Bernd Sturmfels (born March 28, 1962 in

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 ...

) is a Professor of Mathematics and

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

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 un ...

and is a director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig since 2017.

Education and career

He received his PhD in 1987 from 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 Seatt ...

and the Technische Universität Darmstadt. After two postdoctoral years at the

Institute for Mathematics and its Applications The Institute for Mathematics and its Applications located at the University of Minnesota is an organization established in 1982 by the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States. Mission The primary mission of the IMA is to increase ...

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origin ...

, Minnesota, and the Research Institute for Symbolic Computation in

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

, he taught at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

, before joining

in 1995. His Ph.D. students include Melody Chan, Jesús A. De Loera,

Mike Develin Michael Lee Develin (born August 27, 1980) is an American mathematician known for his work in combinatorics and discrete geometry. Early life Mike Develin was born in Hobart, Tasmania. He moved to the United States with his Korean mother, li ...

, Diane Maclagan, Rekha R. Thomas,

Caroline Uhler Caroline Uhler (born 1983) is a Swiss statistician working in the field of machine learning and applications in genomics. Her research focuses on developing methods for causal inference to infer regulatory relationships from different data modaliti ...

, and Cynthia Vinzant.

Contributions

Bernd Sturmfels has made contributions to a variety of areas of mathematics, including

algebraic geometry Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics, classically studying zeros of multivariate polynomials. Modern algebraic geometry is based on the use of abstract algebraic techniques, mainly from commutative algebra, for solving geometrical ...

commutative algebra Commutative algebra, first known as ideal theory, is the branch of algebra that studies commutative rings, their ideals, and modules over such rings. Both algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory build on commutative algebra. Prom ...

, discrete geometry, Gröbner bases,

toric varieties In algebraic geometry, a toric variety or torus embedding is an algebraic variety containing an algebraic torus as an open dense subset, such that the action of the torus on itself extends to the whole variety. Some authors also require it to be n ...

, tropical geometry,

algebraic statistics Algebraic statistics is the use of algebra to advance statistics. Algebra has been useful for experimental design, parameter estimation, and hypothesis testing. Traditionally, algebraic statistics has been associated with the design of experiments ...

, and

computational biology Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and Computer simulation, computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the ...

. He has written several highly cited papers in algebra with Dave Bayer. He has authored or co-authored multiple books including ''

Introduction to tropical geometry ''Introduction to Tropical Geometry'' is a book on tropical geometry, by Diane Maclagan and Bernd Sturmfels. It was published by the American Mathematical Society in 2015 as volume 161 of Graduate Studies in Mathematics. Topics The tropical sem ...

'' with Diane Maclagan.

Awards and honors

Sturmfels' honors include a National Young Investigator Fellowship, an

Alfred P. Sloan Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr. ( ; May 23, 1875February 17, 1966) was an American business executive in the automotive industry. He was a long-time president, chairman and CEO of General Motors Corporation. Sloan, first as a senior executive and l ...

Fellowship, and a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship. In 1999 he received a Lester R. Ford Award for his expository article ''Polynomial equations and convex polytopes''. He was awarded a

Miller A miller is a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a grain (for example corn or wheat) to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalent ...

Research Professorship at the University of California Berkeley for 2000–2001. In 2018, he was awarded the George David Birkhoff Prize in Applied Mathematics. In 2012, 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, meeting ...

.List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
retrieved 2013-08-05.

References

External links

Homepage at Berkeley
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sturmfels, Bernd 1962 births Living people Scientists from Kassel 20th-century German mathematicians 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians University of Washington alumni Fellows of the American Mathematical Society UC Berkeley College of Engineering faculty Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Mathematics popularizers Technische Universität Darmstadt alumni Algebraic geometers Combinatorialists Sloan Research Fellows Algebraists Cornell University faculty 21st-century German mathematicians Academic staff of Max Planck Society Max Planck Institute directors

Education and career

Contributions

Awards and honors

References

Further reading

External links