a research fellow at Princeton University, the Mathematical Science Research Institute (MSRI) and the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM). In spring 2003 and spring 2004 she visited her collaborator Dominic Joyce at Oxford with the support from an AWM Mentoring grant. She will be spending the Spring 2015 semester at Cornell University.
Salur's research is in the area of manifolds with special holonomy and calibrations. In particular she studies geometry and topology of the moduli spaces of calibrated submanifolds inside Calabi-Yau, and manifolds. Her work is partially funded by a research grant from the National Science Foundation.
At Cornell Salur will continue her work on manifolds with special holonomy and Ricci flat metrics. She plans to collaborate with Xiaodong Cao and Yuri Berest on projects related to the geometric flows on and manifolds. Understanding these flows will have many applications in mathematical physics and algebraic geometry. She also plans to work with Tara Holm and Reyer Sjamaar on calibrated submanifolds and special vector fields on manifolds with special holonomy. These are similar to Hamiltonian vector fields which play an important role in symplectic geometry.
2015-2016
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Malabika Pramanik, University of British Columbia will receive the 2015-16 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid- career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Malabika Pramanik was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talent and the close connection of her work with the research of the analysis group at Cornell. She earned a B.Stat. in Statistics from Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta in 1993 and an M.Stats from the same institution in 1995. Malabika received her PhD in mathematics, under the direction of F Michael Christ, from University of California, Berkeley in 2001.
Before coming to the University of British Columbia in 2006, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Pramanik spent time as a Fairchild Senior Research Fellow at California Institute of Technology, Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Rochester, and Van Vleck Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin Madison. She is currently an adjunct visiting faculty member (2014-2017), Centre for Applicable Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India. In 2005 she was a US Junior Oberwolfach Fellow (awarded by NSF). She will be spending the spring 2016 semester at Cornell University.
Pramanik's research spans several areas including Euclidean harmonic analysis, geometric measure theory, several complex variables, partial differential equations, and inverse problems. Her work is partially funded by research grants from the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
About her upcoming semester at Cornell Pramanik says: "I look forward to this unique opportunity of interacting with Professors Camil Muscalu and Robert Strichartz. Their research in harmonic analysis, specifically the theory of multilinear singular integrals and convergence of Fourier series (Prof Muscalu) and spectral analysis of fractal sets (Prof Strichartz) are of great interest to me. In general, I hope to benefit from the inspiring environment of Cornell's mathematics department, with its many distinguished faculty and myriad academic events."
2016-2017
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Pallavi Dani, Louisiana State University will receive the 2016 -17 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid- career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Pallavi Dani was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents and the close connection of her work with the research of several mathematics faculty at Cornell. She earned a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Mumbai, Mumbai India in 1999 and an MS in Mathematics from the University of Chicago, in 2001. Dani received her PhD in mathematics, under the direction of Benson Farb, from the University of Chicago in 2005.
Before coming to Louisiana State University in 2008, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Dani spent time as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma. In 2008 - 09 she was a Visiting Research Associate at Emory University. She will be spending the spring 2017 semester at Cornell University.
Dani's research is in the area of geometric group theory. In particular, she studies quasi-isometry invariants of groups, such as Dehn functions and divergence, with a special interest in hyperbolic groups and CAT(0) groups. More recently she has been working on the quasi-isometry and commensurability classification of right-angled Coxeter groups. Her work is partially funded by a research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
About her upcoming semester at Cornell Dani says: "I am honoured to have been given the opportunity to participate in the vibrant research atmosphere at Cornell University. While there I will work with Tim Riley on questions related to subgroup distortion in hyperbolic groups, and filling invariants in subgroups of non-positively curved groups. I hope to learn more about the theory of special cube complexes from Jason Manning. I also expect to have fruitful interactions with Martin Kassabov and Justin Moore. I feel confident that this experience will help me forge new directions in my research. "
2017-2018
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Julia Gordon, University of British Columbia, Canada will receive the 2017-2018 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize. The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Julia Gordon was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her wide range of mathematical talents and the connection of her work with the research of Cornell faculty members Nicolas Templier and Birgit Speh. She earned a Diploma (MS equivalent) from St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia in 1998. Gordon received her PhD in mathematics, under the direction of Thomas C Hales, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2003.
