Torquato to receive Kleinman Prize

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) has selected Princeton's Salvatore Torquato to receive the Ralph E. Kleinman Prize for his work connecting mathematics with applications outside the field.

Torquato, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials, will be presented with $5,000 and a certificate on May 28 at SIAM's annual meeting, the Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems in Snowbird, Utah. The Kleinman Prize is awarded every two years to an individual who has contributed outstanding research that bridges the gap between mathematics and applications.

The institute's awards committee cited his "many and deep contributions to the modeling, analysis and computational study of heterogeneous materials," which have improved our understanding of the liquid and glass states of matter. Torquato's work has explored the behavior of large groups of particles that make up disordered heterogeneous materials, liquids, glasses and biological materials, employing both theoretical and computer simulation techniques. He is also interested in modeling the growth of tumors.

Torquato, who has been at the University since 1992, also is a senior faculty fellow in the Princeton Center for Theoretical Physics. He is an associated faculty member in physics, applied and computational mathematics, chemical engineering, and mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Torquato's other honors include being named a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in 1998 and a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2004. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study for both the 1998-99 and 2003-04 academic years. He received the William Prager Medal of the Society for Engineering Science in 2004.

SIAM was founded in 1952 to advance the application of mathematics and computational science and to promote research that will lead to effective new mathematical and computational methods and techniques for society, science, engineering and industry. The society has more than 10,000 members.