Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences - PIMS

Sara Billey Professor of Mathematics and John Rainwater Faculty Fellow, University of Washington.

Sara Billey received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 1994 supported by the National Physical Science Consortium Fellowship, 1990-1994. She held an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship and UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship, before joining the Department of Applied Mathematics at MIT in 1998. While at MIT, she received the NSF CAREER Award, 2000-2006 and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers under the Clinton administration. She joined the faculty at the University of Washington in 2003. She is an inaugural fellow of the American Mathematical Society and received the Bergstrom Award for Art and Science 2018 with collaborator Timea Tihanyi. Her research interests include algebraic combinatorics, Lie theory, computational algebraic geometry, probability, experimental mathematics, complexity theory, fingerprint databases, discrete geometry and mathematical machine learning algorithms.

Derek Bingham, Professor or Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University.

Derek Bingham is a Professor of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Simon Fraser University. He completed his PhD in Statistics in 1999 with Randy Sitter at SFU on the design and analysis of fractional factorial split-plot experiments. After graduating, he moved to the Department of Statistics at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor. In 2003, he joined the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Simon Fraser as the Canada Research Chair in Industrial Statistics. The focus of his current research is on developing statistical methods for combining physical observations with large-scale computer simulators. This includes new methodology for Bayesian computer model calibration, emulation, uncertainty quantification and experimental design. His work is generally motivated by real-world applications. His recent collaborations have been with scientists at USA national laboratories (Argonne National Lab and Los Alamos National Lab) and also USA Department of Energy sponsored projects (Center for Radiative Shock Hydrodynamics; Center for Exascale Radiation Transport).

Anthony Bonato, Professor of Mathematics, Toronto Metropolitan University

Anthony Bonato is a Professor of Mathematics at Toronto Metropolitan University. His research is in graph theory, with applications to real-world complex networks and pursuit-evasion games. His research is supported by grants from NSERC, and he has won several awards for his research and graduate supervision. He currently serves on the Canadian Mathematical Society Board of Directors as Director-Ontario, the NSERC EDI Committee, and the AARMS Scientific Review Panel. Dr. Bonato has been a member of the PIMS SRP since 2023.

Dan Coombs, Professor of Mathematics and Department Head, University of British Columbia

Dan Coombs is a Professor of Mathematics and the Head of the Mathematics Department at the University of British Columbia. He obtained his PhD in 2001 from the University of Arizona, held a postdoctoral position at Los Alamos National Laboratories (2001-2003), and joined UBC in 2003. Prof. Coombs works in the field of computational immunology, addressing a wide range of problems in viral disease dynamics and HIV modelling, and in the dynamics of receptors on cell surfaces. In particular, he and his co-workers have recently developed innovative single particle tracking algorithms that have enabled improved and insightful interpretation of experimental data from cell biology.

Ellen Eischen, Professor of Mathematics, University of Oregon

Ellen Eischen is a professor of mathematics at the University of Oregon. While she has broad interests, her research especially focuses on number theory. Her research contributions especially concern algebraic and p-adic aspects of automorphic forms and L-functions. In addition to her research, Dr. Eischen also contributes significant efforts towards broadening participation in math and engaging with broader communities. She has created workshops to train faculty and students in principles of improvisation for engaging with broader audiences, organized the Creativity Counts exhibit at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art to share a creative side of math with the broader public, and developed the APAW workshop to facilitate diverse research collaborations. The impact of her museum-focused work continues both through her service on the Advisory Board of the newly forming Seattle Universal Math Museum and through the online version of Creativity Counts, which quickly became the JSMA's most visited virtual exhibit. Eischen serves on the editorial boards of Essential Number Theory and Research in Number Theory. In recognition of some of her contributions, she was recently named a Fellow of the AWM. Support for her activities has included an NSF CAREER Award, several other NSF research grants, and the Williams Fund.

C. Sinan Güntürk, Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University

C. Sinan Güntürk is a Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. He is also an affiliated faculty at the NYU Center for Data Science. He received his Ph.D. in 2000 from Princeton University and held postdoctoral positions at the Institute for Advanced Study and NYU. His research interests mainly center around efficient digital representations of analog signals. This subject draws on approximation theory, harmonic analysis, information theory, and occasionally on dynamical systems and number theory. Recently he has been involved in building a quantization theory for compressive sampling as well as for deep neural networks. Dr. Güntürk was the co-recipient of the Seventh Monroe H. Martin Prize in applied mathematics in 2005 and a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2006. He has been a member of the PIMS SRP since 2023.

