Jeffrey Cheeger has been awarded a 2013 Simons Fellowships by the Simons Foundation, along with 39 other fellows in Mathematics. The announcement is available from the Simons Foundation.

Zvi Kedem has received the Outstanding Contribution to ACM award for his leadership in rebuilding the ACM Computing Classification System (CCS) as a modern cognitive map of the computing field for the worldwide computing community.  As editor-in-chief, Kedem managed the effort to revise and automate the key component that underlies the ACM Digital Library’s search index infrastructure. The full press release is available from the ACM.

John Rinzel was named a Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Fellow for "contributions to mathematical neuroscience and physiology," along with 32 other new fellows this year. Among Rinzel’s research were co-authored studies, with Pablo Jercog, a former graduate student at NYU’s Department of Physics and Center for Neural Science, identifying mechanisms the brain uses to help process sound localization cues. Their findings, which appeared in the journals PLoS Biology and Nature Neuroscience, focused on how the brain computes the different arrival times of sound into each ear to estimate the location of its source. The full press release is available from NYU News.

Global Distinguished Professor Sylvia Serfaty was awarded a Henri Poincaré Prize at the 2012 International Congress on Mathematical Physics, along with Freeman Dyson, Barry Simon, and Nalini Anantharaman. Serfaty won the prize "for her outstanding work on the theory of Ginzburg-Landau equations, including remarkable progress towards the rigorous proof of the onset of the Abrikosov lattice in the theory of superconductivity. "

Courant alumnus Ivan Corwin received an International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Young Scientist Prize along with two other recipients at the 2012 International Congress on Mathematical Physics, for his "outstanding contributions to the probabilistic analysis of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation modelling stochastic growth process."

Pierre Germain has received a Sloan Research Fellowship along with 125 other young scholars. The Fellowship recognizes early-career scientists who demonstrate "unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field". Germain studies nonlinear dispersive equations, which describe a wealth of physical phenomena, from quantum mechanics to general relativity to fluid mechanics. Germain's recent work has focused on waves at the surface of the ocean. His research provides tools to understand their behaviour over long periods of time, which aids in our understanding of tsunamis, among other phenomena. The full press release is available from NYU Today.

The White House announced in a Sept. 27, 2011 Press Release that S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan was named a recipient of the National Medal of Science, "for his work in probability theory, especially his work on large deviations from expected random behavior, which has revolutionized this field of study during the second half of the twentieth century and become a cornerstone of both pure and applied probability.  The mathematical insights he developed have been applied in diverse fields including quantum field theory, population dynamics, finance, econometrics, and traffic engineering."  President Obama presented the award to recipients on October 21st, 2011. A full Press Release is available from NYU Today.  Congratulations, Raghu!

Mikhael Gromov has been elected a Foreign Member of The Royal Society, UK, along with 44 Fellows and 7 other Foreign Members.  As stated in their citation: "Gromov ranks among the most deeply original mathematicians of our time, with contributions ranging from group theory, Riemannian and symplectic geometry, and the topology of partial differential relations, to his recent interest in the mathematics of biomolecular systems. His remarkable insight and unorthodox viewpoints have redefined whole areas of mathematics, most notably the subject of geometric group theory."  The full article is available from NYU Today.

Marsha Berger has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in a class of 212 new members and 16 foreign Honorary Members. As stated in the NYU press release, "AAAS has elected as fellows and foreign honorary members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation." She will be inducted at a special ceremony on October 1.The full release is available from NYU Today.

Gerard Ben Arous has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.  Fellowships are awarded to IMS members in honor of their "outstanding research and professional contributions."  His election will be celebrated at the IMS Presidential Address and Awards Ceremony on August 1.