ASI Lecturers from USA
Mario Bonk received his Ph.D. from the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany in 1988. In the 1990s, he spent extended periods in the U.S. first supported by the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation and later by a Heisenberg Fellowship of the German Science Foundation. He accepted a professorship at the University of Michigan in 2002 and at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2012. Currently, Dr. Bonk is serving as the Chair of the Department of Mathematics at UCLA. Previously, he has served as Graduate Vice Chair at UCLA. He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid (2006). Dr. Bonk's research interests lie at the interface of geometry and analysis, including classical complex analysis, the geometry of negatively curved spaces, geometric group theory, dynamics of rational maps, and analysis on metric spaces. His research has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation since 2002.
Marcelo Disconzi received his Ph.D. from Stony Brook University in 2012. He is currently an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Vanderbilt University. In 2018, he was awarded the prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship provided by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, which is one of the highest recognitions that can be given to early-career academics in the U.S. and Canada. Dr. Disconzi has been continuously supported by the National Science Foundation, having been awarded grants from both the mathematics and the physics divisions, reflecting his contributions at the intersection of mathematics and physics. Dr. Disconzi has published over 40 papers in peer-reviewed journals, many of them in the best journals in his field of expertise. Two recent notable results by Dr. Disconzi and collaborators are the first proof of local well-posedness for a relativistic fluid with a physical vacuum boundary (which provides the basic model of star evolution) and the first construction of a causal, stable, and local well-posed theory of relativistic viscous fluids (which is important for the study of neutron star mergers). This latter result provided a solution to an 80-year-old problem that goes back to the work of Eckart and Landau in the 1940s.
Svetlana Jitomirskaya is a mathematical physicist, currently a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Irvine/Georgia Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Moscow State University (1991). She is known for her pioneering work on non-perturbative quasiperiodic localization. Dr. Jitomirskaya she was awarded the Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics (2005). Other honors include a Joint AMS-MAA address in San Antonio, TX (2006) and a plenary talk at the International Congress of Mathematical Physics (2006) and invited talk at the International Congress of Mathematicians (2002) and International Congress of Mathematical Physics in London (2000). She was a Sloan Fellow (1996-2000) and UCI Chancellor's Fellow (2012-2015). Her recent honors include Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research (2018), membership in American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2018), Simons Fellow in Mathematics (2020), Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics (2020), and membership in the National Academy of Sciences (2022). She is an invited plenary speaker at the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians. Svetlana is the recepient of the inaugural Olga Alexandrovna Ladyzhenskaya Prize for her groundbreaking work in mathematical physics awarded on July 2, 2022.
Norman Levenberg is an expert in pluripotential theory, multidimensional complex dynamics, Kahler geometry, random polynomials and random holomorphic sections of line bundles and has authored more than 80 publications in these areas. He is currently a Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has been Assistant Professor at Wellesley College (1985-1992) and Associate Professor at the University of Auckland (1992-2004) and has held several long-term visiting positions including Syracuse University (2001-2002), Laval University (2008-2009) and Université d'Aix Marseille (Spring 2012). Dr. Levenberg is a researcher with strong international collaborations. He was an invited speaker at over 25 conferences/workshops abroad in the past six years. Dr. Levenberg obtained his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1984.
Mikhail Lyubich is one of the founders of modern one-dimensional dynamics, having in many ways shaped the development of the field. He received his B.S. in Mathematics from Kharkov State University in Ukraine (1980) and Ph.D. in Mathematics from Tashkent State University in Uzbekistan (1984). Currently, he is a Professor of Mathematics at SUNY Stony Brook and the Director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences at Stony Brook. In 2002-2008 he was a Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto. In his Ph.D. thesis, devoted to holomorphic dynamics, he proved fundamental results on ergodic theory and structural stability of rational maps; in particular, the existence of the measure of maximal entropy of a rational map, now known as Lyubich measure. As a sought-after speaker, he was one of the 21 plenary speakers at the International Congress of Mathematicians (2014).
