AWM Dissertation Prize 2025

Yvonne Alama Bronsard, Agustina Czenky, and Naomi Sweeting to Receive the Ninth Annual Association for Women in Mathematics Dissertation Prize

In January 2016 the Executive Committee of the Association for Women in Mathematics established the AWM Dissertation Prize, an annual award for up to three outstanding PhD dissertations presented by female mathematical scientists and defended during the 24 months preceding the deliberations for the award. The award is intended to be based entirely on the dissertation itself, not on other work of the individual.

Yvonne Alama Bronsard, Agustina Czenky, and Naomi Sweeting will be presented with 2025 AWM Dissertation Prize at the Joint Prize Session at the 2025 JMM in Seattle, WA.

Citation for Yvonne Alana Bronsard

Yvonne Alama Bronsard received her PhD in 2024 from the Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions, Sorbonne Université, under the direction of Katharina Schratz. She is currently a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at l’IRMAR in Rennes, France and will continue her fellowship at MIT in 2025.

Yvonne Alama Bronsard’s dissertation lies at the frontier of computational mathematics and partial differential equations (PDEs) and provides a novel class of numerical schemes for nonlinear PDEs with strong geometric properties at low regularity, which allow a practical implementation at reasonable cost. “The numerical schemes she obtained fill a void, since they are suitable for a wide range of dispersive equations, and their symmetrical extension ensures remarkable long-time behavior. Ms. Alama Bronsard has produced a masterly piece of work.” “I am convinced that her dissertation will push forward high impact research on the challenging interface of computational mathematics and nonlinear partial differential equations”. Alama Bronsard is currently a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow.

Response from Alama Bronsard

I am greatly honored to be awarded the AWM dissertation award, and deeply grateful to everyone who encouraged me throughout my graduate years. I would like to especially thank my advisor Katharina Schratz, whose guidance and enthusiasm enlightened my mathematical journey. Many thanks also to Arieh Iserles, who has always avidly supported my work and my career, and to my brilliant collaborator Georg Maierhofer, thanks to whom I applied to this award. Finally, I am very thankful for the enriching environment of the Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions, where I completed my PhD studies.

I now thank Lia Bronsard, which has marked my path the most, who accompanied me throughout my career (starting with a conference in Calculus of Variations at the age of two months), and with whom I now share my passion for mathematics.

I would like to finish by sincerely thanking the selection committee for their time, and the AWM for its wonderful support of the community of women in mathematics.

Citation for Agustina Czenky

Agustina Czenky received her PhD in 2024 from the University of Oregon under the direction of Victor Ostrik.  She is currently a Simons Collaboration Assistant Professor at University of Southern California.

In her dissertation, Czenky solved two significant problems within the realm of tensor categories that are related but quite different.  “Agustina’s dissertation is exceptional.” First, she classified symmetric fusion categories of positive characteristic of rank 3 and nearly completed the classification in rank 4, leaving only the cases of characteristics 5 and 7 outstanding.  In the second part of her thesis, Czenky explicitly constructs two types of unoriented 2-TQFTs that arise from variants of Deligne categories. “The resulting 52 page work is ambitious and technically very sophisticated.”  This body of work resulted in two solo authored papers in International Mathematics Research Notices (IMRN) and Quantum Topology.

I am truly honored to receive the AWM Dissertation Prize. I would like to thank the AWM, the selection committee, and those who nominated me for this recognition. I am deeply grateful to my advisor Victor Ostrik for his guidance, support and generosity during my graduate school years. I wish to also specially thank Julia Plavnik and Chelsea Walton for their encouragement and advice along the way. The AWM Student Chapter was a big part of my graduate student life, providing a community that I am very fortunate to have been part of. Finally, I want to thank my family and friends for their constant support and belief in me.

Citation for Naomi Sweeting

Naomi Sweeting received her PhD in 2024 from Harvard University under the direction of Mark Kisin.  She is currently a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton and will start as an Assistant Professor at MIT in 2026.

Naomi Sweeting has done outstanding research in the area of Number Theory under the direction of Mark Kisin at Harvard University.  In her thesis, entitled “Tate classes and endoscopy for GSp(4) over totally real fields,” she attacked the Tate conjecture for a particular family of Tate classes on Shimura varieties, constructed using the theory of endoscopy for automorphic forms.  Shimura varieties parameterize Abelian varieties with fixed polarizations, endomorphisms, and level structure.  On any variety, particularly moduli spaces, the algebraic cycles are a key ingredient in studying their Chow and cohomology rings.  The Tate conjecture predicts that all Tate classes are spanned by algebraic cycles. Sweeting shows that a natural algebraic cycle generates the Tate classes which are associated with generic members of the endoscopic L-packets on GSP(4). Her construction is considered creative, technically strong, and revolutionary in the field by her nominators.  “I find this result really fascinating, as it tests the Tate conjecture in a setting where the Tate classes are produced by a completely non-algebraic method, involving endoscopy. The proof is really remarkable.”

It’s truly an honor to be receiving the AWM dissertation prize. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Mark Kisin, for all of the incredible advice and encouragement he gave me as my PhD supervisor. I am also grateful to all of my friends and colleagues at the Harvard math department for creating a wonderful environment in which to complete my PhD, and to my family for always supporting me. Finally, I wish to sincerely thank the AWM, as well as those who took part in my nomination.