The Association for Women in Mathematics and the American Mathematical Society are pleased to announce that Monica Vişan, Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), will be the 2026 AWM-AMS Emmy Noether Lecturer. The Noether Lecture will be delivered at the Joint Mathematics meetings, to be held in Washington, DC, January 4 – 7, 2026. Press release.

The Association for Women in Mathematics and the Mathematical Association of America are pleased to announce that the 2025 Etta Zuber Falconer Lecturer will be Olivia Prosper Feldman, Associate Professor, University of Tennessee. The Falconer Lecture will be delivered at the MAA MathFest, to be held in Sacramento, CA, from August 6 – 9, 2025. A full press release is attached.
Feldman was recommended for this award by a joint selection committee of Reginald Len McGee II (MAA) (Chair), Bonita Saunders (MAA), Christina Eubanks-Turner (AWM), and Ozlem Ugurlu (AWM). Press Release

The Association for Women in Mathematics is pleased to announce that the 2025-2026 Ruth I. Michler Memorial Prize has been awarded to Ling Xiao, Associate Professor of mathematics at the University of Connecticut. Xiao has been selected to receive the Michler Prize for her research accomplishments in geometric analysis and partial differential equations. Professor Xiao will spend an upcoming semester visiting Cornell. Press release

The Association for Women in Mathematics and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics are pleased to announce that Professor Yongjie Jessica Zhang will be the 2025 Sonia Kovalevsky Lecturer. The Kovalevsky Lecture will be delivered at the 2025 SIAM/CAIMS Annual Meeting taking place in Montréal, Québec, Canada, July 28 - August 1, 2025. Press release.

The Kovalevsky Lecture honors Sonia Kovalevsky (1850–1891), the most widely known Russian mathematician of the late 19th century. In 1874, Kovalevsky received her Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Göttingen and was appointed lecturer at the University of Stockholm in 1883. Kovalevsky did her most important work in the theory of differential equations. Zhang was recommended for this award by a joint AWM-SIAM Kovalevsky Selection Committee (Alina Chertock (Chair), Claudia Falcon, Judith Hill, and Noemi Petra).

The CWM called for proposals for initiatives to support women in mathematics taking place from March 2025 to February 2026. The CWM 2025 call received 61 applications, of which 13 will be supported. Some of the selected projects aim to support continental and regional networks for women in mathematics, such as activities led by the African Women in Mathematics Association (AWMA), the Meeting of Women in Mathematics in Central Africa in Congo, and the establishment of the Arab Women in Mathematics Network. CWM is also supporting research workshops aimed at establishing research networks for women in Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and Nigeria. Additionally, CWM is supporting networking activities for women in mathematics in Argentina, India, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe, as well as a math camp for young women in Iran. Depending on the nature of the project, CWM funding is directed toward infrastructure, travel expenses, and accommodation support for women participants from developing countries.

More details on each of these projects can be found here .

US President Joe Biden has announced that Ingrid Daubechies, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of Mathematics, will receive the National Medal of Science in 2025. She is being honored for her pioneering work on signal processing. More information here.

What is the Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science (SCGES)?
 
From 2017 to 2019, a number of international scientific organizations, including the IMU, took part in the project A Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical, Computing, and Natural Sciences: How to Measure It, How to Reduce It?, known as the “Gender Gap in Science Project”. The main goal of the project was to produce sound data about gender gap in science to support the choices of interventions that scientific unions could feasibly undertake. In 2020, the Gender Gap in Science Book was published, presenting the methodology, results, activities and recommendations of the project. The SCGES was formed as a follow-up to this project, reflecting a shared wish among these organizations to continue to act together to further promote gender equality in science. Its aim is to ensure liaison amongst international scientific unions to foster gender equality and the implementation of recommendations of the “Gender Gap in Science Project”.

The SCGES fourth Annual Report has just been published and can be found on the SCGES website.  Compiled by twenty-one of its partners, the report contains information on each union’s situation and the actions that they have undertaken regarding gender equality in the scientific discipline they represent.

The Committee for Women in Mathematics (CWM) is pleased to announce the CWM 2025 Call for activities or initiatives aimed at supporting women in mathematics. These activities should take place between March 2025 and February 2026.

The CWM grant offers financial support of up to €3,000 per initiative.

Application Deadline: December 13, 2024
How to Apply: Submit your application via IMU Grants.

For detailed information, please read the full call here: Download the CWM Call 2025 PDF

Webinar on the CWM Call 2025

CWM hosted an informative webinar on November 27, 2024, to provide an overview of the CWM Call 2025, explain the new application process, and address participant questions.

If you missed the event, you can watch the recording and access the slides here.

We encourage all interested parties to review these materials and submit their applications.

The Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science (SCGES) has just launched “Women scientists around the world: strategies for gender equality”, a new joint project with the International Science Council (ISC). The project consists in a series of articles, based on interviews with women scientists from various disciplines and geographic regions, several of whom have attained leadership roles in scientific organizations. It explores the drivers and barriers to gender representation in scientific organizations, aiming  to document from a qualitative point of view the obstacles to gender equality in science, and the strategies developed to reach it.

The first blog introducing the series is signed by Léa Nacache: Who shapes the future of science? Examining the stark gender imbalance in scientific leadership: https://gender-equality-in-science.org/2024/10/14/who-shapes-the-future-of-science-examining-the-stark-gender-imbalance-in-scientific-leadership/

The first article gives voice to Dr. Encieh Erfani, an Iranian physicist specialized in cosmology and ISC Fellow, who resigned from her academic position in Iran in 2022 as a protest in honor of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who died in custody after being detained for allegedly violating Iran’s compulsory hijab law. In the face of gender apartheid: Dr. Erfani’s path (signed by Léa Nacache and Marie-Françoise Roy) https://gender-equality-in-science.org/2024/10/17/in-the-face-of-gender-apartheid-dr-erfanis-path/

The second piece is devoted to former CWM member Marie Françoise Ouedraogo. She was the first woman in Burkina Faso to earn a PhD in mathematics, and founded the  Association of Women in Mathematics in Africa (AWMA) in 2013. From pioneer to leader: Paving the way for African women in mathematics (signed by Léa Nacache and Marie-Françoise Roy) https://gender-equality-in-science.org/2024/10/21/from-pioneer-to-leader-paving-the-way-for-african-women-in-mathematics/

The SCGES is an independent committee formed in 2020 by several international scientific organizations, including the IMU. It is a follow-up to the “Gender Gap in Science Project”, ensuring  liaison amongst international scientific unions to foster gender equality, and the implementation of the project's recommendations.
https://gender-equality-in-science.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/SCGESreport2022-2023.pdf

The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) will present AWM Prizes and Awards during the Joint Prize Session of the JMM, scheduled for January 8 – 11, 2025 in Seattle, WA.

The 2025 Fellows of AWM (FAWM) are Katrina D. Barron (University of Notre Dame), Guozhen Lu (University of Connecticut), Marianne Korten (Kansas State University), Kathryn Leonard, (Occidental College), Fengyan Li, (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Lillian B. Pierce, (Duke University), Magdalena Daniela Toda, (Texas Tech University). The AWM Fellows Program recognizes individuals who have demonstrated a sustained commitment to the support and advancement of women in the mathematical sciences, consistent with the AWM mission: “to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity and the equal treatment of women and girls in the mathematical sciences.” Press release.

The 2025 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry will be awarded to Mona Merling, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania.Established in 2012, the AWM Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize highlights exceptional research in topology/geometry by a woman early in her career. Press release.

The recipient of the inaugural AWM Mary & Alfie Gray Award for Social Justice is Chad M. Topaz, Professor of Complex Systems at Williams College and co-founder of the Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (QSIDE). The Award recognizes Topaz for courageous and innovative research-to-action work that vigorously and imaginatively brings the methods of mathematics and data science to bear on social justice challenges in the legal system, education, arts and media, and other fields, shedding new light on systemic injustice and its consequences. Press release.

The 2025 Gweneth Humphreys Award will be awarded to Dewey Taylor, Professor of Mathematics, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). The Award recognizes the world-wide reach of Dr. Taylor’s mentorship activities. Press release.

The 2025 Louise Hay Award for Contributions to Mathematics Education will be presented to Pamela E. Harris, Associate Professor of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is being honored for her dedication to diversity and equity in academia, for her success in fostering others’ growth in how they support diversity and equity and for her brilliance, dedication, and passion as an educator who teaches both mathematics and equity. Press release.

The 2025 Service Award recipients are: Kuei-Nuan Lin, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Penn State Greater Allegheny, who is being recognized for her leadership of the AWM Mentor Network program, for her service on the Education and Outreach Portfolio Committee and on the AWM-NSF Travel Grants Selection Committee, and for her work as an Associate Editor for the 2022 AWM Symposium Proceedings volume; and Mei Yin, Professor of Mathematics, University of Denver, who is recognized for founding and leading the AWM Student Chapter at the University of Denver for the past nine years, for supporting the AWM Women in Algebraic Combinatorics (WiAC) Research Network. More information here.

The AWM Distinguished Service Award will be presented to Anne Leggett, Professor Emerita, Loyola University Chicago. Anne is being honored in particular for her dedication to the AWM’s Newsletter as editor for 46 years and for numerous contributions to AWM’s institutional structure and memory. More information here.

AWM will award the 35th Annual Alice T. Schafer Prizes for Excellence in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Woman to tahda queer, a mathematics and interdisciplinary studies major at City University of New York, and Marie-Hélène Tomé, a mathematics major at Duke University and  Katherine Tung, a mathematics major at Harvard University. More information here.