Saarbrücken mathematician appointed to prestigious visting research professorship in the USA

Photo: Youtube –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjYJAob0yO8

Prof. Frank Olaf-Schreyer has been appointed to a research professorship at the world-renowned Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute on the campus of the University of California in Berkeley. From 2002 until his retirement in the summer semester of 2023, mathematician Schreyer held a bridge professorship for mathematics and computer science at Saarland University, where he conducted research into algebraic geometry and algorithmic algebraic geometry. As part of the Mirzakhani Research Professorship, which he will now take up from January until May 2024, he will focus on commutative algebra.

“I am honored by this appointment and am really looking forward to the challenge,” says the Saarbrücken mathematician Schreyer. The Mirzakhani Professorship is named for Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017). Maryam Mirzakhani grew up in Tehran where she obtained her BSc in mathematics from the Sharif University of Technology. She then came to the US where she earned her PhD in 2004 from Harvard University. She held professorships at Princeton University and Stanford University as well as a fellowship at the Clay Mathematics Institute. Her research topics included Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry. In 2014, the International Mathematical Union (IMU) awarded her the Fields Medal, one of the highest honors in mathematics. She also served on the Scientific Advisory Committee from 2012-2016 and was a research professor and program organizer at what is now the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute.

The Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute was founded in 1982 as the “Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI)”. It is among the world’s leading institutions for mathematics research and, according to its own information, has been supported since its origins by the National Science Foundation (NSF), joined by other government agencies, private foundations and corporations, individual donors, and over 115 academic sponsor institutions in the United States and around the globe. In 2022, the institute changed its name to the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute after receiving a $70 million gift from the two now name-giving donor families.

/pzs

Background Saarland Informatics Campus:
900 scientists (including 400 PhD students) and approx. 2500 students from more than 80 nations make the Saarland Informatics Campus (SIC) one of the leading locations for computer science in Germany and Europe. Four world-renowned research institutes, namely the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems,  and the Center for Bioinformatics along with  Saarland University and its three departments and 24 degree programs, together  cover the entire spectrum of computer science.