2020 Laureate Profile: Professor Kari Vilonen

 

Professor Kari Vilonen

Administering Organisation: The University of Melbourne 

Fellowship project summary: 

FL200100141: This program aims to address deep longstanding questions about real groups, algebraic objects which describe the basic symmetries occurring in nature. The study of these basic symmetries is central in all areas of mathematics and they come up in many applications. The expected outcomes include solving a central 50-year-old problem of unitarity as well as making major progress in the Langlands program, a grand unification scheme of mathematics. The benefits include raising Australia's international research profile, building a large network of international collaboration with top institutions in the world, and increasing capacity in number theory and algebraic geometry, which are playing an ever more important role in technology. 

Australian Research Council funding: $3,077,547.00

About Professor Kari Vilonen

Kari Vilonen is a professor of mathematics at The University of Melbourne.

Professor Vilonen’s research focuses on geometric methods in representation theory and the Langlands program. His major mathematical contributions are in the areas of the Geometric Langlands Program, Representations of Real Groups, and Microdifferential Systems. 

He was a speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1998 in Berlin and at the Current Developments in Mathematics Conference in 2002 at Harvard. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Humboldt Research Award recipient, and is a Foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. 

Find out more about Professor Vilonen’s research by visiting his profile page on The University of Melbourne’s website. 

For further information about this funding scheme, please visit the Australian Laureate Fellowships scheme page.
 

Image credit: The University of Melbourne