Prestigious awards for BC math prof
Assistant Professor of Mathematics Spencer Leslie has been selected for two prestigious professional awards, a Sloan Research Fellowship and a Von Neumann Fellowship, only months after having won a coveted National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
Leslie, who earned master’s and doctoral degrees in mathematics from Boston College, has been a member of the Mathematics faculty since 2022. His work focuses on automorphic forms, highly symmetrical functions or objects that play a significant role in various areas of mathematics, including number theory, representation theory, and algebraic geometry. One of his particular interests is the Langlands program, a set of conjectures connecting different areas of math.
The two-year $75,000 Sloan fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to early-career researchers “whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders,” according to the foundation, “and who have the potential to revolutionize their fields of study.” The funds may be used for any expense judged supportive of the fellow’s research including staffing, professional travel, lab expenses, equipment, or summer salary support.
Through the Von Neumann Fellowship, Leslie will spend the 2026-2027 academic year at the Mathematics Department of the Institute for Advanced Studies, a renowned center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry in Princeton, NJ, that has hosted eminent scholars such as Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, George F. Kennan, and Emmy Noether. He and his fellow von Neumann Fellows—the institute typically hosts up to eight a year—will participate in ongoing seminars and serve as mentors for post-docs.
“To be awarded two distinguished fellowships like this is an incredible honor,” said Leslie. “The Sloan Fellowships are very competitive: They require you to be nominated by your department and include external letters of support. The Institute for Advanced Studies, of course, has a distinguished reputation, and to be in a research environment like that is an exciting prospect.”
He added that the Sloan Fellowship will enable him to organize workshops and other professional development opportunities for BC mathematics graduate students.
“I hope that, as a result of the fellowships and grants my departmental colleagues and I have been fortunate to win, more graduate students will see BC as the place to go for mathematics,” he said.
Professor and Mathematics Department Chair Renato Mirollo offered praise for Leslie’s latest accomplishment. “This string of three major awards in a year’s period is truly impressive. We are delighted to see Spencer gain recognition for his groundbreaking research on the Langlands program and look forward to additional accolades as his research program develops and deepens going forward. It’s especially gratifying to me and my colleagues to see one of our own Ph.D. program alumni achieve such great success.”
James P. McIntyre Professor of Mathematics Sol Friedberg offered similar praise.
"Spencer Leslie is already responsible for a major program that will influence parts of number theory and representation theory for a generation," said Friedberg. "His development of relative endoscopy for symmetric spaces was frankly unexpected by most leaders in the field, and doing so has required an enormous range of new ideas. Speaking as his colleague as well as his former dissertation advisor, I am confident that this is only the beginning."