Emmy Murphy is an American mathematician and a professor at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

, Mississauga campus. Murphy also maintains an office at the

Bahen Centre for Information Technology The Bahen Centre for Information Technology is a building at the St. George campus of the University of Toronto. It is primarily used by the University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science and Engin ...

. Murphy works in the area of

symplectic topology Symplectic geometry is a branch of differential geometry and differential topology that studies symplectic manifolds; that is, differentiable manifolds equipped with a closed, nondegenerate 2-form. Symplectic geometry has its origins in the ...

contact geometry In mathematics, contact geometry is the study of a geometric structure on smooth manifolds given by a hyperplane distribution in the tangent bundle satisfying a condition called 'complete non-integrability'. Equivalently, such a distribution ...

and

geometric topology In mathematics, geometric topology is the study of manifolds and Map (mathematics)#Maps as functions, maps between them, particularly embeddings of one manifold into another. History Geometric topology as an area distinct from algebraic topo ...

Education

Murphy graduated from the

University of Nevada, Reno The University of Nevada, Reno (Nevada, the University of Nevada, or UNR) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Reno, Nevada, United States. It is the state's flagship public university and prim ...

in 2007, She completed her doctorate at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 2012; her dissertation, ''Loose Legendrian Embeddings in High Dimensional Contact Manifolds'', was supervised by

Yakov Eliashberg Yakov Matveevich Eliashberg (also Yasha Eliashberg; ; born 11 December 1946) is an American mathematician who was born in Leningrad, USSR. Education and career Eliashberg received his PhD, entitled ''Surgery of Singularities of Smooth Mappin ...

Career

She was a

C. L. E. Moore instructor The job title of C. L. E. Moore instructor is given by the Math Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to recent math Ph.D.s hired for their promise in pure mathematics research. The instructors are expected to do both teaching and res ...

and assistant professor at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

before moving in 2016 to

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

, where she became an associate professor of mathematics. She moved to

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 2021 as a full professor; and later moved to the

in 2023. Murphy is recognized for her contribution to symplectic and

. She won the New Horizons in Mathematics Prize in 2020 for "the introduction of notions of loose Legendrian submanifolds", and "overtwisted contact structures in higher dimensions", which is joint work with Matthew Strom Borman and

. Murphy was invited to the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

in 2018 and she gave a talk related to some results on

h-principle In mathematics, the homotopy principle (or h-principle) is a very general way to solve partial differential equations (PDEs), and more generally partial differential relations (PDRs). The h-principle is good for underdetermined PDEs or PDRs, su ...

phenomena. Apart from using

to study the flexibility of local geometric models, Murphy's work uses cut-and-paste/surgery techniques from

smooth topology In algebraic geometry, the smooth topology is a certain Grothendieck topology, which is finer than étale topology. Its main use is to define the cohomology of an algebraic stack with coefficients in, say, the étale sheaf \mathbb_l. To understand ...

. She also works on exploring the interaction of symplectic/contact topology with geometric invariants, such as those coming from pseudo-holomorphic curves or constructible sheaves. Murphy received the grants from

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

for the period 2019–2022 on the topic "Flexible Stein Manifolds and Fukaya Categories".

Awards and honors

* 2025

Krieger–Nelson Prize The Krieger–Nelson Prize is presented by the Canadian Mathematical Society in recognition of an outstanding woman in mathematics. It was first awarded in 1995. The award is named after Cecilia Krieger and Evelyn Nelson, both known for their contr ...

. *

Fellow of the American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

, in the 2025 class of fellows. * Von Neumann Fellow,

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

, 2019–2020. * New Horizons in Mathematics prize awarded by the

Breakthrough Prize The Breakthrough Prizes are a set of international awards bestowed in three categories by the Breakthrough Prize Board in recognition of scientific advances. The awards are part of several "Breakthrough" initiatives founded and funded by Yuri M ...

Foundation 2020. * Invited speaker at the 2018

. * Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize 2017 by the

Association for Women in Mathematics The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment o ...

. * AWM Birman Prize 2016 by

Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium The Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium ( , sometimes referred to as ' ) is the independent learned society of science and arts of the French Community of Belgium. One of Belgium's numerous academies, it is the French-speak ...

. * Sloan Research Fellowship 2015.

References

External links

*
Loose Legendrian Embeddings in High Dimensional Contact Manifolds
' * {{DEFAULTSORT:Murphy, Emmy Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American mathematicians University of Nevada, Reno alumni Stanford University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Northwestern University faculty Princeton University faculty Academic staff of the University of Toronto 21st-century American women mathematicians American transgender women LGBTQ mathematicians Fellows of the American Mathematical Society