Irina Mitrea, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Mathematics, earned the Temple University Faculty Research Award, which recognizes excellence and major contributions in the recipient’s field.

Mitrea’s work has been focused on the development of a systematic treatment of second and higher-order elliptic boundary value problems using singular integral operators. With more than 60 research articles and nine collaborative monographs, “her contributions in research have been extraordinary and have established her as a leader in her field,” said Miguel Mostafá, CST Dean.

Her research has been also recognized through the 2008 Ruth Michler Memorial Prize from the Association for Women in Mathematics, a Von Neumann Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 2014, and a Simons Foundation Fellowship in 2019. Mitrea has been an American Mathematical Society Fellow since 2015.

Most recently, Mitrea has co-authored an unprecedented five-volume, 5,000-page original research monograph that creates a new track in mathematics. The monograph, titled Geometric Harmonic Analysis, represents more than 15 years of research at the crossroads of geometry, mathematics concerned with metric properties of the ambient space, and harmonic analysis, which studies a complex object by decomposing it into simpler building blocks and establishing patterns of behavior.

Mitrea was also profiled by Temple as one of five university women trailblazers in STEM. “I personally am so hopeful seeing the extraordinary talent of the younger generation of women in mathematics and so grateful for the work they do every day to help redraw professional norms for a more inclusive and diverse mathematical community,” said Mitrea.