Song Song, a Chinese-born star in the mathematics world, arrived as a full-time professor at a university in eastern China after more than 10 years of research and teaching in the United States.
Prior to his new appointment, Sun was a professor in the mathematics department at the University of California, Berkeley. For his work, he has received multiple awards, including the Oswald Veblen Geometry Prize and the New Horizons Mathematics Prize.
Mr Sun is the latest in a series of IASM appointments from US universities. Luan Yongbin, a former University of Michigan geometer, was hired by the institute in 2021, and Harvard number theory expert Liu Yifei joined in 2022.
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Sun’s main research interests include differential geometry. Differential geometry is a branch of mathematics that studies the geometry of curves and surfaces in three-dimensional Euclidean space, and has a wide range of applications in everyday life, from medical imaging to computer vision.
Originally from Huaining County, Anhui Province, Sun entered the University of Science and Technology of China at just 15 years old. He received his PhD in geometry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2010 under the guidance of Chinese-American mathematician Chen Xiuxiong.
In 2014, one year after arriving as an assistant professor at Stony Brook University in New York, Sun was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship. This is one of the most competitive awards given to early-career researchers who have the potential to revolutionize their field of research.
Two years later, he received the New Horizons Prize in Mathematics for his “many groundbreaking contributions to complex differential geometry,” according to the prize selection committee.
Sun’s appointment is part of IASM’s aim to be a world-class mathematics centre.
“It is IASM’s dream and mission to become such a world-leading research hub. We still have a long way to go, but we are moving towards our goal,” Lee said in a university release. “We warmly welcome talented mathematicians from around the world to join our cause.”
Established in 2019, the institute is primarily funded by Zhejiang University, with support and donations from local governments.