Math professor wins research fellowship

    Assistant Professor of Mathematics Dan Margalit won a Sloan Research Fellowship, a high honor for young researchers, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced on Feb. 17.
    Margalit is one of 118 fellows for 2009, all of whom are university and college faculty members from the United States and Canada conducting advanced research in fields ranging from physics to molecular biology. He was the only Tufts faculty member selected.
    Margalit received the fellowship for his research in the mathematical field of topology, which he described as "studying symmetries."
    "In my research, I attempt to understand the symmetries of the surface of something like a donut," Margalit said. "There are some obvious symmetries; you can rotate the surface, or you can flip it over. But there's a lot of hidden symmetries as well, symmetries that you don't necessarily see right off the bat."
    The fellowship, awarded to candidates based on past publications and research, consists of a $50,000 grant for a two-year period. The award is typically given to young researchers.
    Margalit is the fifth Tufts professor to be awarded the fellowship and the first in the mathematics category. The fellowships have been awarded since 1955.
    Many Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win other prestigious awards. Thirty-eight have won the Nobel Prize in their respective fields, and 14 others have received the Fields Medal, one of the top honors in mathematics.
    "The award is really for them," Erica Stella, a fellowship administrator at the Sloan Foundation, told the Daily. "Each year, they're required to send progress reports on their research, but it's not for a specific project. Instead, it's for the promise of what they are to accomplish in the future."
    Margalit said his approach to mathematics takes an interesting angle.
    "A lot of what I study bridges various areas of math that are deeply connected," he said. "I'm lucky that I'm working in an area that's connected to a lot of different ideas."
    Professor of Mathematics Bruce Boghosian, who chairs the Department of Mathematics, agreed, explaining that Margalit must think about the classification of "knots and braids," non-Euclidean geometries and "configuration spaces."
    "Mathematicians feel the kind of abstract things that they look at have a certain reality to them," Boghosian said. "When you can glimpse that reality from two different ways, when you can take two subfields of mathematics and apply those to a single subject, well, there's a beauty to it."
    Though Sloan Research Fellows are not bound to continue their previous research, Margalit plans to maintain focus in the topology field. He will primarily use the grant to travel to different conferences and universities.
    "In math, I don't need to buy any lab equipment or get any fruit flies," he said. "You use the money to travel and talk to people."
    Margalit said he would like to focus on collaborating with other mathematicians.
    "A lot of people have the image of the obsessed mathematician working in his office," he said. "But ideas come from talking to people and bouncing ideas off each other."

Bruce:     "The kind of thing that [Margalit] does makes connections to other areas of mathematics," he said.

    "In order to study the symmetries of surfaces, [Margalit] ends up thinking of the classification of knots and braids," Boghosian said. "He uses non-Euclidean geometries, hyperbolic geometries, things called configuration spaces."

Margalit: "Math is very collaborative," he said.

Margalit: "So my main purpose is giving myself the opportunity to talk to different people."

    The Department of Mathematics, and the entire Tufts community, is extremely proud of Margalit's research and his prospects for the future.
    "The research that he's doing is very fundamental mathematical research. You know, in his career so far he's really made fundamental advances in math and we're all really happy and proud to have him here," Boghosian said.