Julian Sahasrabudhe, Richard Samworth, and Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb have been invited to give talks at the International Congress of Mathematicians in July 2026.
The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is one of the most important dates in the mathematical calendar. Convened every four years by the International Mathematical Union, the ICM features the world's leaders in the field and celebrates the diversity of today’s mathematics. Next year's ICM will take place in Philadelphia, with dates chosen to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the 40th anniversary of an ICM being held in the United States.
Celebrating international mathematics
Only mathematicians whose work is of the highest international standard are invited to speak at the week-long event, which usually draws thousands of participants working in all areas of mathematics. The ICM also sees the award of some of the most prestigious prizes in mathematics. These include the famous Fields Medals, awarded to mathematicians up to the age of 40 for existing work and future promise, and the Chern Medal, a life-time achievement award for accomplishments that warrant the "highest level of recognition for outstanding achievements in the field of mathematics". Other prizes reward the impact of research outside mathematics, outstanding contributions to the information sciences and achievements in increasing public awareness of mathematics.
Cambridge has always had a strong presence at the ICM. A total of six Fields Medallists were working here at the time they received their award including, in recent years, Caucher Birkar (in 2018) and Timothy Gowers (in 1998). The last two ICMs alone featured eight speakers from Cambridge (five in 2022 and three in 2018), and one of the 2022 Fields Medallists, James Maynard, is a Cambridge alumnus.
The three mathematicians invited to speak at next year's ICM continue this tradition. Between them, they represent the breadth and depth of research pursued at Cambridge: in pure mathematics, applied mathematics, and mathematical statistics.
Julian Sahasrabudhe
Julian Sahasrabudhe is Professor of Combinatorics at the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics (DPMMS).
Combinatorics studies how we can count or arrange things. It's got a long history, starting with the work of Fibonacci in the 13th century, and now finds itself at a crucial juncture. "Combinatorics has reached this really interesting point where there's enough theory that it's able to jump and connect to other areas," Sahasrabudhe told us in a previous interview. In his work he is keen to make these links: "to take something I find really interesting but don't understand, and understand it with the tools that I do."
Recent breakthroughs of Sahasrabudhe's have included results in sphere packing, which you can imagine in terms of packing oranges into a very large, higher-dimensional box, and Ramsey theory, which involves finding order within systems which, at first sight, appear completely disordered. He has also been recognised for work in complex analysis and random matrix theory.
This research has been rewarded with a number of prizes, including a European Prize in Combinatorics (in 2021) and a Whitehead Prize (in 2024). The citation for the Whitehead Prize captures just how game-changing Sahasrabudhe's contributions have been: "His work has changed the landscape in each of these areas. His results are characterised by the most bold and daring proof schemes, which initially seem entirely unrealisable but which he succeeds in making work through raw power and incredible creativity."
You can find out more about Sahasrabudhe's work in this article.
Richard Samworth
Richard Samworth is Professor of Statistical Science at DPMMS and Director of the Statistical Laboratory. Much of Samworth's work has involved developing new statistical methods, as well as statistical theory, to tackle modern data challenges.
"One of the ways the subject has evolved in recent years is in the size of data sets that are routinely collected, in areas like genetics, medical imaging, particle physics, and many others," he told us in a previous interview. "This creates a demand for new techniques, because the traditional ones may be too slow or perform very poorly in this brave new Big Data world."
Samworth has won a number of awards for his work in this area, including a David Cox Medal for Statistics and a Guy Medal in Silver, which he received within 24 hours of each other earlier this year. But there is also a practical aspect to what he does at the Statistical Laboratory at DPMMS: he runs the Statistics Clinic where anyone from the University of Cambridge can show up with their statistical problem and get advice from a team of experts. The clinic has attracted "patients" from areas as far afield as education, history and music.
You can read more about Samworth's work in this article.
Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb
Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Department for Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) and head of the Cambridge Image Analysis group (CIA). A lot of Schönlieb's work focuses on mathematical methods used in image analysis, image processing and inverse imaging problems. These have a wide range of applications, from medical imaging (eg helping medical professionals to spot tumours) to restoring ancient art by letting mathematical techniques fill in the blanks.
An important component of Schönlieb's work involves the development of novel techniques in machine learning to make the most of the vast amounts of data the modern world provides. This vastly expands the power of techniques in image analysis — allowing us to understand and improve traffic flow from an abundance of video footage, for example, or to assess the biodiversity of forests from satellite imagery.
Through her roles as Director of the Cantab Capital Institute for the Mathematics of Information (CCIMI) and Director of the EPSRC Centre for Mathematical and Statistical Analysis of Multimodal Clinical Imaging (CMIH) Schönlieb not only develops mathematical insight in this application of artificial intelligence, but also pursues a wide range of novel applications. Her work includes projects that go beyond the imaging realm, such as maximising the information we can glean from blood tests, diagnosing Alzheimer's, and supporting medical trauma networks.
"Why I'm so excited about the data driven component of my work is because of the collaboration with people in different disciplines," Schönlieb told us in a previous interview. Indeed, building connections with experts from other sciences, industry, and business is a strong focus of Schönlieb's work. She has been honoured with a number of prizes, including a Whitehead Prize (in 2016) and a Philip Leverhulme Prize (in 2017).
The work of Samworth, Sahasrabudhe, and Schönlieb illustrates the scope, diversity and excitement of modern mathematics. "I think that often [who is invited] is reflective of a sense of certain subjects coming of age, and growing into their ascendance," said Ivan Smith, now Head of DPMMS, when he was an invited speaker at the 2018 ICM in Rio de Janeiro. The invitations to all three Cambridge speakers are testament to their roles at the forefront of their fields - congratulations to all!