Maggie Hall Miller (born in 1993 or 1994) is a mathematician whose primary area of research is

low-dimensional topology In mathematics, low-dimensional topology is the branch of topology that studies manifolds, or more generally topological spaces, of four or fewer dimensions. Representative topics are the theory of 3-manifolds and 4-manifolds, knot theory, ...

. She is an assistant professor at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

. She and co-authors made notable advancements to the understanding of

Seifert surface In mathematics, a Seifert surface (named after German mathematician Herbert Seifert) is an orientable surface whose boundary is a given knot or link. Such surfaces can be used to study the properties of the associated knot or link. For exampl ...

s. She was awarded the

Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize The Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics is an annual award of the Breakthrough Prize series announced in 2013. It is funded by Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg and others. The annual award comes with a cash gift of $3 million. The Breakthrough Prize ...

in 2023.

Education and career

Miller completed her undergraduate studies at the

. She earned her PhD in mathematics from

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 2020, with

David Gabai David Gabai is an American mathematician and the Princeton University Department of Mathematics, Hughes-Rogers Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University. His research focuses on low-dimensional topology and hyperbolic geometry. Biography ...

as advisor (thesis: ''Extending fibrations of knot complements to ribbon disk complements''). After completing her doctoral degree, Miller worked as an

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party * National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political g ...

Postdoctoral Fellow from 2020 to 2021 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 ...

. Later as a Visiting Clay Fellow and Stanford Science Fellow, she spent time 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 ...

from 2021 to 2023. Miller is currently a tenure track professor at the

Mathematical work

In 2022, together with Kyle Hayden, Seungwon Kim, JungHwan Park and Isaac Sundberg, Miller proved a then 40 years old

conjecture In mathematics, a conjecture is a conclusion or a proposition that is proffered on a tentative basis without proof. Some conjectures, such as the Riemann hypothesis or Fermat's conjecture (now a theorem, proven in 1995 by Andrew Wiles), ha ...

of Charles Livingston on

Awards and honors

Miller was awarded a 2021 Clay Research Fellowship by the

Clay Mathematics Institute The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) is a private, non-profit foundation dedicated to increasing and disseminating mathematical knowledge. Formerly based in Peterborough, New Hampshire, the corporate address is now in Denver, Colorado. CMI's sc ...

for her work to expand topological research of

manifold In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a N ...

s. Her contributions were described by MIT as "important...to long-standing problems in low-dimensional topology." Clay Research Fellowships are awarded to recent PhD-holders who are selected for their research accomplishments and potential as leaders in mathematics research. In her previous position at Stanford, she was a Stanford Science Fellow. Fellowships are awarded to early career scientists who have demonstrated scientific achievement and advancement, as well as a desire to collaborate with a diverse scholarly community. Prior to her appointment at Stanford, Miller was awarded a

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 ...

Mathematical Sciences Postdoc Research Fellowship while at MIT in the Department of Mathematics. She also has a record of accomplishment during her graduate studies, having been awarded the Princeton Mathematics Graduate Teaching Award in 2018 and the Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Fellowship in 2019. She received the 2023

, one of 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 ...

s, for "work on fibered ribbon knots and surfaces in 4-dimensional manifolds.", and was named one of

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

' 30 Under 30 – Science for 2023. In 2025, Miller was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship.

Selected publications

* *

References

External links