Alberto Bressan, Eberly family chair in mathematics at Penn State University, will be awarded the Fichera Prize from the Italian Mathematical Union (IMU). The prize, which will be awarded during the general congress of the IMU in Bologna, Italy later this year, is assigned once every four years to the author of a paper of great significance in the field of mathematical analysis and applications.
Bressan's research interests fall within the broad area of nonlinear analysis, including nonlinear partial differential equations, optimization problems, differential inclusions, the mathematical theory of control, and differential games. He is regarded highly for his work in the field of hyperbolic conservation laws, where he has established fundamental properties of solutions and the convergence of vanishing viscosity approximations.
Bressan's previous awards include election as a foreign member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters in 2011, and the gold medal of the Luigi and Wanda Amerio Prize, which he received in 2010 from the Academy of Sciences and Letters at the Istituto Lombardo in Milan, Italy. In 2008, he was awarded the Bôcher Memorial Prize, which is the oldest prize awarded by the American Mathematical Society (AMS). In 2006, he received the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize in Mathematics, Mechanics, and Applications from the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome. This prize is among the highest awards reserved for Italian citizens for achievements in the arts, music, literature, history, philosophy, medicine, and physical and mathematical sciences. Together with his former student, Stefano Bianchini, he also received the "Analysis of Partial Differential Equations" prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), for the joint paper, "Vanishing Viscosity Solutions of Nonlinear Hyperbolic Systems," which was published in 2005 in the journal Annals of Mathematics.
Bressan has written two books. The first, "Hyperbolic Systems of Conservation Laws: The One-Dimensional Cauchy Problem," was published by Oxford University Press in 2000. The second, "Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Control," was co-authored by Benedetto Piccoli and appeared in 2007 within the book series of the American Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Bressan also has authored more than 180 scientific papers. He currently serves on editorial boards for 17 international journals, including Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis, Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems, and SIAM's Journal on Mathematical Analysis. He serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Differential Equations.
Prior to joining the Penn State faculty in November of 2003, Bressan was a professor at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy from 1991 to 2003 and an associate professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder from 1986 to 1990.
He received a doctoral degree in mathematics from the University of Colorado in 1982, and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Padova in Italy in 1978.