Biosketch

Alice Guionnet is a mathematician known for her work in probability theory. She was born in Paris and studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris). She received her PhD in 1995 from the Université Paris-Sud, under the supervision of Gerard Ben Arous, on the dynamics of spin glasses. In 1993, she was hired by the CNRS. She has held positions at the Courant Institute, Berkeley University and MIT. She is currently a Director of Research at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. Alice Guionnet is known for her contributions to statistical physics, in particular spin glasses and large random matrices. She was awarded the Oberwolfach Prize, the Rollo Davidson Prize, the Paul Doisteaut-Emile Blutet Prize, the Loève prize, and the Blaise Pascal Medal and was nominated Simons investigator. She was elected to the French Academy of Sciences and at Academia Europea in 2017. In 2022, she was elected to the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022.

Research Interests

Alice Guionnet is known for her work on large random matrices and spin glasses. With Ben Arous, she studied Langevin dynamics for spin glasses when the number of particles approaches infinity. With Amir Dembo, they investigated the behavior of spin glasses at large times and the aging phenomenon. She participated in the development of large random matrix theory by establishing concentration of measure and large deviation theory in this framework. She initiated the rigorous study of heavy-tailed matrices and obtained the convergence of the spectrum of generic non-normal matrices with Krishnapur and Zeitouni. She developed the analysis of Dyson-Schwinger equations to obtain topological asymptotic expansions, and studied beta-models and random tilings. In collaboration with Figalli, she introduced the concept of approximate transport to show the universality of local fluctuations. Alice Guionnet has also shown significant results in free probability theory by comparing Voiculescu entropies with Mireille Capitaine and Philippe Biane, building a tower of subfactors of any index with Vaughan Jones and building with Vaughan Jones and Dima Shlyakhtenko, and establishing isomorphisms between von Neumann algebras by constructing free transport maps building with Dima Shlyakhtenko.

Membership Type

International Member

Election Year

2022

Primary Section

Section 32: Applied Mathematical Sciences

Secondary Section

Section 11: Mathematics