Kristen Hendricks, a Michigan State University assistant professor of mathematics in the College of Natural Science, is one of 20 researchers who received a 2019 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in mathematics.
The Sloan Foundation supports early career scientists in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their fields of research.
“I'm thrilled to receive the fellowship and grateful for my department's nomination and support,” Hendricks said. “Naturally, I will make every effort to justify the foundation's good opinion of me.”
Hendricks will receive a two-year, $70,000 stipend to advance her work on equivariant Floer theory and low-dimensional topology, the mathematical study of shape.
“Over the past few years,I have been involved with a program to develop new tools for understanding the set of three-dimensional spaces with properties in common with the three spheres,” Hendricks said. “This award will support the continuation of that work.”
Hendricks joins a distinguished group of scientists who have received Sloan Research Fellowships since they were established in 1955. More than 40 Sloan Fellows have gone on to win Nobel Prizes later in their careers.
“Professor Hendrick's Alfred B. Sloan Fellowship, awarded to only 20 mathematicians a year, is a testimony to the significance of her work on low dimensional topology,” said Keith Promislow, MSU Department of Mathematics chair. “As a leading expert on Floer theory, professor Hendricks has developed new tools to understand the way that groups can act on chain complexes. By distinguishing between sets of chain complexes, these tools afford a fundamentally new approach to machine learning.”
For a complete list of 2019 Sloan Research Fellowship Award recipients, visit the Sloan Foundation’s website.