The Math+X: Encouraging Interactions program, through matching grants for endowment, created joint Chairs, each shared equally between a mathematics department and a partner department. The grants include substantial operating funds to support activities shared between the two departments.
François Baccelli, University of Texas at Austin: Simons Chair in Mathematics and Electrical and Computer Engineering
François Baccelli is the Simons Chair in Mathematics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, and head of the Simons Center on Communication, Information and Network Mathematics. He is an expert of stochastic network theory and communication network modeling and his research focuses on the interface of applied mathematics with communications, information theory and network sciences.
Outside of the academic setting, Baccelli has worked on projects ranging from research on access networks with French telecommunications company Alcatel, investigating network inference with Sprint Corporation in the U.S.
Baccelli received his Doctorat d’Etat from the Université de Paris-Sud in 1983, where he wrote his thesis on probabilistic models for distributed systems. Before joining University of Texas at Austin, Baccelli’s research focused on network theory at Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique (INRIA) in Paris. He also held an academic appointment in computer science at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.
Prior to that, he served as head of the computer and network performance evaluation research group at INRIA Sophia Antipolis and was professor of applied mathematics at the Ecole Polytechnique. He has held visiting positions at the University of Maryland, Bell Laboratory’s mathematics center, Stanford University, Eindhoven University as a Eurandom Chair, Heriot Watt University as an Honorary Professor, University of California, Berkeley as a Miller Professor, and the Isaac Newton Institute at the University of Cambridge, where he co-organized the 2010 program on Stochastic Processes and Communication Sciences. In 2005, Baccelli was elected as a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
Emmanuel Candès, Stanford University: The Barnum-Simons Chair in Mathematics and Statistics
Emmanuel Candès is the Barnum-Simons Chair in Mathematics and Statistics at Stanford University, as well as a professor of mathematics, statistics and electrical engineering, and a member of the Institute of Computational and Mathematical Engineering. His research interests are in computational harmonic analysis, statistics, information theory, signal processing and mathematical optimization with applications to the imaging sciences, scientific computing and inverse problems. Prior to his appointment as a Simons Chair, Candès was the Ronald and Maxine Linde Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University in 1998.
Candès has received numerous awards throughout his career, most notably the 2006 Alan T. Waterman Medal – the highest honor presented by the National Science Foundation – which recognizes the achievements of scientists who are no older than 35, or not more than seven years beyond their doctorate. Other honors include the 2005 James H. Wilkinson Prize in Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing awarded by the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), the 2008 Information Theory Society Paper Award, the 2010 George Pólya Prize awarded by SIAM, the 2011 Collatz Prize awarded by the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM), the 2012 Lagrange Prize in Continuous Optimization awarded jointly by the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS) and Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), and the 2013 Dannie Heineman Prize presented by the Academy of Sciences at Göttingen. He has given over 50 plenary lectures at major international conferences, not only in mathematics and statistics, but also in several other areas including biomedical imaging and solid-state physics. In 2014, Candès was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Maarten de Hoop, Rice University: Simons Chair in Computational and Applied Mathematics and Earth Science
Maarten de Hoop joined Rice University on July 1, 2015, as the Simons Chair in Computational and Applied Mathematics and Earth Science. His research interests are in inverse problems, microlocal analysis and computation, and applications in exploration and global seismology and geodynamics. de Hoop is also a visiting faculty member at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, has been on the faculty of Purdue University and Colorado School of Mines, and was a senior research scientist and program leader with Schlumberger Gould Research Center. De Hoop has been a scientific advisor with Corporate Science and Technology Projects, Total American Services, Inc., since 2010. He received his Ph.D. in technical sciences from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands in 1992.
Over the last 15 years, de Hoop has received significant research support from the energy industry. At Purdue, de Hoop founded the Geo-Mathematical Imaging Group, an industry-university consortium project. He is a member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the American Mathematical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, from which he received the J. Clarence Karcher Award, and the Institute of Physics, where he has been a fellow since 2001.
As the Simons Chair, he has continued to work to promote interaction between mathematicians and scholars from other disciplines, and collaboration among academia and industry.
Yoichiro Mori, University of Pennsylvania: Calabi-Simons Chair in Mathematics and Biology
Yoichiro Mori joined the University of Pennsylvania in 2019 as the Calabi-Simons Chair in Mathematics and Biology. Mori received his M.D. from the University of Tokyo in 2002 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University in 2006. After postdoctoral work at the University of British Columbia, he was a faculty member at the University of Minnesota from 2008 until his move to the University of Pennsylvania.
Mori’s research interests are in mathematical biophysics and physiology, and applied and numerical analysis. His work ranges from biofluid mechanics and cell motility to ionic electrodiffusion and electrophysiology. Some of his projects have been in collaboration with experimental scientists, while other projects have focused on mathematical foundations. His earlier work on the numerical analysis of problems in biofluid mechanics was recognized by the Leslie Fox prize in Numerical Analysis.
As the Calabi-Simons Chair, he will continue to work to promote interaction between biomedical scientists and mathematicians.