Scientific Advisory Panel
The Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) works in conjunction with the Directorate to provide scientific leadership to the Institute and to support the advancement of the Institute's scientific endeavours. The SAP, which is chaired by the Director, includes the Deputy Director and a rotating membership of at least seven distinguished mathematicians from Canada and abroad. The Panel meets twice a year (spring and fall) and makes recommendations to the Board of Directors on the selection of thematic and focus programs, workshops and conferences, summer schools, and special lecture series.
Members 2026-27
| Caucher Birkar | Tsinghua University |
| Kevin Buzzard | Imperial College London |
| Rupert Frank | University of Munich |
| Aliana Fraser | University of British Columbia |
| Alice Guionnet | CNRS |
| Deirdre Haskell | Fields Institute |
| Miranda Holmes-Cerfon | University of British Columbia |
| Patrick Ingram | Fields Institute |
| Barbara Niethammer | Univerity of Bonn |
| He Oh | Yale University |
| Gopal Prasad | University of Michigan, Emeritus |
| Eric Vanden-Eijnden | Courant Institute, NYU |
| Karen Vogtmann | University of Warwick |
| Jun-cheng Wei | University of British Columbia |
| Maciej Zworski | University of California, Berkeley |
Caucher Birkar was awarded the Fields Medal in 2018 “for his proof of the boundedness of Fano varieties and contributions to the minimal model program.”
Birkar is perhaps best known for the development of new techniques and tools for understanding the birational geometry of algebraic varieties and for settling several long-standing problems in the field. In particular, his work has helped prove that all algebraic varieties can be reduced to one of three basic types through birational transformations, bringing order to the associated infinite zoo of polynomial equations. Further he showed that Fano varieties form a neat family that can be defined by a small number of parameters.
His work covers a broad range of topics and classification problems in birational geometry including minimal models, flips, Fano and Calabi-Yau varieties, singularities, generalized pairs, moduli theory and positive characteristic geometry.
Classification is a theme that has also played out in Birkar’s personal life. His name, which he changed to reflect his challenging path to academic success, can be interpreted as “immigrant mathematician” or “explorer mathematician” in Kurdish. His mathematical abilities landed him at the University of Tehran. He did his graduate studies at the University of Nottingham, UK.
Birkar’s lived experiences, and notable contributions, make him an important advocate for the role of education and scientific research in improving people's lives and building a better future.
Kevin Buzzard is an algebraic number theorist at Imperial College London. He was awarded a Whitehead Prize by the London Mathematical Society in 2002 for "his distinguished work in number theory", and the society's Senior Berwick Prize in 2008. He gave a plenary lecture at the 2022 ICM on the topic of computer theorem provers. He is currently working on a formalization of the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.
Rupert Frank (University of Munich): Rupert works on problems in analysis, calculus of variations and mathematical physics. He received his PhD degree in 2007 from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. After a postdoctoral internship and an assistant professorship at Princeton, in 2013 he became professor at Caltech and in 2016 at LMU Munich, where he holds a chair in analysis and applied mathematics. He was an invited speaker at the 2022 International Congress of Mathematics as well as at the 2021 European Congress of Mathematics.
Aliana Fraser is Professor of Mathematics at the University of British Columbia. She received her BSc from the University of Toronto and her PhD in Mathematics from Stanford University. She was a Courant Instructor at the Courant Institute (NYU) and a Tamarkin Assistant Professor at Brown University before joining the faculty at the University of British Columbia in 2002. Her research interests include differential geometry and geometric analysis. She was awarded the 2012 Krieger Nelson Prize and the 2021 Cathleen Synge Morawetz Prize from the Canadian Mathematical Society, is a 2026 ICM Section Speaker, and is a Fellow of the AMS and CMS. She serves on several editorial boards, including Canadian Journal of Mathematics, Canadian Mathematical Bulletin, Journal of Geometric Analysis, and Archiv der Mathematik, and served on the AARMS Scientific Review Panel from 2021-2025.
Alice Guionnet works in the field of probability theory and statistical mechanics. She is particularly known for her contributions to large random matrices. She obtained her PhD in 1995, after which she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at New York University for one year. She is currently a research director at ENS Lyon and was a professor of mathematics at MIT from 2012 to 2016. She has received the Oberwolfach Prize, the Rollo Davidson Prize, the Doisteau-Blutet Prize, the Loeve Prize, and the Blaise Pascal Medal. She has been elected to the Academia Europaea, the French Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Deirdre Haskell, Director, was born in Philadelphia, PA, USA in 1963. She moved to England in 1974, where she went to school and university, completing her BA at Oxford University in 1984. She moved back across the Atlantic to pursue a PhD at Stanford University, awarded in 1990, and back once more for a postdoctoral fellowship at Queen Mary College of the University of London. A final transatlantic move took her to the College of the Holy Cross in her first tenure-track position. Another country then beckoned, and she moved to McMaster University in Canada in 2000, where she was promoted to full professor and served several terms as associate chair (undergraduate) of the Mathematics and Statistics department. Dr Haskell’s research in model-theoretic algebra has been supported by grants from the NSF and NSERC. During her career, she has organised many international conferences, including some at the Fields Institute. She has served on committees of the Association for Symbolic Logic, on the editorial board of the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, and is currently a managing editor of Math Logic Quarterly. When not doing mathematics, she enjoys skiing, sailing, and hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.
