Last modified: Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Young IU mathematician receives Sloan fellowship
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb. 24, 2009
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A newly arrived mathematician to Indiana University has been named among 118 young scientists, economists and mathematicians as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow.
Ciprian Demeter, 33, will receive a $50,000 research grant from the Sloan Foundation, which since 1955 has made awards to young researchers having gone on to win a cumulative 38 Nobel Prizes and 14 Fields Medals, considered the highest honor in mathematics. Demeter had letters of support from two previous Fields Medal winners, Jean Bourgain of the Institute of Advanced Study and Terrence Tao of UCLA.
"Ciprian is a rising star in analysis and already a leader of his field," said Demeter's nominator, IU Department of Mathematics Chair James Davis. "I expect his impact only to increase as time goes by and I am convinced he will become a leader in the department. He is highly deserving of the Sloan Fellowship."
Established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., then president and chief executive officer of General Motors, the foundation makes grants in support of original research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and economics. The research fellowships specifically support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers who are "often at pivotal stages in their work," said foundation president Paul Joskow.
Demeter's research is in analysis and ergodic theory and he studies the long-term behavior of random systems. If you pump gas into an enclosed vacuum, Davis explained, ergodic theory studies the distribution of the gas particles in the enclosure over time.
"My research lies at the interface between harmonic analysis, ergodic theory and additive combinatorics," Demeter said. "I am mostly interested in using time-frequency methods to investigate multi-linear processes, such as singular integral operators and multi-linear ergodic averages."
Demeter was hired by IU in 2007 after receiving a doctorate degree in mathematics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and while doing post-doctoral work at UCLA. He immediately spent one year on leave to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., where Albert Einstein was a faculty member for more than 22 years. Demeter began teaching and working in the IU College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Mathematics as an assistant professor last fall.
"In addition to performing groundbreaking research, Ciprian is also very generous to younger researchers getting started in his and related subjects," Davis said. "Here at IU, he has already been spending considerable time with some of our graduate students in analysis and he has already organized an analysis seminar."
This summer Demeter will be among three researchers to lead a weeklong mathematics summer school at Snowbird Resort, Utah, for graduate and postdoctoral students on the subjects of harmonic analysis, Carleson theorems and multilinear analysis. The school is funded by the National Science Foundation and the American Mathematical Society.
To speak with Demeter, please contact Steve Chaplin, University Communications, at 812-856-1896, or stjchap@indiana.edu.
