Former student Joel Moreira has been awarded the 2020 Michael Brin Dynamical Systems Prize for Young Mathematicians, given to outstanding researchers in dynamical systems within four years of earning their PhD. This prize has been awarded biannually since 2016 and carries a cash award of $4,000. The prize was recently presented to Dr. Moreira at the virtual Penn State workshop in dynamical systems, after which he presented on his work. Dr. Moreira’s advisor at Ohio State was professor of mathematics Vitaly Bergelson.
Dr. Moreira was recognized by the prize committee for “his outstanding work on ergodic Ramsey theory and his joint proof of the Erdős sumset conjecture.” The joint proof highlighted in the award citation is with math alumni Donald Robertson and Florian Richter, who were both advised by Professor Bergelson as well. Dr. Moreira notes that “to this day many of my papers are still co-authored by fellow Ohio State graduates.”
Dr. Moreira adapts ideas from ergodic Ramsey theory, captured by Furstenberg’s Correspondence Principle, to solve two long-standing Ramsey-type problems. His work has appeared in some of the top mathematical journals.
Dr. Moreira graduated from our doctoral program in 2016, having completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. He spent several postdoctoral years at Northwestern University and is now an assistant professor at Warwick University in the United Kingdom. He was previously awarded the prestigious Presidential Fellowship by Graduate School at Ohio State. You can follow his mathematical work at his blog I can’t believe it is not random!
