By Sally Pobojewski
News and Information Services
Trevor D. Wooley, assistant professor of mathematics, is one of 20 science and engineering researchers nationwide to receive a five-year $500,000 fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
The Packard Fellowships were established to support the work of promising young scientists and engineers and to encourage talented graduate students to pursue university research in the United States.
“Trevor Wooley is one terrific young man, and we are indeed lucky to have him here at Michigan,” said Donald J. Lewis, professor of mathematics and department chair. “In addition to the major contributions he’s made to mathematics theory, he has become one of our better classroom instructors. He really excels at motivating young students to become researchers.”
Wooley, 29, is recognized for his original research in analytic number theory, specifically involving the application of exponential sum estimates. He analyzes the properties of integers that satisfy a particular type of equation called a diophantine equation.
“All my research is related to basic questions concerning integer solutions of equations—questions that are fundamental to mathematics,” Wooley said.
He plans to use his Packard Fellowship funding to bring visiting mathematicians to Ann Arbor for long-term research collaborations and to support his graduate students.
Wooley joined the U-M in 1991 after a year at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College. He received his Ph.D. from the University of London, Imperial College of Science and Technology, in 1990.
Wooley received the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship Award in 1993, along with the London Mathematical Society’s Junior Berwick Prize.
