Irina Mitrea, professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics from 2016 to 2019, has been awarded a prestigious Simons Fellowship. The program, aimed at researchers in both mathematics and theoretical physics, provides funding for up to a semester-long research leave.
The goal of the Simons Fellowship is to allow recipients to focus solely on research for the sustained periods often necessary for significant advances. With the Simons Fellowship support, Mitrea plans to visit the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, Instituto de Ciencias Matematicas in Madrid, Uppsala University in Sweden, and the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics at Brown University.
Professor Mitrea, who recently received a three-year $180,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, is the first Temple University recipient of the award since its inauguration in 2012. “Irina is uniformly recognized throughout the mathematical community as a leader in her field of Harmonic Analysis and Partial Differential Equations,” explains Brian Rider, professor and current chair of the Mathematics Department. “This well-deserved award is just one more indication of importance of her work, and yet another reflection of the incredible strides our department has made over the course of the last decade.”
In 2015, Mitrea was elected as fellow of the American Mathematical Society “for contributions to partial differential equations and related fields as well as outreach to women and under-represented minorities at all educational levels.” Mitrea has been instrumental in developing the Mathematics Department’s growing outreach to young people, especially girls, through programs such as Sonia Kovalevsky Day, which encourages middle school girls to study mathematics and to consider mathematics-related careers. She is also part of the 2019 class of fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics.
The Simons Foundation’s mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences. Co-founded by Jim and Marilyn Simons, the foundation exists to support basic or discovery-driven scientific research undertaken in the pursuit of understanding the phenomena of our world.