Melody Tung Chan is an American mathematician and violinist who works as Associate Professor of Mathematics at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

. She is a winner of the

Alice T. Schafer Prize The Alice T. Schafer Mathematics Prize is given annually to an undergraduate woman for excellence in mathematics by the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM). The prize, which carries a monetary award, is named for former AWM president and fou ...

and of the

AWM–Microsoft Research Prize in Algebra and Number Theory The AWM–Microsoft Research Prize in Algebra and Number Theory was established in 2012 and is a prize given every other year by the Association for Women in Mathematics to an outstanding young female researcher in algebra or number theory. The win ...

. Her research involves

combinatorial commutative algebra Combinatorial commutative algebra is a relatively new, rapidly developing mathematical discipline. As the name implies, it lies at the intersection of two more established fields, commutative algebra and combinatorics, and frequently uses methods of ...

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conne ...

, and tropical geometry.

Education and career

Chan was inspired to become a violinist as a pre-schooler, seeing Yo-Yo Ma on

Sesame Street ''Sesame Street'' is an American educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Workshop until June 2000) a ...

. As a freshman at

Scarsdale High School Scarsdale High School (SHS) is a public high school in Scarsdale, New York, United States, a coterminous town and village in Westchester County, New York. It is a part of the Scarsdale Union Free School District. The school was founded in 1917. ...

in Scarsdale, New York, she became the youngest first place winner of the 1997 Young Artists Competition of the

Sarah Lawrence College Sarah Lawrence College is a Private university, private liberal arts college in Yonkers, New York. The college models its approach to education after the Supervision system, Oxford/Cambridge system of one-on-one student-faculty tutorials. Sara ...

chamber orchestra. She studied violin at

Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most el ...

with

Itzhak Perlman Itzhak Perlman ( he, יצחק פרלמן; born August 31, 1945) is an Israeli-American violinist widely considered one of the greatest violinists in the world. Perlman has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that hav ...

and

Dorothy DeLay Dorothy DeLay (March 31, 1917 – March 24, 2002) was an American violin instructor, primarily at the Juilliard School, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of Cincinnati. Life Dorothy DeLay was born on March 31, 1917, in Medicine Lodg ...

from 2000 to 2001. In 2002, she played a

Vivaldi Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist and impresario of Baroque music. Regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, Vivaldi's influence during his lifetime was widespread a ...

concerto for four violins alongside Perlman in a performance at the

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...

that was broadcast on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

. She then majored in computer science and mathematics at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

. At Yale she played violin in the Yale Symphony Orchestra, won a

Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was established by the United States Congress in 1986 in honor of former United States Senate, United States Senator and 1964 United States presidential election, 1964 president ...

and the university's Hart Lyman Prize for best junior student, and became vice president of the local chapter of

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

. She graduated ''

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

'' from Yale in 2005. After studying for the

Mathematical Tripos The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. It is the oldest Tripos examined at the University. Origin In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was a ...

at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

from 2005 to 2006, Chan worked with Paul Seymour at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, completing a master's degree there in 2008. She completed her doctorate in 2012 at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. Her dissertation, ''Tropical curves and metric graphs'', was supervised by Bernd Sturmfels. Chan conducted postdoctoral research at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

from 2012 to 2015, and then joined Brown as Manning Assistant Professor in 2015.

Recognition

As an undergraduate at Yale, Chan won the 2005

for her undergraduate research, which resulted in three published papers on

distinguishing coloring In graph theory, a distinguishing coloring or distinguishing labeling of a graph is an assignment of colors or labels to the vertices of the graph that destroys all of the nontrivial symmetries of the graph. The coloring does not need to be a ...

s of Cayley graphs. Chan was given a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2018. She is the 2020 winner of the

, "in recognition of Chan’s advances at the interface between algebraic geometry and combinatorics", including "an astounding result" on the

cohomology In mathematics, specifically in homology theory and algebraic topology, cohomology is a general term for a sequence of abelian groups, usually one associated with a topological space, often defined from a cochain complex. Cohomology can be viewe ...

moduli space In mathematics, in particular algebraic geometry, a moduli space is a geometric space (usually a scheme or an algebraic stack) whose points represent algebro-geometric objects of some fixed kind, or isomorphism classes of such objects. Such spac ...

s, "foundational work on the moduli of metric graphs and tropical curves", and "beautiful new results on the expected number of turns in a random Young tableau". She was named a Fellow of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

, in the 2022 class of fellows, "for contributions to research at the interface of algebraic geometry and combinatorics, and to mentorship and mathematical exposition".

References

External links

Home page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Chan, Melody Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians Juilliard School alumni Yale University alumni Alumni of the University of Cambridge Princeton University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Brown University faculty Sloan Research Fellows 21st-century American women Fellows of the American Mathematical Society