International Cooperation Award

Andrei Okounkov is the Samuel Eilenberg Professor of Mathematics at Columbia University. He received his B.S. in 1993 and his Ph.D. in 1995, both in Mathematics from Moscow State University, graduating summa cum laude.

Professor Okounkov has been recognized with numerous prestigious honors, including the Fields Medal in 2006. His other awards include a Sloan Research Fellowship (2000), a Packard Fellowship (2001), the European Mathematical Society Prize (2004), and the Compositio Prize (2009). He has been elected to several esteemed academies: the US National Academy of Sciences (2012), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2016), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2020), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2023). He was also an invited plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2018 and a recipient of the Frontier of Science Awards in 2023 and 2024.

He has contributed significantly to the service of the mathematical community. A long-time supporter of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, he served on and chaired its Scientific Advisory Committee and later served as a member and Vice-Chair of its Board of Trustees. His advisory and trustee roles extend to other institutions, including the Clay Mathematics Institute, the Packard Foundation, the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, and the Hamilton Mathematics Institute. Professor Okounkov has also served as an editor for several journals, such as the Journal of the American Mathematical Society, and has organized numerous conferences, workshops, and special programs. In recognition of his dedicated service as a member of the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union and the Local Organizing Committee for the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians, the IMU passed a resolution expressing its deep gratitude for his "tireless dedication and commitment."

Caucher Birkar is a Professor at the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center (YMSC) of Tsinghua University. His research primarily focuses on algebraic geometry, with a specialized emphasis in birational geometry. This field maintains profound connections with many other mathematical disciplines, including differential geometry, arithmetic geometry, group theory, mirror symmetry, and mathematical physics.

He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham between 2001 and 2004. He has received several prestigious honors and awards. These include being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2019 and being awarded the Fields Medal in 2018. He is also a recipient of the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2010) and the Prize of the Fondation Sciences Mathématiques de Paris (2010).