Mihnea Popa (born 11 August 1973) is a Romanian-American mathematician 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 high ...

, specializing in algebraic geometry. He is known for his work on complex

birational geometry In mathematics, birational geometry is a field of algebraic geometry in which the goal is to determine when two algebraic varieties are isomorphic outside lower-dimensional subsets. This amounts to studying mappings that are given by rational ...

, Hodge theory,

abelian varieties In mathematics, particularly in algebraic geometry, complex analysis and algebraic number theory, an abelian variety is a Algebraic variety#Projective variety, projective algebraic variety that is also an algebraic group, i.e., has a group law th ...

, and vector bundles.

Academic career

Popa received his bachelor's degree in 1996 from the

University of Bucharest The University of Bucharest ( ro, Universitatea din București), commonly known after its abbreviation UB in Romania, is a public university founded in its current form on by a decree of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza to convert the former Princel ...

. He studied mathematics at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

from 1996 to 1997, and then in 2001 he received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

from 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 ...

under the supervision of Robert Lazarsfeld. His thesis was titled ''Linear Series on Moduli Spaces of Vector Bundles on Curves''. From 2001 to 2005, Popa was a Benjamin Peirce Assistant Professor at

and from 2005 to 2007 an assistant professor at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

. He joined the

University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois ...

as an associate professor in 2007 and became a full professor in 2011. In 2014 he moved to

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

, and in 2020 he became a professor at

Awards and honors

Popa is an honorary member of the

Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy The "Simion Stoilow" Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy is a research institute in Bucharest, Romania. It is affiliated with the Romanian Academy, and it is named after Simion Stoilow, one of its founders. History On December 2 ...

. He was an AMS Centennial Fellow in 2005–2007, a Sloan Research Fellow in 2007–2009, and a Simons Fellow in 2015–2016. In 2015 he became 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 2018 he was an Invited Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

.''D-modules in birational geometry'', ICM 2018
Arxiv
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Selected publications

* * * * * * * * Positivity for Hodge modules and geometric applications, i
Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics, Vol. 97, Part I, Algebraic Geometry: Salt Lake City 2015
pp. 555–584. * * * *

References

External links

Homepage
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Popa, Mihnea 1973 births Living people 20th-century Romanian mathematicians 21st-century Romanian mathematicians 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians University of Bucharest alumni University of Michigan alumni University of Chicago faculty University of Illinois Chicago faculty Northwestern University faculty Harvard University faculty Sloan Fellows Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Algebraic geometers Romanian expatriates in the United States