Biosketch

Yuval Peres is a Mathematician recognized for his research in probability, ergodic theory and analysis. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem in 1990, and later taught there and at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2006, he has been a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond. He has published more than 250 research papers and has co-authored books on Brownian motion, Markov chains, Probability on Networks, Fractals, and Game Theory. Yuval was awarded the Rollo Davidson Prize in 1995, the Loève Prize in 2001, and the David P. Robbins Prize in 2011. He was an invited speaker at the 2002 International Congress of Mathematicians and in the 2008 European Congress. He will deliver a plenary lecture at the Mathematics Congress of the Americas in 2017. He has advised 21 Ph.D. students. In 2016 he was elected as a foreign associate to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Research Interests

Yuval Peres' research interests are primarily in probability theory and related fields, such as ergodic theory and fractals, game theory, and theoretical computer science. He specializes in stochastic processes on graphs, such as random walks, percolation, and other topics from statistical physics; Bernoulli convolutions; the p-Laplacian; mixing times; combinatorics, especially random graphs; geometric group theory; martingales; and point processes. In recent years he has collaborated on research in adaptive learning and control theory. A central theme of Peres' research is finding new connections between different areas of probability and analysis. For example, he related percolation on trees to intersections of Brownian paths; with R. Lyons and R. Pemantle he developed ergodic theory on Galton-Watson trees; with R. Kenyon, he found a connection between Intersections of fractals and the growth of random matrix products; with L. Levine, he related certain cellular automata to free boundary problems for the Laplacian; with J. Ding and J. R. Lee, he related cover times for random walks to maxima of Gaussian processes; and with A. Naor, he related compression of groups to the rate of escape of random walks.

Membership Type

International Member

Election Year

2016

Primary Section

Section 32: Applied Mathematical Sciences

Secondary Section

Section 11: Mathematics