ICTP Associate Honored

ICTP Associate Meysam Nassiri has been invited to deliver one of the main lectures at the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Speaking at ICM is of great importance and prestige in the mathematics community, and ICM speakers are commonly regarded as the current and future leaders of their mathematics fields.

Nassiri is a mathematics professor at the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences, Iran. His research focuses on dynamical systems, ergodic theory, and their interactions with topology, geometry and mechanics. His lecture at ICM, which will be delivered jointly with Andres Koropecki from Universidade Federal Fluminense in Brazil, will be around some of the important developments in the study of the dynamical systems on 2-dimensional surfaces using the methods and ideas from topology.

ICM is organized every 4 years and is the most important gathering of mathematicians from around the world. Some of the most prestigious prizes in mathematics, including the Fields Medal, the Nevanlinna Prize, the Gauss Prize, and the Chern Medal, are awarded at the conference. The next ICM will be organized by the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA) and held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 1 to 9 August 2018.

Nassiri has been an ICTP Associate since 2016, part of a program that awards support to scientists in developing countries for a period of six years. The support enables Associates to visit ICTP for three, month-long visits for collaborations and research, and Nassiri will be making his first visit in June of this year. Associateship is only one piece of the successful collaboration between Nassiri and mathematicians at ICTP, where work on dynamical systems, ergodic theory, and topology is well represented by Stefano Luzzato and several postdoctoral fellows. Luzzatto recently returned from visiting Nassiri and his colleagues in Iran, where they discussed further collaborations and joint activities with ICTP.  Nassiri will also be a co-director of an ICTP-sponsored two-week school to be held in Iran in 2018. 

Given the limited number of talks and the considerable competition between different mathematical societies seeking a voice at ICM, the honor of giving one of the plenary or invited lectures at ICM is high. It is widely considered one of the most significant achievements in the mathematical life of any distinguished mathematician, and ICTP is very proud of Nassiri.

Following Cumrun Vafa (distinguished Iranian physicist and professor at Harvard University), Freydoon Shahidi (distinguished professor of Perdue University), and Maryam Mirzakhani (professor at Stanford University), Nassiri will be the fourth Iranian to deliver a plenary or invited lecture at ICM. He is the first mathematician based in Iran to achieve this honor.

The full list of plenary and invited speakers at ICM, going back to the first meeting in 1897, is available at the webpage of International Mathematical Union (IMU).