Hong Wang, Russel Caflisch, Sanjeev Khanna Receive Silver Professorships

April 2, 2026

Three Courant professors have been selected to receive the university's Silver Professorship in recognition of their outstanding work.

Hong Wang has been named Silver Professor of Mathematics. Professor Wang is a leading researcher in Fourier analysis and geometric measure theory. She is renowned for her 2025 resolution of the Kakeya conjecture, a central problem in harmonic analysis and geometry. Her honors include the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize and the Salem Prize. She is also a Permanent Professor at IHES.

Sanjeev Khanna has been named Silver Professor of Computer Science. His research has shaped core areas of theoretical computer science, particularly approximation algorithms, computational intractability, combinatorial optimization, and sublinear algorithms. Professor Khanna is an ACM Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Sloan Fellow. He recently joined our faculty from the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as the Henry Salvatori Professor of Computer and Information Science.

Russel Caflisch has been named Silver Professor of Mathematics. An alum and former Director of Courant, Professor Caflisch has wide-ranging scholarly interests, including materials science, mathematical finance, Monte Carlo methods, kinetic theory, fluid dynamics, and partial differential equations. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Caflisch is also set to receive the SIAM Prize for Distinguished Service to the Profession at the SIAM Annual Meeting this summer. 

The most prestigious named professorship that NYU can offer its faculty, Silver Professorships are made possible by a 2002 bequest from the estate of attorney and philanthropist Julius Silver. Silver Professors are chosen in recognition of their many accomplishments, as well as their exemplary commitment to undergraduate education.