Victoria Schleis, a postdoctoral research associate in our top-rated Mathematical Sciences department, has been awarded a prestigious fellowship by the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) for the 2024-25 academic year.
This fellowship recognises Victoria’s outstanding contributions to the field of combinatorial algebraic geometry and provides an incredible opportunity for her to collaborate with leading scholars from around the world.
Victoria's research is in a field of maths called combinatorial algebraic geometry, which uses simple, step-by-step methods to study complex shapes formed by the solutions of polynomial equations.
She specifically focuses on two areas: tropical geometry and matroid theory. Tropical geometry simplifies complex shapes into simpler structures called ‘matroids’, which can then be studied more easily using matroid theory.
Matroid theory is a branch of maths that helps find common patterns of independence, like those found in matrices or networks, making it easier to solve different mathematical problems.
Victoria has also developed a new theory called ‘matroidal and tropical quiver theory.’
This theory looks at how matroids can be transformed using linear maps and studies their possible relationships, linking together different areas of maths, such as algebraic geometry, combinatorics, and representation theory.
It is this pioneering work that has earned her the prestigious IAS fellowship.
As a member of the IAS, Victoria will join a community of more than 250 distinguished scholars and promising post-doctoral researchers who are selected each year based on their bold ideas, innovative methods, and deep research questions.
This fellowship offers a unique platform for her to advance her research further and engage in the free and open exchange of ideas with scholars from diverse fields.
The IAS, located in Princeton, New Jersey, has a storied history of fostering intellectual inquiry and fundamental discovery. Scholars who have been associated with IAS include some of the greatest minds of the past century, such as Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Our Department of Mathematical Sciences is ranked in the top 10 in the UK in the Complete University Guide 2025. Visit our Mathematical Sciences webpages for more information on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
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