Xavier Tolsa receives the National Research Award
Diana Morant, Minister for Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU), recently announced the winners of the National Research Awards 2024, which include 20 modalities endowed with 30,000 euros each and are “the most important recognition in Spain in the field of scientific research”.
Xavier Tolsa, ICREA research lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at the UAB has been awarded the National Research Award in the Julio Rey Pastor modality for his recognised national and international career in the area of harmonic analysis, potential theory and geometric theory of functions, solving important problems in his area of knowledge such as Painlevé's problem on the geometric characterisation of avoidable sets.
Xavier Tolsa received his PhD in Mathematics from the UAB in 1998. After spending a year at the University of Göteborg and another year at the Université de Paris-Sud, in 2001 he started working at the Department of Mathematics of the UAB with a Ramon y Cajal grant, and in 2003 he obtained an ICREA position with which he continues at the UAB. His research has focused on the area of mathematical analysis, and more specifically in harmonic analysis, geometric measure theory, potential theory, and other related areas. His results include the resolution of numerous open problems, such as the Painlevé problem for bounded analytic functions (posed at the beginning of the 20th century) or the proof of the semi-additivity of the analytic capacity, conjectured in the 1960s. In other recent collaborative works he has solved the David and Semmes problem, the two-phase problem for harmonic measure, and Carleson's epsilon^2 conjecture. For his results he has won several awards, including the 2002 Salem prize, the 2004 European Mathematical Society prize, and the 2019 Rei Jaume I Award for basic research.
In addition, María Escudero, researcher of the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology-ICN2 (CSIC-Government of Catalonia-UAB), has been awarded in the category for young researchers, which recognises the merit of young people - with a maximum age of 40 years - who have achieved relevant achievements in the early stages of their careers.
María Escudero is ICREA research lecturer and Group Leader at ICN2, located on the UAB campus. She has been awarded in the María Teresa Toral category for her innovative research in electrochemical processes, as well as in the design, at the atomic level, of new advanced materials. Her discoveries provide scientific and technological solutions to convert renewable electricity into green fuels such as hydrogen, liquid fuels for aviation and sustainable maritime transport. All of this, together with her leadership skills, make her worthy of this distinction.