Immediately before coming to the University of British Columbia in 2006, where she is currently an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics, Gordon was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. Before that she spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton and a semester as a postdoctoral fellow at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, Canada.
Gordon's research is in the areas of representation theory of p-adic groups and of motivic integration. Her research is partially funded by a series of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grants which she has had since 2006.
About her upcoming semester at Cornell, Gordon says: "In 2011, Nicolas Templier and Sug Woo Shin asked about the possibility of making a uniform bound for orbital integrals, which was needed for their work on low-lying zeroes of L-functions. Raf Cluckers, I Halupczok and I were able to develop this bound, and while at Cornell, I plan to work with Templier on further applications of such bounds. Separately, I have been working with J Achter and S Ali Altuğ on a different project of counting the number of abelian varieties in an isogeny class. Some of the calculations done in this project are related to the trace formula and Templier's area of expertise. I am hoping to learn more about this from him during the term at Cornell. I also hope to talk to Birgit Speh about real Lie groups and mysterious analogies between harmonic analysis on real and on -adic reductive groups."
2018-2019
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Julie Bergner, University of Virginia, will receive the 2018-2019 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Julie Bergner was selected to receive the Michler Prize because of her proposed project to connect some of her recent work with the research of Cornell faculty member Inna Zakharevich, including simultaneous developments by both women (and their respective coauthors) on algebraic K-theory constructions. Bergner earned her Master's (2002) and Ph.D. (2005) from the University of Notre Dame under the direction of William Dwyer.
Bergner has been at the University of Virginia since 2016, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics. Prior to that, Bergner was an Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside from 2008-2016.
Bergner's research has been in the areas of homotopy theory. Her proposed research will bring together several facets of her work: the theoretical framework of homotopical categories and generalisations, the realisation of 2-Segal spaces as a form of algebraic K-theory, and looking at derived Hall algebras as algebraic homotopical categories.
About her upcoming semester at Cornell, Bergner says: "While my past research has focused on homotopical categories and algebraic applications, this research project will require me to gain a much deeper knowledge of algebraic K-theory and topological Hochschild homology. Being able to collaborate on these ideas with Inna Zakharevich, who is an expert in both these areas, would be an excellent opportunity to expand my understanding of these problems and ultimately to make progress on their solutions. I am particularly eager to learn about the closely related research she is doing with Jonathan Campbell, and I fully expect that the interplay between the two will be critical in solving these problems."
2019-2020
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Anna Skripka, University of New Mexico, will receive the 2019-2021 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
The Michler Prize grants a mid-career woman in academia a residential fellowship in the Cornell University mathematics department without teaching obligations. This pioneering venture was established through a very generous donation from the Michler family and the efforts of many people at AWM and Cornell.
Anna Skripka was selected to receive the Michler Prize to persue proposed project to connect some of her recent work in noncommutative analysis with the research of Cornell faculty member Prof Michael Nussbaum on statistical problems of estimation, regression, and asymptotic analysis. Skripka earned her B.S. degrees from Kharkiv National University, Ukraine (2001) and her Ph.D. (2007) from the University of Missouri under the direction of Konstantin A Makarov. She has been at the University of New Mexico since 2012, where she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics. Prior to that, Skripka was an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Texas A&M. She held invited positions at the University of California, Berkeley; Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon; and the University of New South Wales. She has been awarded 4 single-investigator NSF awards including a CAREER award.
Skripka has been working primarily in the areas of noncommutative analysis and operator theory on problems that emerged from quantum theory. Her proposed research will expand to noncommutative aspects of probability and statistics and combine function analytic and probabilistic methods.
About her upcoming semester at Cornell, Skripka says: "I look forward to this unique opportunity for participating in the dynamic research life at Cornell's mathematics department and interacting with Cornell experts in probability and analysis. I plan to collaborate with Prof Michael Nussbaum on problems of quantum statistics and asymptotically efficient estimation.
The existing partial results suggest that these problems should be approached by both analytic and statistical methods in their subtle combination, which we hope to find by joining our expertise. I also hope to advance on noncommutative approximation theory with help of consultations on combinatorial and multilinear harmonic analysis methods. I am eager to explore new techniques and directions in probability and analysis at the departmental seminars."
