The 2024 André Aisenstadt Prize is awarded to Alexander Kupers.
Alexander Kupers was born in the Netherlands. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 2016 under the supervision of Søren Galatius. After a postdoctoral position at the University of Copenhagen and a Benjamin Pierce fellowship at Harvard University, he joined the department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough in 2020.
His work is motivated by the modern version of a classical problem: the classification of smooth manifolds. Classically one asks about the classification up to diffeomorphism but a more modern perspective is to understand moduli spaces of manifolds. Kupers has made significant breakthroughs to this problem on many fronts, involving the solution of concrete problems while at the same time requiring the development of new mathematical techniques. This include spectacular work on Torelli groups of surfaces and their higher-dimensional analogues, the introduction and development of higher-order homological stability, and novel combination of surgery theory and embedding calculus.
Learn more about the André Aisenstadt Prize.