What Research Areas Do the New MIT Mathematics Faculty Specialize In?

The MIT Department of Mathematics recently welcomed four assistant professors, and their research spans probability theory and statistical physics, the mathematical foundations of deep learning, interactions among combinatorics, functional analysis, and probability, and number theory. The department's homepage announcement identifies each new faculty member and summarizes their background and research focus, which is the most direct source for matching a name to a specialty.

The Four New Faculty and Their Research Areas

Jeanne Boursier: Probability and Statistical Physics

Boursier received her PhD in Mathematics from Université Paris-Dauphine in 2022, supervised by Djalil Chafaï and Sylvia Serfaty. Before joining MIT she was a postdoctoral researcher at ENS Lyon and a Ritt Assistant Professor at Columbia University. Her work sits in probability theory, with a focus on statistical physics—particularly phase transitions and spin glasses. Readers looking for research on random systems and their critical behavior will find her work relevant.

Alex Damian: Mathematics of Deep Learning

Damian holds a joint appointment in Mathematics and EECS[AI+D]. His research addresses the mathematical foundations of deep learning, emphasizing optimization dynamics and representation learning. He was previously a Kempner Research Fellow at Harvard University, earned his PhD in Applied and Computational Mathematics from Princeton University under Jason Lee, and received his BS in Mathematics from Duke University. This is the profile to follow if you are interested in why and how neural network training works from a theoretical standpoint.

Jorge Garza-Vargas: Combinatorics, Functional Analysis, and Probability

Garza-Vargas received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, advised by Nikhil Srivastava and Dan-Virgil Voiculescu. Before MIT he was a postdoctoral scholar in the CMS Department at Caltech and an assistant professor at Princeton. He is broadly interested in the interactions between combinatorics, functional analysis, and probability, and has worked on both pure and applied problems. His arrival is scheduled for 2026 according to the announcement.

Naomi Sweeting: Number Theory

Sweeting received her BA in mathematics with honors from the University of Chicago in 2019 and her PhD from Harvard University in 2024, advised by Professor Mark Kisin. In 2023 she was a visiting graduate student at the Simons-Lauffer mathematical institute, and from 2024 to 2026 she held a postdoctoral position. Her area is number theory and related fields.

How to Use This Information

• Prospective students comparing advisors can use the table to shortlist faculty by subfield before reading individual pages or recent papers.
• Researchers planning collaborations or seminar invitations can identify overlaps—for example, probability appears in both Boursier's and Garza-Vargas's work, while Damian bridges mathematics and AI.
• Journalists or event organizers seeking an expert comment should match the topic to the specialty rather than the department as a whole.

The homepage announcement also notes a newly created page on the AI transformation for mathematics, with opinions, information, and activities of interest to the MIT community—a useful follow-up if Damian's area is your focus. For full publication lists and contact details, check each faculty member's individual department page, since the announcement itself only summarizes research directions.