2020-2021
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Shabnam Akhtari (University of Oregon) has been awarded the 2021-2022 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
Shabnam Akhtari was selected to receive the Michler Prize to pursue her proposed research on classical Diophantine equations, in particular to study index form equations and their applications to understanding the structure of rings in algebraic number fields. Awarding this opportunity to Akhtari distinguishes the history of the Ruth Michler Prize. She is a stellar researcher who will for sure have lasting impact in number theory and in mathematics.
The Cornell number theory group is thriving, thanks to recent hires which led to a boom of graduate students in the field. More broadly in upstate NY, there is a vibrant number theory community of over a dozen mathematicians who jointly run the Upstate Number Theory Conference. Akhtari will find a natural fit within this group, allowing her to share her research and possibly begin new collaborations. She is a natural role model for the many upstate number theory graduate students and postdocs.
About her upcoming semester at Cornell, Akhtari says: "I am looking forward to spending a semester at Cornell focusing on my research. The opportunity to work with Professor Ravi Ramakrishna and other number theorists at Cornell and in the area is particularly exciting."
Professor Akhtari earned her B.S. at Sharif University of Technology (Tehran), her M.S. at Simon Fraser University (Canada) and her Ph.D. at The University of British Columbia (Canada). She has been a postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University, Kingston; at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, Bonn, and at the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, Montreal. Since then she has been faculty at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018. She has been awarded two single-researcher NSF grants, as well as two Simons Foundation fellowships.
2021-2022
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Shabnam Akhtari (University of Oregon) has been awarded the 2021-2022 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
Shabnam Akhtari was selected to receive the Michler Prize to pursue her proposed research on classical Diophantine equations, in particular to study index form equations and their applications to understanding the structure of rings in algebraic number fields. Awarding this opportunity to Akhtari distinguishes the history of the Ruth Michler Prize. She is a stellar researcher who will for sure have lasting impact in number theory and in mathematics.
The Cornell number theory group is thriving, thanks to recent hires which led to a boom of graduate students in the field. More broadly in upstate NY, there is a vibrant number theory community of over a dozen mathematicians who jointly run the Upstate Number Theory Conference. Akhtari will find a natural fit within this group, allowing her to share her research and possibly begin new collaborations. She is a natural role model for the many upstate number theory graduate students and postdocs.
About her upcoming semester at Cornell, Akhtari says: "I am looking forward to spending a semester at Cornell focusing on my research. The opportunity to work with Professor Ravi Ramakrishna and other number theorists at Cornell and in the area is particularly exciting."
Professor Akhtari earned her B.S. at Sharif University of Technology (Tehran), her M.S. at Simon Fraser University (Canada) and her Ph.D. at The University of British Columbia (Canada). She has been a postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University, Kingston; at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, Bonn, and at the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, Montreal. Since then she has been faculty at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018. She has been awarded two single-researcher NSF grants, as well as two Simons Foundation fellowships.
2022-2023
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Emily E Witt, University of Kansas, has been awarded the 2022-2023 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
Citation: Emily E Witt has been selected to receive the Michler Prize for her research accomplishments in commutative algebra. Her results on local cohomology modules based on applications of invariant theory have been groundbreaking, striking, and unexpected. Her techniques are innovative and broadly applicable. Witt will use the award to pursue a research project at the intersection of commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, and singularity theory. The project's title, Invariants of Singular Plane Curves, is a tribute to the paper with the same title published by Ruth I Michler posthumously.
Cornell's Mathematics Department has a large and active research group in algebra, geometry, and combinatorics, and in particular, Professor Witt will interact with experts in commutative algebra such as Irena Peeva and Mike Stillman.
Witt was awarded her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2011. Subsequently, she was a Dunham Jackson Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Utah. Since 2015, she has been a faculty member at the University of Kansas, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020. She currently holds the institution's Keeler Intra-University Professorship, under which she is collaborating with computer science faculty on the use of proof assistant software to develop formal proofs.
Professor Witt's achievements have been recognised by awards from her current institution, the National Science Foundation, the Simons Foundation, and the National Security Agency. In particular, she currently holds an NSF CAREER Award.
