We are pleased to announce that Dr. Krzysztof Kapulkin has been selected as a winner of the "Thomas C. Hales Distinguished Research Award" in Mathematics. The prize is awarded annually for the best doctoral dissertation written by a graduate student in mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Kapulkin's dissertation contains a proof of Joyal’s conjecture that claims that the quasicategories naturally associated to certain type theories are locally cartesian closed. This is an important element in the development of the new foundational system for Mathematics known as Homotopy Type Theory. This is also the first result that is addressing the homotopy-theoretic structures that are present in the new foundations. Among other things, it is expected that Homotopy Type Theory will play an important role in the development of new and improved formal verification systems and proof assistants.
This award is being awarded for the eleventh time this year. Along with the prize winners before him, Dr. Kapulkin has set a standard of excellence for future graduate students at Pitt to follow.
The prize has been made possible by a generous gift to the University of Pittsburgh from the Beckham Foundation.