Lesieutre from Eberly College of Science named Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow
Eberly College of Science’s John Lesieutre, assistant professor of mathematics, has been honored with a Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. This is a prestigious and competitive award given to promising young researchers in the early stages of their careers, in recognition of their research accomplishments.
Lesieutre is among 126 outstanding researchers selected from 57 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada to receive 2019 Sloan Research Fellowships.
According to the Sloan Foundation, the fellowships, awarded yearly since 1955 to tenure-track, early-career faculty in eight scientific fields, “honor early-career scholars whose achievements mark them as among the very best scientific minds working today.”
Lesieutre studies algebraic geometry and algebraic dynamics. His research focuses on bettering our mathematical understanding of the solutions to systems of polynomial equations in many variables. He also studies the process of iterating rational maps: If one starts with a number, plugs it in to a rational function, and then repeatedly plugs the result into the same rational function, what can be said about the outcome? Lesieutre's work merges "classical" techniques from the 19th century with modern methods in algebraic and arithmetic geometry. His work has led to the resolution of several open problems, including providing the first example of a set of polynomial equations whose solution set has infinitely many different symmetries.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Lesieutre was a research assistant professor from 2015 to 2018 at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 2014 to 2015. He earned a doctoral degree in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014 and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at Harvard University in 2009.
Candidates for Sloan Research Fellowships are nominated by peer scientists and the Fellows are selected by an independent panel of senior scholars for their "research accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become a leader in his or her field." Winners receive a two-year, $70,000 fellowship to further their research.
"The Sloan Research Fellows represent the very best science has to offer," said Sloan President Adam Falk. "The brightest minds, tackling the hardest problems, and succeeding brilliantly - Fellows are quite literally the future of 21st-century science."
Click for more information about the Sloan Research Fellowships.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit grant-making institution based in New York City. Established in 1934, the foundation makes grants in support of original research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics.