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May 29, 2025
Bryna Kra, the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Mathematics in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, has received the 2025 Martin E. and Gertrude G. Walder Award for Research Excellence.
“Professor Kra has not only advanced her field through her research, but she also has heightened the profile of the mathematics department and the University with her international reputation and leadership,” Provost Kathleen Hagerty said. “Add to this her contagious passion for mathematics and her desire to attract more students to the discipline, and Professor Kra represents Northwestern faculty at their best.”
The award, established in 2002 by Dr. Joseph Walder, and conferred annually by the provost, recognizes excellence in research at Northwestern. Walder earned a doctorate and medical degrees from Northwestern.
Known for her groundbreaking contributions to ergodic theory — the study of the statistical behavior of dynamic systems — Kra solved a long-standing question on the existence of the limit of certain multiple ergodic averages. This work uncovered the role of nilpotent groups and their homogenous spaces in analyzing configurations in sets of integers.
“I’m grateful for this recognition, and it leads me to reflect on the greatest aspects of my field, mathematics — the deep pleasure that comes from insight and understanding a mathematical problem, and the camaraderie that mathematicians provide to one another in this endeavor,” Kra said.
Kra was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019. She also is a fellow and past president of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Kra received an AMS Centennial Fellowship in 2006; the Levi L. Conant Prize of the AMS in 2010; and was awarded Simons Fellowships in 2016, 2021 and 2025. She was an invited speaker at the 2006 International Congress of Mathematicians. In 2023, she was named a Fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics and a Corresponding Foreign Member of La Academia Chilena de Ciencias.
She chaired Northwestern’s Department of Mathematics from 2009 to 2012. She also founded an award-winning program called Graduate Research Opportunities for Women.
From Northwestern, she has received the 2022 Provost Award for Exemplary Faculty Service and the 2022 Dorothy Ann and Clarence L. Ver Steeg Distinguished Research Fellowship Award. She currently serves on the Mathematical & Physical Sciences Advisory Board of the Simons Foundation and on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute.
