Geordie Williamson Wins Award for Optimizing AI in Theoretical Mathematics

Geordie Williamson, Distinguished Visiting Professor (2020–21) in the School of Mathematics, has been announced as the recipient of the 2024 Max Planck–Humboldt Research Award. The honor is presented by the Max Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to recognize researchers with exceptional potential for the future. It aims to attract  innovative scientists from around the world to spend a designated period at a German higher education institution or research facility. 

The award will enable Williamson, who is based at The University of Sydney, to collaborate with scholars at the University of Bonn and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics. Together, they will address a range of mathematical problems using artificial intelligence.

Williamson's previous research has leveraged artificial neural networks to highlight previously unnoticed connections among numerous mathematical objects. Alongside his colleagues in Germany, he will continue to use AI to address a problem in knot theory, a branch of mathematics that, as the name suggests, studies the properties of knots. The problem can be illustrated by considering the difficulty in determining whether seemingly knotted structures, such as those that can be found in a string, are genuinely knotted or not. The key question is: when tension is applied to the ends of the string, does the knot maintain its form, or does it simply unravel? One of the project's objectives is to develop a straightforward method for identifying these cases. 

By optimizing AI's pattern recognition capabilities and data processing power, the team hopes to streamline their research process and potentially uncover novel perspectives or relationships within knot theory. This application of AI in mathematical research exemplifies how such technology can be harnessed to tackle complex theoretical problems.

Read the award citation on the Max Planck website.

Find out more about Williams's research on The University of Sydney website.