Chelsea Walton is a mathematician whose research interests include

noncommutative algebra In mathematics, a noncommutative ring is a ring whose multiplication is not commutative; that is, there exist ''a'' and ''b'' in the ring such that ''ab'' and ''ba'' are different. Equivalently, a ''noncommutative ring'' is a ring that is not ...

noncommutative algebraic geometry Noncommutative algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics, and more specifically a direction in noncommutative geometry, that studies the geometric properties of formal duals of non-commutative algebraic objects such as rings as well as geome ...

symmetry in quantum mechanics Symmetries in quantum mechanics describe features of spacetime and particles which are unchanged under some transformation, in the context of quantum mechanics, relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, and with applications in the ...

Hopf algebra Hopf is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Eberhard Hopf (1902–1983), Austrian mathematician *Hans Hopf (1916–1993), German tenor *Heinz Hopf (1894–1971), German mathematician *Heinz Hopf (actor) (1934–2001), Swedis ...

s, and

quantum group In mathematics and theoretical physics, the term quantum group denotes one of a few different kinds of noncommutative algebras with additional structure. These include Drinfeld–Jimbo type quantum groups (which are quasitriangular Hopf algebras) ...

s. She is an associate professor at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

and a

Sloan Research Fellow The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

Education and career

Walton is African-American, originally from

Detroit, Michigan Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...

, and was educated in the

Detroit public schools Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) is a school district that covers all of the city of Detroit, Michigan, United States and high school students in the insular city of Highland Park. The district, which replaced the original Detr ...

. As a child she made a

letter frequency Letter frequency is the number of times letters of the alphabet appear on average in written language. Letter frequency analysis dates back to the Arab mathematician Al-Kindi (c. 801–873 AD), who formally developed the method to break ...

table from her children's dictionary, and as a high school student, seeking a way to "do logic puzzles all day and get paid for this", she was already planning a career as a mathematics professor. She graduated from

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...

in 2005, and completed her Ph.D. at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 2011. Her dissertation, ''On Degenerations and Deformations of Sklyanin Algebras'',Walton, C. M. (2011). ''On degenerations and deformations of Sklyanin algebras'' (Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan). was jointly supervised by and Karen E. Smith, and based in part on her work as a visiting student at the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

, where Stafford had moved. Walton did postdoctoral research at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

and the

Mathematical Sciences Research Institute The Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath), formerly the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), is an independent nonprofit mathematical research institution on the University of California campus in Berkeley, Califo ...

, and became a

C. L. E. Moore instructor The job title of C. L. E. Moore instructor is given by the Math Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to recent math Ph.D.s hired for their promise in pure mathematics research. The instructors are expected to do both teaching and rese ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

from 2012 to 2015. She came to

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then called Ba ...

as Selma Lee Bloch Brown Assistant Professor of Mathematics in 2015 . She moved to the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

in 2018. She joined the faculty at

in 2020.

Recognition

Walton was named a Sloan Fellow in 2017, becoming the fourth African-American to win a

Sloan Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

in mathematics. Walton was also recognized by

Mathematically Gifted & Black Mathematically Gifted & Black (MGB) is a website that features the accomplishments of black scholars in mathematical sciences. In addition to highlighting the work and lives of established mathematicians in the African Diaspora, the platform aims ...

as a Black History Month 2017 Honoree. In 2018 she won the André Lichnerowicz Prize in Poisson geometry, the first woman to be awarded this prize. The award citation noted her research on Sklyanin algebras in

Poisson geometry In differential geometry, a Poisson structure on a smooth manifold M is a Lie bracket \ (called a Poisson bracket in this special case) on the algebra (M) of smooth functions on M , subject to the Leibniz rule : \ = \h + g \ . Equivalen ...

, on the actions of

s, and on the

universal enveloping algebra In mathematics, the universal enveloping algebra of a Lie algebra is the unital associative algebra whose representations correspond precisely to the representations of that Lie algebra. Universal enveloping algebras are used in the representati ...

of the

Witt algebra In mathematics, the complex Witt algebra, named after Ernst Witt, is the Lie algebra of meromorphic vector fields defined on the Riemann sphere that are holomorphic except at two fixed points. It is also the complexification of the Lie algebra ...

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Walton, Chelsea 1983 births Living people 21st-century American mathematicians African-American mathematicians Michigan State University alumni University of Michigan alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Temple University faculty University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty Sloan Research Fellows 21st-century American women mathematicians 21st-century African-American women 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American people 20th-century African-American women

Education and career

Recognition

References

Further reading

External links