Alessio Figalli: inaugural lecture
On 28 February, Professor Alessio Figalli gave his inaugural lecture entitled: "Optimal transport: theory and applications". He has been professor at the Department since September 2016.
Laudatio by Peter Bühlmann, Head of Department:
Dear Rector, dear President, dear Vice President, dear Alessio, fellow colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,
I am delighted to welcome you all to Alessio Figalli’s inaugural lecture. Alessio Figalli was born in Rome, and grew up in that beautiful city. He studied Mathematics at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa; then, less than a year later, under the supervision of Luigi Ambrosio and Cédric Villani, he obtained a joint doctorate from the Scuola Normale and the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon in 2007. After a year working as a visiting assistant professor in Paris – and at the age of only 25 – Alessio became associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin! He was promoted to full professor there two years later. In September 2016, he joined the Mathematics Department at ETH Zurich.
Alessio Figalli carries out research across the whole spectrum of mathematics, focusing in particular on the calculus of variations, optimal transportation in relation to partial differential equations and random matrixes. His fundamental and groundbreaking work has had visible influence on a wide range of mathematical fields. Alessio has won various major awards for his research, including the Peccot-Vimont Prize of the Collège de France in 2011, the European Mathematical Society Prize in 2012, the Stampacchia Gold Medal in 2015 and just recently, an ERC Consolidator Grant.
Alessio Figalli is an exceptionally dynamic and brilliant scientist, and a very engaging person – he will be a great asset to our department. We are most grateful to have him with us at ETH!