Past Member Svitlana Mayboroda named 2023 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate
Svitlana Mayboroda, past von Neumann Fellow in the Institute's School of Mathematics (2018, 2021) has been named the 2023 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Physical Sciences & Engineering. Blavatnik National Awards honor the nation’s most innovative young scientists and engineers, celebrating the past accomplishments and future potential of faculty members under the age of 42.
In the award citation, Mayboroda, who currently serves as a McKnight Presidential and Northrop Professor in the University of Minnesota's School of Mathematics, is praised for having developed an elegant new mathematical theory to understand electronic waves. Alongside her collaborators, she invented a technique known as localization landscape theory, which solves long-standing problems in condensed matter physics, explaining why waves do not propagate in complex or disordered materials. Mayboroda’s groundbreaking work is leading to improvements in crucial technologies like LED lighting, semiconductors, and solar cells.
Each of the Blavatnik winners across three disciplinary categories, including Mayboroda, will be presented with a medal at the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Ceremony on September 19, 2023. At this ceremony, Mayboroda will join a distinguished list of IAS Blavatnik Laureates. This includes Guy Rothblum, past Visitor in the School of Mathematics (2009–11, 2021) and Ronen Eldan, past Visitor (2021) and von Neumann Fellow (2021–22) in the same School. Rothblum and Eldan won the Israel Awards in Physical Sciences & Engineering in 2020 and 2021 respectively. June Huh, past Veblen Fellow (2014–17) and Visiting Professor (2017–20) in the School of Mathematics, is another IAS-affiliated recipient. He was named the Blavatnik Post-doc Regional Award Winner in 2017.
To learn more about Mayboroda and her work, which is situated at the intersection of partial differential equations, harmonic analysis, and geometric measure theory, watch her installment of our Paths to Math series on YouTube.
