DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize Announced

Mouhamed Moustapha Fall, Professor and President of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Senegal, has been awarded the 2022 DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries.

Professor Fall received the Prize for his outstanding work in the theory of Partial Differential Equations. The DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize Committee, composed of eminent mathematicians from around the world who were appointed in April 2022, commented that Fall has obtained "impressive results on existence and non-existence of solutions of linear and nonlinear partial differential equations inspired by Geometry and Mathematical Physics". The Committee highlighted Fall's "remarkable study of solutions to fractional Schrodinger equations and nonlocal mean curvature problems".

Fall's research has given important contributions to the classical theory of constant mean curvature hypersurfaces in Riemannian manifolds, its extension to the nonlocal case and its connection to the general theory of fractional partial differential equations. In recognition of these results, Mouhamed Moustapha Fall was an invited speaker at the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro. 

Mouhamed Moustapha Fall, after getting the Postgraduate Diploma at ICTP, earned a PhD in mathematics from SISSA (Italy) and held postdoctoral positions in Belgium, Germany and Italy, before returning to Senegal at AIMS (with an endowed Chair funded by the Alexander von Humboldt foundation), an institution of which he has recently become President. He was an ICTP Simons Associate from 2014 to 2019.

The Prize selection Committee also recognised Fall's "outstanding contributions to the advancement of mathematics in Africa through research and public engagement". Professor Fall, on top of an intense activity as guide and supervisor of many Master and PhD students in Senegal, is indeed a member of the International Scientific Board of the International Basic Science Programme (IBSP) of UNESCO, 2021-2023, and in January 2023 started his term as member of the IMU Executive Committee for 2023-2026.