Jennifer Balakrishnan

Jennifer Shyamala Sayaka Balakrishnan is an American mathematician[1] known for leading a team that solved the "cursed curve", a Diophantine equation that was "famously difficult" before her solution.[2] More generally Balakrishnan specializes in algorithmic number theory and arithmetic geometry. She is Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor at Boston University,[1][3] and a Sloan Research Fellow.[4]

Jennifer Balakrishnan
Jennifer Balakrishnan (2018)
NationalityUnited States
Alma mater
AwardsSloan Fellowship (2018)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsBoston University
ThesisColeman integration for hyperelliptic curves: algorithms and applications (2011)
Doctoral advisorKiran Kedlaya
Websitemath.bu.edu/people/jbala/

Education and career

Balakrishnan was born in Mangilao, Guam[5] to Narayana and Shizuko Balakrishnan; her father is a professor of chemistry at the University of Guam.[6][7] As a junior at the Harvest Christian Academy (Guam), Balakrishnan won an honorable mention in the 2001 Karl Menger Memorial Award competition, for the best mathematical project in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Her project concerned elliptic coordinate systems.[8] In the following year, she won the National High School Student Calculus Competition, given as part of the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad.[9]

Balakrishnan graduated from Harvard University in 2006, with both a magna cum laude bachelor's degree and a master's degree in mathematics.[1] She moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for her doctoral studies, completing her Ph.D. in 2011. Her dissertation, Coleman integration for hyperelliptic curves: algorithms and applications, was supervised by Kiran Kedlaya.[1][10]

She returned to Harvard for postdoctoral studies from 2011 to 2013, and then moved to the University of Oxford from 2013 to 2016, where she was a Junior Research Fellow in Balliol College and a Titchmarsh Research Fellow in the Mathematical Institute.[1] She became Clare Booth Luce Assistant Professor at Boston University in 2016.[1][3]

Balakrishnan is one of the principal investigators in the Simons Collaboration on Arithmetic Geometry, Number Theory, and Computation, a large multi-university collaboration involving Boston University, Harvard, MIT, Brown University, and Dartmouth College, with additional collaborators from other universities in the US, England, Australia, the Netherlands, and Canada.[11]. She also serves on the board of directors of the Number Theory Foundation and the editorial board of Research in Number Theory.[12][13]

Contributions

In 2017, Balakrishnan led a team of mathematicians in solving the "cursed curve" . This curve is modeled by the equation

and, as a Diophantine equation, the problem is to identify all the combinations of rational numbers for the variables , , and for which the equation is true.[2] Although as an explicit equation this curve has a complicated form, it is significant in the theory of elliptic curves, as a modular curve whose solutions characterize the one remaining unsolved case of a theorem of Bilu, Parent & Rebolledo (2013) on the Galois representations of elliptic curves without complex multiplication.[14] Computations by Galbraith (2002) and Baran (2014) had previously identified seven solutions to the cursed curve (six corresponding to elliptic curves with complex multiplication, and one cusp), but their computational methods were unable to show that the list of solutions was complete.[15][16] Following a suggestion of Oxford mathematician Minhyong Kim, Balakrishnan and her co-authors constructed a "Selmer variety" associated with the curve, such that the rational points of the curve all lie on the Selmer variety as well, and such that the number of points of intersection of the curve and the variety can be computed. Using this method, they proved that the seven known solutions to the cursed curve are the only ones possible.[2]. This work was initially reported in 2017 arXiv preprint [17] and was published in Annals of Mathematics in 2019 [18].

As well as for her work in number theory, Balakrishnan is known for her work implementing number-theoretical algorithms as part of the SageMath computer algebra system.[3]

Recognition

In 2018, Balakrishnan was selected as a Sloan Research Fellow.[4]

She received the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professorship in 2016.[19]

Selected publications
  • Balakrishnan, Jennifer S.; Bradshaw, Robert W.; Kedlaya, Kiran S (2010). "Explicit Coleman integration for hyperelliptic curves". Algorithmic number theory, 16–31, Lecture Notes in Comput. Sci., 6197, Springer, Berlin. MR2721410.
  • Balakrishnan, Jennifer S.; Besser, Amnon (2012). "Computing local p-adic height pairings on hyperelliptic curves". Int. Math. Res. Not. (IMRN), no. 11, 2405–2444. MR2926986.
  • Balakrishnan, Jennifer S.; Besser, Amnon; Müller, J. Steffen (2016). "Quadratic Chabauty: p-adic heights and integral points on hyperelliptic curves". J. Reine Angew. Math. 720 (2016), 51–79. MR3565969.

References
  1. Curriculum vitae (PDF), Boston University, May 9, 2018, retrieved 2018-09-17
  2. Hartnett, Kevin (December 7, 2017), "Mathematicians crack the cursed curve", Quanta Magazine
  3. Rimer, Sara (November 4, 2016), "Young Mathematician Wins Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professorship", Research, Boston University
  4. Barlow, Rich (March 21, 2018), "Sloan Fellowships Go to BU astronomer, physicist, and mathematician", BU Today, Boston University
  5. "Jennifer Balakrishnan and Vivek Venkatachalam". The New York Times. 2011-05-28. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-02-08.
  6. Rajghatta, Chidanand (March 14, 2002), "8 Indian-American stars shine at Intel contest", The Times of India
  7. "Jennifer Balakrishnan and Vivek Venkatachalam", Weddings/Celebrations, The New York Times, May 28, 2011
  8. "AMS Menger Awards Made", News, Events and Announcements, American Mathematical Society, June 28, 2001
  9. "National High School Student Calculus Competition", Mathematics People, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 49 (7): 820, August 2002
  10. Jennifer Balakrishnan at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  11. "Principal Investigators", Simons Collaboration on Arithmetic Geometry, Number Theory, and Computation, Brown University, retrieved 2018-09-17
  12. Board of directors, Number Theory Foundation, retrieved 2020-01-18
  13. Editors, Springer Science+Business Media, retrieved 2020-01-18
  14. Bilu, Yuri; Parent, Pierre; Rebolledo, Marusia (2013), "Rational points on ", Annales de l'Institut Fourier, 63 (3): 957–984, doi:10.5802/aif.2781, MR 3137477
  15. Galbraith, Steven D. (2002), "Rational points on and quadratic -curves", Journal de Théorie des Nombres de Bordeaux, 14 (1): 205–219, doi:10.5802/jtnb.354, MR 1925998
  16. Baran, Burcu (2014), "An exceptional isomorphism between modular curves of level 13", Journal of Number Theory, 145: 273–300, doi:10.1016/j.jnt.2014.05.017, MR 3253304
  17. Balakrishnan, Jennifer S.; Dogra, Netan; Müller, J. Steffen; Tuitman, Jan; Vonk, Jan (2017), Explicit Chabauty–Kim for the split Cartan modular curve of level 13, arXiv:1711.05846, Bibcode:2017arXiv171105846B
  18. Balakrishnan, Jennifer S.; Dogra, Netan; Müller, J. Steffen; Tuitman, Jan; Vonk, Jan (2019), "Explicit Chabauty–Kim for the split Cartan modular curve of level 13", Annals of Mathematics, 109 (3): 885–944, arXiv:1711.05846, doi:10.4007/annals.2019.189.3.6
  19. "Mathematician Jennifer Balakrishnan Wins Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professorship | The Brink". Boston University. Retrieved 2020-02-08.
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