Nina Zubrilina to Receive the 2020 Morgan Prize

Washington, DC - Nina Zubrilina is the recipient of the 2020 AMS-MAA-SIAM Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student for "her research in the areas of analysis and analytic number theory... characterized by her independent vision, her creativity, and her technical abilities."

The prize citation continues: "Zubrilina is described as a researcher with unusually mature vision, who has obtained beautiful and surprising results that shocked leading experts in the field. Zubrilina has written six papers and preprints (with more forthcoming), all solo authored, which makes her early contributions to several areas of mathematics all the more impressive. Her published papers appear in Discussiones Mathematicae and Discrete Mathematics with further papers under revision at the International Journal of Number Theory and International Mathematics Research Notices."

Zubrilina graduated from Stanford University with departmental honors and is now a PhD student in mathematics at Princeton University. She has been awarded the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the Hertz Foundation Graduate Fellowship, the NSF Graduate Fellowship, the Princeton Centennial Fellowship, and an honorable mention for the Alice T. Schafer Mathematics Prize.

It is a great honor and a privilege to receive the 2020 Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize. I want to thank Mrs. Morgan as well as the AMS, MAA, and SIAM for supporting and encouraging undergraduate mathematical education.

I am incredibly grateful to Professor Thomas Church for the colossal work he has done to support me and other underrepresented undergraduates in the Stanford math department. Learning and working with Professor Church was the most rewarding part of my undergraduate career, and his unwavering support and mentorship gave me the desire and confidence to continue doing math in graduate school.

I am very thankful to Joe Gallian for the two wonderful and prolific summers in the Duluth REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates), and his continued mentorship over the years. I would like to thank Henry Cohn for a very productive summer at Microsoft Research, and for contaminating me with his deep scientific curiosity about the world. Summer research experience was foundational to my decision to pursue a research career, and I am very thankful to Professor Gallian and Professor Cohn for creating such superb environments to try it out.

I want to thank my advisor Kannan Soundararajan, and all my excellent undergraduate professors and mentors, including but certainly not limited to Brian Conrad, Jacob Fox, Persi Diaconis, Daniel Bump, Lenya Ryzhik, Ravi Vakil, and Simon Rubinstein-Salzedo, as well as my mathematical friends and peers Ann Dmitrieva, Ben Gunby, Colin Defant, Tony Feng, and Levent Alpoge.

I would also like to thank all my educators at the Moscow High School #57, especially to Professors Sergeev, Gordin, and Timashev. The world-class mathematical education I got in this excellent school cemented my fascination with research mathematics.

Lastly, I want to give special thanks to my family. My parents have supported and advised me every step of the way, and I am so very grateful to have them.

Nina Zubrilina earned her undergraduate honors math degree at Stanford University. As an undergraduate, she participated in the Duluth REU twice and spent a summer at Microsoft Research New England. Nina Zubrilina is currently pursuing a PhD in mathematics at Princeton University. Apart from mathematical research, she enjoys playing music, making films and writing film scores, lifting, and reading.

Receiving Honorable Mention are Mehtaab Sawhney, MIT, David Stoner, who is a PhD student Stanford University after graduating from Harvard University, and Ashwin Sah, MIT, jointly; and Murilo Corato Zanarella, a PhD student at MIT who graduated from Princeton University.

The AMS-MAA-SIAM Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student is awarded annually to an undergraduate student (or students for joint work) for outstanding research in mathematics. Any student who was enrolled as an undergraduate in December at a college or university in the United States or its possessions, Canada, or Mexico is eligible for the prize.

The prize recipient's research need not be confined to a single paper; it may be contained in several papers. However, the paper (or papers) to be considered for the prize must be completed while the student is an undergraduate. Publication of research is not required.

The 2020 prize will be awarded Thursday, January 16 during the Joint Prize Session at the 2020 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Denver.