Two Young Math Faculty Win International Prizes

Lexing Ying awarded the Feng Kang Prize from the Chinese Academy of Science and Alessio Figalli awarded the Peccot-Vimont Prize 2011 of the College de France.

AUSTIN, Texas—Mathematician Lexing Ying has been awarded the Feng Kang Prize for Scientific Computing from the Chinese Academy of Science and Alessio Figalli has been awarded the Peccot-Vimont Prize 2011 and Cours Peccot 2012 of the College de France.

Ying, an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics, won the Feng Kang Prize for his significant contributions in fast algorithms in scientific computing. The prize has been awarded since 1995, and is awarded every other year to honor young Chinese scientists in China and abroad for their significant contributions in the broad areas of scientific computing.

Ying’s field of research is numerical analysis, and in particular the development, analysis and application of fast algorithms. Fast algorithms make it possible to solve many problems for which traditional techniques do not work. Ying develops and applies tools from a very broad range of mathematics and computer science. For example, he recently developed fast algorithms for the Helmholtz and Maxwell’s equations with solid theoretical foundation and with practical applications, for example, in seismology and electromagnetics. This has been an outstanding problem in computational linear algebra for decades.

Figalli joined the department in 2009 as a Harrington Faculty Fellow, and he is now a full professor.

The Peccot-Vimont Prize 2011 prize is given every year to one or two mathematicians under the age of 30 who have obtained outstanding results in pure or applied mathematics. Part of the prize is to deliver a series of lectures on his research at the College the France, the so-called "Cours Peccot."

Figalli’s research focuses on areas related to both analysis and geometry. One of his main fields of research is the theory of optimal transportation. This was introduced at the beginning of the 19th century, but has recently found important applications to many areas, such as Ricci flows in geometry, partial differential equations of evolution, image processing and optimal pricing. Figalli has contributed fundamental insights to the theory.

He also works on problems in the calculus of variations, for instance studying geometric and regularity properties of configurations modeling drops and crystals. More recently, he started working on regularity theory for elliptic partial differential equations, both of local and non-local type, and phase transition problems.