Birkbeck Researcher Receives European Prize in Combinatorics
Dr Alexey Pokrovskiy accepted the award at the European Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Applications.
Dr Alexey Pokrovskiy, a Research Fellow in Birkbeck’s Department of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, has been awarded the European Prize in Combinatorics, a prestigious award made once every two years for excellent contributions in Combinatorics, Discrete Mathematics and their applications.
The prize, which is traditionally awarded during the European Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Applications, recognises the contribution of European researchers aged 35 and under to the field.
Alexey is joint winner of the prize with his research collaborator Richard Montgomery from the University of Birmingham. The judging panel stated that they had received a number of high level submissions in the 2019 round, but the pair were the unanimous winners “for their deep contributions to extremal and probabilistic combinatorics.”
Speaking of the award, Alexey said:
“It is a huge honour to receive this prize, and I am even more honoured to share it with my dear friend and colleague Richard Montgomery. I always knew I wanted to be a mathematician like my father, but I never imagined getting a prize like this. It leaves me indebted for the support from colleagues at Birkbeck and the wider community of combinatorics. I hope to continue contributing theorems to combinatorics for years to come."
Professor Sarah Hart, Head of the Department of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, said:
“We are delighted to see a young Birkbeck mathematician being recognised with such a prestigious international award. The award recognises the importance and relevance of Alexey’s work, which includes the solving of a number of long-standing conjectures in graph theory.”