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Michael Groechenig, an associate professor in the University of Toronto Mississauga’s department of mathematical and computational sciences, has received the prestigious 2024 New Horizons Prize in Mathematics from .

Billed as “the Oscars of Science,” the Breakthrough Prize was founded by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg, Julia and Yuri Milner and Anne Wojcicki to recognize the world's top scientists working in the fundamental sciences. 

The New Horizons Prize in Mathematics is awarded to promising early-career researchers who have already produced important work. Jacob Tsimerman of the department of mathematics in the Faculty of Arts & Science was recognized with the 2022 prize.

Groechenig received the award for his insights into arithmetic geometry, specifically for his contributions to the theory of rigid local systems and applications of p-adic integration to mirror symmetry and the fundamental lemma.

“I was feeling quite surprised and very humbled when I learnt about having won the New Horizons,” Groechenig says. “It’s such an honour to receive that recognition from my community.

“I’m grateful to my collaborators Hélène Esnault, Dimitri Wyss and Paul Ziegler for the many interesting things they have taught me and for our joint work on the papers for which the prize was awarded.”

Groechenig was .