Bryna R. Kra

Biosketch

Bryna Kra is the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Mathematics at Northwestern University. She was awarded the Centennial Fellowship of the American Mathematical Society in 2006 and the Conant Prize of the American Mathematical Society in 2010, and was elected a fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012. In 2016, she became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2019 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She has held positions at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, the Institute des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques in France, at the University of Michigan, the Ohio State University, and Pennsylvania State University, before joining the faculty at Northwestern University in 2004.

Research Interests

Bryna Kra works on topics at the intersection of dynamics, combinatorics, and number theory. Her work in ergodic theory on multiple ergodic averages settled a long-standing open problem and uncovered the role of nilpotent groups and their homogeneous spaces in analyzing configurations in sets of integers. This work opened connections to other fields and inspired numerous developments, including structure theorems in ergodic theory, in topological dynamics, and in arithmetic combinatorics, convergence results for numerous other averages, and recurrence phenomena in other settings. Continuing research at the intersection of dynamics and combinatorics, she worked on systems of low complexity, uncovering algebraic and geometric structures in such systems, and using them to study connections to combinatorial problems.