Chern Prize

Ching-Li Chai is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. He was elected as an Academician of the 28th Convocation of Academia Sinica. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1984 (under the supervision of Professor David Mumford). He served as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University from 1981 to 1984. He was a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, from 1984 to 1985, followed by appointments as a Lecturer at Princeton University from 1985 to 1987 and an Assistant Professor from 1987 to 1989. He joined the University of Pennsylvania as an Associate Professor in 1989 and was promoted to Professor in 2000. He held the Francis J. Carey Term Chair Professorship from 2007 to 2012. Additionally, he was a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of Mathematics, Academia Sinica, from 2012 to 2013.

His research specialization is mathematics (Arithmetic Algebraic Geometry). His academic honors include being an Invited Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Madrid, in 2006; delivering the Leung Yeuk Lam Lecture Series at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in August 2007; presenting the Niven Lectures at the University of British Columbia in March 2006; being elected an Academician of Academia Sinica in 2010; and being named a Simons Fellow in 2018.

Jixiang Fu is a Professor of Mathematics at Fudan University, Director of the Institute of Mathematics, and a Chair Professor at the Shanghai Center for Mathematical Sciences. His honors include the Morningside Silver Medal, the Chern Award from the Chinese Mathematical Society, and the TWAS Award in Mathematics. He was also an invited speaker at the 2010 International Congress of Mathematicians.

Professor Fu specializes in complex geometry and has made pioneering contributions to non-Kähler geometry: his work on the existence of non-Kähler solutions to the Strominger system opened up a new area of research; his construction of balanced metrics on non-Kähler Calabi-Yau threefolds via conifold transitions provides a foundational tool for studying their geometry; and his introduction of the form-type complex Monge-Ampère equation has led to several major breakthroughs. More recently, his research has expanded into Kähler geometry, where he has achieved significant results on diverse topics, including Teissier's proportionality problem, the limiting behavior of Hermitian-Yang-Mills metrics, the deformed Hermitian-Yang-Mills flow, and the global generation of higher direct images of pluricanonical bundles.