INDIANAPOLIS — The Purdue School of Science at IUPUI is proud to announce Distinguished Professor Alexander Its has received the Eisenbud Professorship at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI).
The professorship was established in 2007 when Jim Simons gave $5 million dollars from the Simons Foundation to create the Eisenbud Endowment. It honors renowned mathematician David Eisenbud who is currently the director of MSRI. The money is used to attract key senior researchers to spend a semester at MSRI.
Its will be joining other researchers from renowned universities in the United States and abroad including Harvard, Columbia, New York University, Courant Institute, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, and Technische Universität München.
“As you can see, our IUPUI is sitting in the same group as some of the best world schools. I believe this is a very good contribution to IUPUI visibility,” said Its.
He and others will run a semester-long program on what the MSRI considers a cutting-edge topic: Universality and Integrability in Random Matrix Theory and Interacting Particle Systems.
The program Its is involved in, the “Jimbo Program”, will be the only program hosted at MSRI in the fall, starting on August 16th and ending on December 17th. Usually, there are two programs at once, but because of the ongoing pandemic, it has been reduced to one.
Its works on the interface between math and physics and is one of the key figures in the theory of integrable systems and has been since the late 1970s. More specifically, his current research is concentrated on the asymptotic analysis of the matrix models and orthogonal polynomials via Riemann-Hilbert and isomondromy methods.
“In the course of my career, I have been fortunate to make some good contributions to the developments of both, integrable systems theory and the theory of random matrices,” said Its.
“We congratulate Dr. Its on this high honor of receiving the Eisenbud Professorship in recognition for his work and in the area of mathematical physics. The MSRI is a premier world mathematical institution, attracting top experts in the field from all over the world. This award reflects well on the international reputation and visibility that Dr. Its and IUPUI have in mathematical research,” said Jeff Watt, Ph.D., the Chair of Mathematical Sciences.
This isn’t the first time a professor from the School of Science has been chosen for this prestigious appointment. Pavel Bleher, Ph.D., a Chancellor’s professor within the math department has also received the Eisenbud professorship and presented at MSRI.