Christian Schnell received his PhD from Ohio State in 2008 under the supervision of Herb Clemens. Since leaving OSU Schnell has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Kavli Institute, and the University of Bonn. Schnell is currently an Assistant Professor at SUNY Stony Brook.

Schnell's work is largely in the area of Hodge theory. He has proved what are arguably the best results so far on the extension of normal functions and on the compactification of period spaces.

The AMS announcement of the fellowship can be found at: http://www.ams.org/news?news_id=2686