Jonathan C. Mattingly, (Chair) James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Statistical Science, Duke University

Jonathan Christopher Mattingly received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Princeton University in 1998. He spent 4 years as a Szego assistant professor at Stanford University and a year as a member of the IAS in Princeton, before moving to Duke in 2003, where he is currently a Professor of Mathematics and of Statistical Science. His expertise is in the longtime behavior of stochastic system including randomly forced fluid dynamics, turbulence, stochastic algorithms used in molecular dynamics and Bayesian sampling, and stochasticity in biochemical networks. Since 2013 he has also been working to understand and quantify gerrymandering and its interaction of a region's geopolitical landscape. This has lead him to testify in a number of court cases including in North Carolina, which led to the NC congressional and both NC legislative maps being deemed unconstitutional and replaced for the 2020 elections. He is the recipient of a Sloan Fellowship and a PECASE CAREER award. He is also a fellow of the IMS and the AMS. He was awarded the Defender of Freedom award by Common Cause for his work on Quantifying Gerrymandering.

Rafe Mazzeo, Professor of Mathematics, Stanford University, Director - Park City Mathematics Institute

Rafe Mazzeo received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology in 1986. He worked as an instructor and assistant professor at Stanford University before moving to the University of Washington. He returned to Stanford as an Associate Professor in 1992 before becoming a Full professor in 1997, where he has also served as the Department Chair. His research interests include Linear and Nonlinear PDE (Geometric microlocal analysis and geometric scattering, Hodge and index theory, spectral geometry, curvature equations, etc.).

Robert McCann, Professor of Mathematics, University of Toronto

Robert McCann is a Professor of Mathematics and holds a Canada Research Chair in Mathematics, Economics, and Physics at the University of Toronto. He is a world leader in the field of optimal transportation, and has played a pioneering role in its rapid development since the mid 90’s. In particular, the notion of displacement convexity, introduced in his PhD thesis, lies behind many of the area’s myriad applications. His distinguished research record has been recognized with many prestigious awards, including an invited lecture at the 2014 International Congress of Mathematicians, election to the Royal Society of Canada in 2014, the 2017 Jeffery-Williams prize of the Canadian Mathematical Society, and the 2023 W.T. and Idalia Reid Prize of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Dr. McCann has been a member of the PIMS SRP since 2023.

Nilima Nigam, Professor of Mathematics, Simon Fraser University

Nilima Nigam is a Professor of Mathematics at Simon Fraser University. She received her Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Delaware in 1999. Her research interests are in the areas of PDE and numerical analysis, with applications in computational electromagnetics and micromagnetics. Specifically, she works on the development and analysis of numerical methods for exterior scattering problems, including FEM and integral equation methods. She is also interested in the use of computational techniques in material science and biology.

Stephanie Portet, Professor of Mathematics, University of Mantioba

Stephanie Portet is a Professor of Mathematics and the PIMS Site Director at the University of Manitoba. Her work is in the area of cellular biology, and more specifically, cytoskeletal networks. The organization of a cytoskeletal network is the main determinant of its cellular function. Prof. Portet's work involves a multidisciplinary approach encompassing different domains such as biophysics and mathematical biology. She is interested in models of the organization of networks and assembly of filaments composing those networks to characterize the determinants of their structures and mechanical properties. Deterministic and stochastic dynamical models are used; mathematical and computational analyses are conducted to characterize the transient and asymptotic behaviour of models. Her special interest is in the intermediate filament network.

Emily Riehl Professor of Mathematics, Johns Hopkins University

Emily Riehl is a Professor of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University working on higher category theory and homotopy type theory. She runs the Johns Hopkins Category Theory Seminar and is a co-organizer for the Homotopy Type Theory Electronic Seminar Talks. She is a co-host of the n-Category Café and was a founding board member of Spectra. She serves on the editorial boards for Homology, Homotopy, and Applications and Mathematical Logic Quarterly and will soon join the editorial board of the Bulletin of the AMS. Dr. Riehl has been a member of the PIMS SRP since 2023.