Among his fundamental results in one-dimensional dynamics is his proof in the 1990s of hyperbolicity of renormalization for unimodal maps.
He was awarded a Sloan Fellowship (1991), Guggenheim Fellowship (2002), and Jeffery-Williams Prize (2010). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2022).
Sergei Merenkov received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2003. From 2003 to 2006 he was a post-doc at the University of Michigan, where his mentor was Prof. Mario Bonk. In 2012 he became a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2016 he became a tenured Full Professor at the City College of New York and in 2015 he became a Doctoral Faculty at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Dr. Merenkov also holds a visiting position at the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at Stony Brook University. Dr. Merenkov's research interests are in Fractal Geometry and Dynamics. The most recent advances in his research come from the use of dynamical methods, particularly ones used in the dynamics of post-critically finite rational maps, to study the geometry of fractals, such as their quasi-symmetry groups. His research has been supported by multiple NSF grants.
Barry Simon is an eminent mathematical physicist. He has authored more than 400 publications in mathematics and physics. His work has focused on broad areas of mathematical physics and analysis covering quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, Brownian motion, random matrix theory, non-relativistic quantum mechanics in electric and magnetic fields and random and ergodic Schrdinger operators. Dr. Simon received his Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University (1970), where he subsequently was a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Physics (1970-1981). Since 1981, he has been a Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at California Institute of Technology. His many honors include Sloan Fellowship (1972-76), Medal of International Academy of Atomic and Molecular Science (1981), Stampacchia Prize (1982), Guggenheim Fellowship (1988-1989) and Poincar\'e Prize (2012), Bolyai Prize of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2015), Steele Prize for Lifetime Acheivment (2016) and Dannie Heineman Prize in Mathematical Physics (2018).
Steve Zelditch is Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Mathematics at Northwestern University. He obtained his bachelor's degree from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981. Dr. Zelditch was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University before moving to Northwestern University in 2010. He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (2002) and has twice been an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematical Physics. He gave Current Developments in Mathematics lectures at Harvard University in 2009 and an AMS Invited Address at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in 2005. He was elected a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012. In 2013 Dr. Zelditch was awarded Stefan Bergman Prize, which he shared with Xiaojun Huang of Rutgers University: “Steve Zelditch is recognized for his ever expanding the horizon of applications of the Bergman kernel. From his semi-classical viewpoint and with his strikingly original vision, he has found deep and diverse relations between the Bergman kernel and many other areas, including complex geometry, probability, and mathematical physics. In the process, he has infused the whole subject of the Bergman kernel with a new vitality”.
Efim Zelmanov is the Rita L. Atkinson Chair in Mathematics at University of California, San Diego. He is an expert in Jordan Algebras and one of the top mathematicians in the world. His awards and distinctions include: Fields Medal (1994); fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Andre Aizenstadt Prize; Foreign Member of the Korean Academy of Science; member of the National Academy of Sciences; Fellow of the American Mathematical Society; and College de France Medal. Dr. Zelmanov received his PhD (1980) and M.S. (1977) in Mathematics from Novosibirsk State University. He previously was a Professor at Yale University (1995-2002), University of Chicago (1994-1995), University of Wisconsin-Madison (1990-1994) and Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of Russia (1980-present).
Hong-Kun Zhang is a leading expert in dynamical systems, especially in the study of statistical properties of chaotic billiards and has authored over 45 publications. Her passion for billiard systems is also reflected in her devotion to use mathematical tools to address applied problems in physics, chemical engineering, financial mathematics, and complex networks. She is a recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER Award (2012-2017) and Simons Fellows in Mathematics (2015-2016). Dr. Zhang obtained her Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2005. She has mentored more than 6 REU students, 4 Ph.D. students, and 3 postdoctoral fellows. Dr. Zhang's main education goals are outreach to women and underrepresented groups in mathematics, and to provide them with a strong network of support. Even though opportunities for women in mathematics have never been greater, many female undergraduate and high school students are unaware of career opportunities in mathematics. She is committed to making mathematics attractive and accessible to female students.
