Maggie Miller (mathematician) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Maggie Miller
Miller (right) in 2023
Born	1993/1994 (age 31–32)
Alma mater	Princeton University (PhD) University of Texas at Austin (BS)
Known for	Low-dimensional topology Work on Seifert surfaces
Awards	Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize (2023)
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics, geometric topology
Institutions	University of Texas at Austin Stanford University
Thesis	Extending fibrations of knot complements to ribbon disk complements (2020)
Doctoral advisor	David Gabai

Maggie Hall Miller (born in 1993 or 1994) is a brilliant mathematician. She studies a field called low-dimensional topology. This area of math looks at the shapes and properties of spaces. She is currently a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Maggie Miller and her team made big discoveries about something called Seifert surfaces. In 2023, she received a special award called the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize.

Becoming a Mathematician

Maggie Miller started her college studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She then went on to earn her PhD in mathematics. This advanced degree was from Princeton University in 2020. Her main teacher and guide for her PhD was David Gabai.

Early Career Steps

After finishing her PhD, Maggie Miller became an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow. She worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2020 to 2021. Later, she was a Visiting Clay Fellow and Stanford Science Fellow. She spent time at Stanford University from 2021 to 2023. Today, Maggie Miller is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Her Math Discoveries

In 2022, Maggie Miller worked with other mathematicians. Their names were Kyle Hayden, Seungwon Kim, JungHwan Park, and Isaac Sundberg. Together, they solved a math puzzle that was 40 years old! This puzzle was a conjecture (a mathematical idea or guess) made by Charles Livingston. It was about Seifert surfaces. These are special surfaces related to knots in mathematics.

Awards and Special Honors

Maggie Miller has received many important awards for her work. These awards show how much her contributions mean to the world of mathematics.

Clay Research Fellowship

In 2021, she was given a Clay Research Fellowship. This award came from the Clay Mathematics Institute. It was for her work in expanding the study of manifolds in topology. Manifolds are like different kinds of shapes or spaces. Experts at MIT said her work was "important" for solving long-standing problems. Clay Research Fellowships are given to new PhDs. They are chosen for their research and their potential to be leaders in math.

Stanford and NSF Fellowships

When she was at Stanford, she was a Stanford Science Fellow. These fellowships are for early career scientists. They recognize great scientific achievements. They also look for a desire to work with many different kinds of scholars. Before Stanford, Miller received a National Science Foundation Mathematical Sciences Postdoc Research Fellowship. This was while she was at MIT.

Awards During Graduate School

Maggie Miller also did very well during her graduate studies. In 2018, she won the Princeton Mathematics Graduate Teaching Award. In 2019, she received the Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Fellowship.

Top Prizes and Recognition

In 2023, she received the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize. This is one of the famous Breakthrough Prizes. She won it for her work on "fibered ribbon knots and surfaces in 4-dimensional manifolds." Also in 2023, she was named one of Forbes' "30 Under 30 – Science." In 2025, Maggie Miller was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship.