Ben Williams has won the 2017 UBC Mathematics and Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences Faculty Award. The prize has a cash component, and winners are invited to give a prestigious invited lecture. Thus we can look forward to hearing Prof Williams describe his work sometime later this year.

The UBC Math/PIMS Faculty Award was created by two founding donors, Anton Kuipers and Darrell Duffie, to recognize UBC researchers for their leading-edge work in mathematics or its applications in the sciences. This is the third time it has been given; previous winners are Rachel Ollivier for 2015 and Yaniv Plan for 2016.

Professor Williams works on the boundary between topology and algebraic geometry/number theory. He and his collaborators have done important foundational work in equivariant and motivic homotopy theory, and have used this "heavy machinery" to shed new light on (and in some cases completely settle) a number of long-standing open problems in algebra. A referee in the competition credits Ben with a knack for figuring out the 'right' perspective on things: "he knows the difference between an explanation and a beautiful explanation, and he definitely strives for the latter."

Ben received his BA (in Math and English Literature) and MSc (in Math) from University College Dublin in Ireland. He went on to earn Ph.D. at Stanford in 2010, under the supervision of Gunnar Carlsson. After 3 years at the University of Southern California, he came to UBC as a postdoc in 2013. We succeeded in recruiting him to the permanent faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2015.