By
Assistant Professor of Mathematics Maksym Fedorchuk has been awarded a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Fedorchuk is among the outstanding US and Canadian researchers chosen this year to receive the fellowships, which are given to early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars among the next generation of scientific leaders.
“I am honored to receive this recognition from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,” said Fedorchuk. “The Sloan Fellowship will allow me to devote more time to my research and to collaborate with my colleagues at BC and at other universities.”
Fedorchuk works in the field of algebraic geometry, focusing in particular on moduli spaces, which map or portray a certain set of objects, such as a line, a curve, a plane or a cylinder. These spaces are constructed by algebraic geometers by using geometric invariant theory, another area of Fedorchuk’s research.
His selection marks the third Sloan fellowship for a mathematics faculty member in the last two years. Last year, assistant professors Joshua E. Greene and David Treumann received Sloan fellowships. Assistant Professor Dawei Chen, who also specializes in algebraic geometry, was recently awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
“I’m pleased to learn that the Sloan Foundation has identified Maksym as one of the nation’s most promising young mathematicians,” College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean David Quigley said. “This is just the latest confirmation of the ascending quality and reputation of our group in algebraic geometry.”
Fedorchuk joined the BC faculty in 2012. Prior to his arrival, he was an assistant professor at Columbia University. He earned his PhD in Mathematics at Harvard and his bachelor’s degree from MIT. The National Science Foundation has funded his research.
Fedorchuk has helped to organize algebraic geometry workshops, such as the major international conference Algebraic Geometry Northeast Series held at BC last October, said Professor of Mathematics Robert G. Meyerhoff, who nominated Fedorchuk for the Sloan award.
“Maksym is an extremely strong algebraic geometer who has solved problems about some of the most fundamental objects in mathematics,” said Meyerhoff. “His work shows impressive insight, creativity, and technical strength.”
Administered and funded by the Sloan Foundation, the fellowships are awarded in eight scientific fields—chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, evolutionary and computational molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences, and physics. Fellows receive $50,000 to be used to further their research.
For a complete list of winners, see www.sloan.org/sloan-research-fellowships/2014-sloan-research-fellows