Congratulations to Professor Alex Fink who has been awarded a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) for the 2024/25 academic year.
This prestigious membership allows for focused research and the free and open exchange of ideas among an international community of scholars at one of the foremost centres for intellectual inquiry.
During his stay, Alex will conduct research on 'Extensions of matroid Hodge theory' which relates to his EPSRC Standard Grant (EP/X001229/1) and the IAS programme. Alex has several papers planned, notably three on; matroid tautological bundles, generalisations of the 'matroid Schubert variety', and wonderful compactifications of arrangements of divisors.
Alex says 'spending four months in the company of colleagues working on the same problems as I am will be very energising. There will be a number of old friends there, as well as new faces. The last time I met a large part of this community collected was at a week-long Banff International Research Station conference in March 2023, and the conversations started there led to a paper with Andy Berget that I'm finishing writing now that proves a conjecture of Speyer from 2009; so this time I'm expecting more exciting developments.'
Each year, IAS welcomes more than 250 of the most promising post-doctoral researchers and distinguished scholars from around the world to advance fundamental discovery as part of an interdisciplinary and collaborative environment. Visiting scholars are selected through a highly competitive process for their bold ideas, innovative methods, and deep research questions by the permanent Faculty — each of whom are preeminent leaders in their fields. Past IAS Faculty include, Albert Einstein, Erwin Panofsky, John von Neumann, Hetty Goldman, George Kennan, and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Located in Princeton, NJ, the Institute for Advanced Study was established in 1930. Today, research at IAS is conducted across four Schools—Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Social Science—to push the boundaries of human knowledge.
Among past and present scholars, there have been 35 Nobel Laureates, 44 of the 62 Fields Medalists, and 23 of the 27 Abel Prize Laureates, as well as MacArthur and Guggenheim fellows, winners of the Turing Award and the Wolf, Holberg, Kluge, and Pulitzer Prizes.