Established in 2013, the AWM Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize recognizes exceptional research in topology and geometry by a woman early in her career. The biennial presentation of this prize serves to highlight to the community outstanding contributions by women in the fields of topology and geometry and to advance the careers of the prize recipients. The award is made possible by a generous contribution from Joan and Joseph Birman.

The 2021 Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry is awarded to Emily Riehl for her deep and foundational work in category theory and homotopy theory. Riehl has proved many fundamental theorems in category theory and its relations to homotopy theory and has produced a large body of exceptional research as well as expository andpedagogical work. Her work is transforming the ways we work with higher categorical objects, drawing on classical category-theory tools and constructions to illustrate and simplify higher categorical constructions. Riehl's theorems and machinery beautifully showcase how these higher categorical constructions can often be viewed as intuitive generalizations of the ordinary ones. Her books on category theory and on homotopical category theory have become the standard
references, and her draft book on ∞-categories is already finding immediate use by researchers. Riehl is an internationally recognized scholar for her important research works in category theory and her innovative ideas about mentorship and communication of mathematics.

Olena Vaneeva from the National Academy of Sciences in Kiev is the first mathematician to win the L'Oreal International Rising Talents award for women.

The book World Women in Mathematics 2018 (Proceedings of the First World Meeting for Women in Mathematics (WM)² , Vol. 20, C. Araujo, G. Benkart, C. Praeger, B. Tanbay (Eds.) was published at the end of 2019 in the Association for Women in Mathematics Series (Springer).

Presentation: The first World Meeting for Women in Mathematics - (WM)² - was a satellite event of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) 2018 in Rio de Janeiro. With a focus on Latin America, the first (WM)² brought together mathematicians from all over the world to celebrate women mathematicians, and also to reflect on gender issues in mathematics, challenges, initiatives, and perspectives for the future. Its activities were complemented by a panel discussion organized by the Committee for Women in Mathematics (CWM) of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) inside the ICM 2018 entitled "The gender gap in mathematical and natural sciences from a historical perspective”.

This historical proceedings book, organized by CWM in coordination with the Association for Women in Mathematics, records the first (WM)² and the CWM panel discussion at ICM 2018. The first part of the volume includes a report of activities with pictures of the first (WM)² and a tribute to Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to be awarded the Fields medal. It also comprises survey research papers from invited lecturers, which provide panoramic views of different fields in pure and applied mathematics.  The second part of the book contains articles from the panelists of the CWM panel discussion, which consider the historical context of the gender gap in mathematics. It includes an analysis of women lecturers in the ICM since its inception.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Maryam Mirzakhani.

Marithania Silvero Casanova was not yet born when Louis Kauffman stated in 1983 the conjecture that established that two particular families of knots were equivalent. Silvero, born in Huelva in 1989, refuted the conjecture in 2015. Her finding has been recognized with the Vicent Caselles research prize, awarded by the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society and the BBVA Foundation.

See more here.

In recognition of Dr. Mirzakhani’s remarkable life and achievements, the National Academy of Sciences has established a newly named Maryam Mirzakhani Prize in Mathematics (formerly the NAS Award in Mathematics, which was established in 1988 by the American Mathematical Society in honor of its centennial). The prize will be awarded biennially for exceptional contributions to the mathematical sciences by a mid-career mathematician. Nominations for the inaugural Mirzakhani Prize are due by October 7, 2019. For more information see here.

Carola Schönlieb has  received the 2019 Calderon Prize, which is a prize for the Inverse Problems field (awarded biennially  starting in 2007). Carola Schönlieb is the first woman mathematician that received this award, her work being in image processing and partial differential equations.

Carola Schönlieb is the current covenor of European Women in Mathematics.

Carmen Torras and Elisa Lorenzo Garcia received the Prize for Pioneer Women in the Physical, Chemical and Mathematical Sciences of the Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno Foundation.

The awards ceremony  took place on June 4 2019 at the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences.In this fourth edition the prize was awarded to Carme Torras (Barcelona, 1956) and for the first time the Young Modality of the Prize was awarded: the recipient was Elisa Lorenzo García (Madrid, 1987).

Carmen Torras is a specialist in artificial intelligence and robotics, she opened a novel line of research on the temporal processing of motor signals.

Elisa Lorenzo García is working at the frontier of number theory and arithmetic geometry, with applications in cryptography. Click here to read an interview with Elisa Lorenzo García on the European Platform of Women Scientists.

May 12 was chosen for the Celebration of Women in Mathematics because it is the birthdate of Maryam Mirzakhani. The initiative was  proposed by the Women's Committee of the Iranian Mathematical Society and voted by a vast majority of attendees to (WM)², the World Meeting for Women on Mathematics on last July 31 in Rio.

Several suggestions for local activities around May 12 are listed here.Please feel free to organize one and mention it on May 12 website.

The initiative is  supported by several organisations for women in mathematics worldwide (European Women in Mathematics, Association for Women in Mathematics, African Women in Mathematics Association, Indian Women and Mathematics, Colectivo de Mujeres Matemáticas de Chile andthe Women's Committee of the Iranian Mathematical Society).

The initiative is welcoming  the support of more organizations, the conditions are as follows

- accepting to put the name of their organization on the website
- sending a contact name
- disseminating the initiative through their channels
- post the information of their activities around May 12 on the May 12 website.

Organizations are invited to contact the coordination group of May 12  through the website.

More information here.