Simion Filip – Winner of the George B. Wood Prize

Here is a nice, longer biography of our November 8th speaker, Simion Filip.  This prize appears to be just one of many past and future distinctions.  In addition to being a great lecturer, he is nearer to many of our students in age and should be a great inspiration.

George B. Wood Legacy Junior Prize

The recipient of this year’s George B. Wood Legacy Junior Prize was Simion Filip. The award is given to a member of the senior class in recognition of exceptional academic achievement during the junior year.

Filip lives in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, where he graduated from Liceul Orizont, the Moldo-Turkish Lyceum. Before matriculating at Princeton, he won a bronze medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Greece and a silver medal at the Balkan Mathematical Olympiad in Bulgaria, both in 2004, and, in 2005, a silver medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Mexico, a gold medal at the Balkan Mathematical Olympiad in Romania and a bronze medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics in Poland.

An A.B. candidate, Filip is concentrating in mathematics, a subject he studied in the spring of his sophomore year at the Independent University of Moscow. At Princeton, Filip won the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence for his sophomore year and the Andrew H. Brown Prize for outstanding junior work in mathematics. In the summers of 2007 and 2008, he won first prize at the International Mathematics Competitions in Bulgaria.

Filip’s research interests in mathematics lie in areas with applications to mathematical physics, in particular, ergodic theory and algebraic geometry. His senior thesis will likely focus on questions about the ergodic theory of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces.

Last year, Filip took 13 courses, including seven graduate seminars. Outside the classroom, he is interested in yoga and rock climbing. He is a member of Forbes College.

After graduation, Filip hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics, with the long-run goal of becoming a research mathematician.

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Simion Filip – Geometry and Physics: from Euclid to Einstein

This Saturday, November 8th, Simion Filip will present the way our understanding of the physical world shaped the geometric problems that we considered throughout history.  Examples will be drawn mostly from elementary Euclidian geometry and the talk should be accessible to anyone who is familiar with angles and triangles.

Mr. Filip is a senior at Princeton University, studying mathematics with an interest in mathematical physics. After graduation, he plans to pursue a Ph. D. in mathematics.  While in high-school, Simion Filip took part in both the International Mathematics and Informatics Olympiads, where he received silver and bronze medals respectively.

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