Miranda Holmes-Cerfon is an associate professor of mathematics at the University of British Columbia. She works on problems in applied mathematics, and aims at developing models and algorithms to address problems in science and engineering. Areas of mathematical interest include stochastic analysis, computational statistical mechanics, multiscale methods, computational geometry, and rigidity theory. Areas of scientific interest include materials science, additive manufacturing, soft-matter physics, fluid dynamics, and ecology. She is the recipient of a Department of Energy Early Career Award and a Sloan Fellowship.
Patrick Ingram is the Deputy Director of the Fields Institute. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at York University, where he most recently served as Graduate Program Director. His research is in number theory, and in particular diophantine geometry. His specific interests lie in the arithmetic of elliptic curves and surfaces, and in the theory of dynamical systems over global fields. In his spare time he enjoys spending time with his family at the cottage, kayaking and fishing on the lake, and exploring the city with his children.
Barbara Niethammer is a Professor at the Institute for Applied Mathematics at the University of Bonn. Her research focuses on the analysis of problems with multiple scales and high -dimensional dynamical systems as well as on the study of long-time behaviour in models of mass aggregation. Before moving to Bonn she held postdoctoral positions at the Courant Institute, Bonn and Leipzig, and faculty positions at the Humboldt-University of Berlin and the University of Oxford.
She was invited sectional speaker at the ICM 2014, Emmy-Noether lecturer at the annual DMV meeting in 2019, plenary speaker at the SIAM annual meeting in 2020 and received the von-Mises-Prize of GAMM and the Whitehead prize of the LMS.
Hee Oh is the Abraham Robinson Professor of Mathematics at Yale University. Her work bridges dynamics, Lie groups, geometry, and number theory, showing how symmetry and motion of shapes in curved spaces uncovers hidden patterns—even when those spaces stretch out endlessly. After earning her Ph.D. from Yale in 1997, she held faculty appointments at Princeton, Caltech, and Brown before returning to Yale in 2013. Her contributions have been recognized with the AMS Satter Prize (2015), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2017), the Ho-Am Prize in Science (2018), and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2024). She is a plenary speaker at the 2026 ICM. She previously served as a vice president of the American Mathematical Society.
Gopal Prasad (University of Michigan, Emeritus): Gopal works on Lie and algebraic groups, arithmetic groups, geometry of locally symmetric spaces, and the representation theory of reductive p-adic groups. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Bombay (now Mumbai). After visiting appointments at Yale and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he joined the faculty at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, where he stayed for 20 years, eventually serving as Dean of the School of Mathematics. In 1990 he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Kyoto. In 1992 he was recruited to the University of Michigan where he has remained ever since. In 1998 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 2006 a Humboldt Senior Research Award. He is a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the American Mathematical Society. In 2008, Prasad became the first Raul Bott Professor of Mathematics at Michigan.
Karen Vogtmann is a professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick, who works mostly in the areas of topology and geometric group theory. She is known for introducing new topological and geometric models for the study of infinite discrete groups, and has had a particularly strong influence on the modern approach to automorphism groups of free groups. Her work has connections to fields as diverse as the study of phylogenetic trees and perturbative quantum field theory, as well as to other areas of mathematics such as algebraic K-theory, homotopy theory, and tropical algebraic geometry. Professor Vogtmann's honors and awards include the Polya prize of the London Mathematical Society, a Humboldt Research Prize, an honorary degree from the University of Copenhagen, an invited address at the 2006 International Congress of Mathematicians, and a plenary address at the 2016 European Congress of Mathematicians. She is a member of Academia Europa, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society. Before relocating to England in 2014 she was the Goldwin Smith Professor of Mathematics at Cornell.
Jun-cheng Wei works in nonlinear partial differential equations and their applications in mathematical biology. He is a Canada Research Chair at UBC and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He received his PhD from Minnesota in 1994 and after some years at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, he joined UBC in 2012. He is a past speaker at the ICM and has also won the Jeffery-Williams Prize of the CMS. He has published close to 500 papers, some in leading journals including Annals, Inventiones, SIAM Review, CPAM, Duke, GAFA, Crelle and JEMS.
Maciej Zworski (UC Berkeley): Zworski works in partial differential equations, scattering theory and microlocal analysis. He received his PhD from MIT in 1989 and has been at Berkeley since 1998. He is Canadian and was briefly at the University of Toronto during 1995-1998. He is the Editor-in-chief of Pure and Applied Analysis and sits on the Editorial Boards of many journals. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, past speaker at the ICM, winner of the Sierpinski Medal, and has many other awards and recognitions. Zworski has an unusually broad knowledge of analysis and related applied fields. He has served on the SAP from 2009-2013.
