Professor Julia Gog OBE wins Hedy Lamarr Prize 2023
We are delighted to announce that the Council of the IMA has awarded the IMA Hedy Lamarr Prize for Knowledge Exchange in Mathematics and its Applications to Professor Julia Gog OBE. This new IMA prize, which was introduced to the community in 2020, is awarded to a mathematician who demonstrates meritorious knowledge exchange in mathematics and its applications.
The citation for the 2023 award to Julia Gog follows:
Julia is the Professor of Mathematical Biology at DAMTP, in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. She is also the David N Moore Fellow in Mathematics at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Julia is also a keen supporter of mathematics outreach and is the Director of the Millennium Mathematics Project (https://maths.org).
Julia has shown a consistently strong interest in raising public awareness about the usefulness of mathematics in our everyday lives.
However, it was during the pandemic is where Julia showed her mathematical greatness. She was a member of SPI-M and SAGE where Julia made a very active contribution towards the Covid-19 response at the highest level, and was frequently seen on television explaining the maths behind COVID to a general audience as well as to policy makers. She was (and remains) co-lead of the JUNIPER consortium which brought many universities and disciplines together to fight COVID in a truly interdisciplinary fashion. During this period, she also managed to find time to work with an outreach journal as well as appearing alongside the Deputy Chief Medical Officer in presenting the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. Julia is an outstanding mathematician who cares passionately about knowledge exchange and outreach, going beyond any reasonable expectations by collaborating with the medical community, the media, and education resource designers to develop activities which benefited schools across the UK. Because of this she was awarded the Royal Society’s Rosalind Franklin Award and Lecture for her achievements in the field of mathematics.
This is a fitting award for a brilliant mathematician, and an exceptional exponent of knowledge exchange.
Professor Nira Chamberlain OBE & Prof Chris Budd OBE