In addition to her research achievements, Witt is involved in a number of initiatives promoting diversity in the mathematical community. For example, she co-organized the first Women in Commutative Algebra research collaboration workshop, and co-directed, with Daniel Hernández, an REU program in algebra and cryptography serving students from underrepresented groups. One of Witt's goals while visiting Cornell's Mathematics Department is to learn more about their successful programs that address diversity and inclusion in STEM.
Response from Witt: It is an honour to receive the Michler Memorial Prize; Ruth Michler's work in the field of algebra makes the award especially meaningful to me. I am grateful to the AWM and the Michler family for the opportunity to interact with Cornell's fantastic researchers in algebra and geometry, and related fields.
2023-2024
The Association for Women in Mathematics and Cornell University are pleased to announce that Lauren M. Childs (Virginia Tech) has been awarded the 2023-2024 Ruth I Michler Memorial Prize.
Citation: Professor Childs was selected to receive the Michler Prize to pursue a research project advancing mathematical theory and methods for trait-based models of infectious disease, including integral projection models. Such models will also be used to study the spread of infectious disease, in particular malaria, and associated population dynamics.
Cornell's Mathematics Department has faculty with a wide range of expertise related to this work, in areas such as dynamical systems, differential equations, and stochastic dynamics. While visiting Cornell, Professor Childs plans to interact with Steven Strogatz, Tim Healey, Alex Townsend, and Alexander Vladimirsky in that department, as well as Stephen Ellner and Megan Greischar from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Lauren M Childs was awarded a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2010. She went on to do postdoctoral work at the Georgia Institute of Technology and at the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health, and spent a semester at Williams College. Since 2016, she has been on the faculty at Virginia Tech, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2022. Professor Childs has published more than 40 publications, including articles in Nature, Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Journal of Theoretical Biology, and she has an impressive record of high profile invited talks. Her achievements have been recognised by awards from Virginia Tech, NIH, NSF, and the Simons Foundation. In 2022, she was awarded an NSF Career Award.
In addition to her research achievements, Professor Childs also has a strong track record of mentoring and outreach at all levels. She has supervised a number of research projects ranging at the undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels and co-organised an AMS Mathematics Research Community program. She has also guest lectured at the Stanford Mathematics Camp, presented in Math Circles, and mentored a high school science fair project.
Response from Childs: I am honoured to receive the 2023-2024 Michler Memorial Prize and am greatly looking forward to returning to my alma mater Cornell to spend a semester focused on research. Many thanks to the Michler family, the AWM, and the Cornell Mathematics Department for the opportunity to interact with the outstanding mathematicians within the department, such as Dr Strogatz, as well as with those involved with quantitative applications to infectious disease across the university such as Dr Greischar and Dr Ellner.
2024-2025 Alexandra Seceleanu, University of Nebraska.
Citation: Dr Seceleanu works widely in commutative algebra with interests in both theoretical and computational aspects. Among her many interests are free resolutions of modules over Noetherian commutative rings and ordinary and symbolic powers of ideals, especially those ideals of interest in algebraic geometry. In addition to more conventional research contributions she has also made significant contributions to the computer algebra system Macaulay2, providing a further boost to this area. With this fellowship at Cornell University, Dr Seceleanu plans to collaborate with Irena Peeva. Her work also has significant overlap with that of Mike Stillman.
Dr Seceleanu received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011. She was then a postdoc and Edith T Hitz Research Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. She participated in the special semester at MSRI in 2012 as a Postdoctoral Research Member. In 2015 she joined the faculty of University of Nebraska as an Assistant professor and she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2021. Her work has been recognised with NSF grants.
In addition to her very impressive research contributions, Seceleanu has significant undergraduate research mentoring experience. Since 2020 she has served as a mentor for the Polymath REU supervising large groups of 20-23 undergraduates each summer on collaborative research.
Response from Seceleanu: I am deeply honoured to be the recipient of the Ruth I Michler Memorial Award. This recognition is not only a testament to my individual contributions, but also a reflection of the support and encouragement I have received from mentors, colleagues, and the mathematical community at large. I am excited about the opportunities this award presents for future collaborations with colleagues at Cornell University and look forward to the contributions this will bring to my research field, commutative algebra. I extend my sincere appreciation to the selection committee for their acknowledgment. I am also grateful to the Michler family, the AWM, and the Cornell Mathematics Department for providing this opportunity.