Mathematics Professor Slutsky Receives NSF CAREER Award

The Department of Mathematics at Iowa State University is pleased to announce that Assistant Professor Konstantin Slutsky has been awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for his project, “Equivariant Analysis: At the Crossroads of Descriptive Set Theory, Dynamical Systems, and Classical Analysis.” The award (No. 2540790) will support five years of research beginning August 1, 2026, with a total intended funding amount of $410,623.

The NSF CAREER program recognizes early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models and to lead advances in research and education. Slutsky’s project explores the emerging field of equivariant analysis, which examines how classical mathematical constructions can be carried out without selecting an arbitrary “origin” or distinguished point. This perspective connects several major areas of mathematics, including descriptive set theory, dynamical systems, and classical analysis.

The research seeks to understand when analytic and differential equations admit solutions that respect the underlying symmetries of a space. Building on recent breakthroughs with collaborators Mikhail Sodin and Aron Wennman, Slutsky will investigate equivariant versions of foundational results in complex analysis and study connections to random analytic objects such as random entire functions and random solutions of partial differential equations.

Beyond its theoretical significance, the project will provide valuable training opportunities for students. Participants will work with tools from ergodic theory, probability, geometry, and dynamical systems—techniques that also play important roles in modern machine learning, stochastic optimization, and autonomous systems.