Associate professor of mathematics and CSWS affiliate Shabnam Akhtari has been awarded the 2021–2022 Ruth I. Michler Memorial Prize from the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Cornell University. Akhtari was selected to receive the Michler Prize to pursue her proposed research on classical Diophantine equations, in particular to study index form equations and their applications to understanding the structure of rings in algebraic number fields.

The Ruth I. Michler Memorial Prize was established through a generous donation from Ruth’s parents Gerhard and Waltraud Michler of Essen, Germany. The award grants a mid-career mathematician a residential fellowship in the Cornell University Mathematics Department without teaching obligations.