Professor Neena Gupta

Neena Gupta, born in India in 1984, is a mathematician specialising in commutative algebra and affine algebraic geometry. She is based at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI).

Gupta used to spend hours doing maths as a young girl and loved solving mathematical problems. She was initially taught by her mother before going to school and then college, graduating in Mathematics. She eventually received a PhD in algebraic geometry and then became a visiting scientist at the ISI. She took up a short fellowship at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and then won an assistant professorship position from the Indian Department of Science and Technology, allowing her to return to the ISI. She is now an associate professor at the Theoretical Statistics and Mathematics Unit at ISI.

In 2014, Gupta solved the Zariski Cancellation Problem originally posed in 1949 by Oscar Zariski, who was a highly influential mathematician in algebraic geometry. The Zariski Cancellation Problem is considered to be one of the most difficult problems in maths, and was a topic that Gupta ruminated on while she was completing her PhD. She describes the problem thus: “The cancellation problem asks that if you have cylinders over two geometric structures, and that have similar forms, can one conclude that the original base structures have similar forms?”. For completing this problem, she was awarded the Young Scientists Award, with the Indian National Science Academy considering her work the best research they had seen in algebraic geometry in some time. 

Gupta has also won other awards for her work. She won the Saraswathi Cowsik Medal (2013), the Swarnajayanti Fellowship (2014), the A.K. Agarwal Award (2015), and the Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries (2021). She was also the youngest recipient of the highly coveted Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) Prize in 2019, which is awarded by the Prime Minister of India and provides a monthly endowment until age 65. She is still studying Zariski today.

Further Reading

• Neena Gupta (mathematician), Wikipedia
• Dr Neena Gupta, Indian Statistical Institute
• Meet Neena Gupta, Who Solved A Math Problem That Remained Unsolved For Almost 70 Years, Ananta Sharma, Storypick, 30 December 2015
• At 35, Dr Neena Gupta Is The Youngest Awardee Of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Cracking 70-Year-Old Mathematics Conundrum, First Post, 11 December 2019
• Celebrating Women in STEM: Dr. Neena Gupta, Madalyn Weston, UKMC Roo News, 3 April 2020
• Meet Mathematician Dr Neena Gupta, Who Solved 70-Year-old Zariski Cancellation Problem, Arunima Sharma, She The People, 16 December 2020
• No one thought I could make it: Ramanujan Prize winner Neena Gupta who solved Zariski problem, Shubhangi Misra, The Print, 15 December 2021
• How 2021 Ramanujan Prize winner Neena Gupta is busting myths in Mathematics, Suha Roy, Telegraph India, 17 January 2022
• Professor Neena Gupta receives Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians, Department of Science & Technology, February 2022

British tech founders Abadesi Osunsade (Hustle Crew) and Michael Berhane (POCIT) talk about the intersection of tech, pop culture and life. Recent episodes covered: 

• Drama at Google & Meta all hands meetings
• Everyone wants Instagram to be Instagram again
• Finessing remote-work to suit your lifestyle
• Apple’s new iOS 16 features
• Sheryl Sandberg steps down as Meta (Facebook) COO

You can: 

Listen: on Apple Podcasts
Follow on Twitter: @techishpod @Abadesi @michaelberhane_
Visit their website: techishpod.com

There’s no such thing as a female peacock – Dr Sally Le Page, 2019

Dr Sally Le Page explains why you’ll ever see a female peacock, but if you see a honey bee, she’s almost certainly a female. 

Sally Le Page is a biologist, YouTuber and science communicator and her personal mission is to bring science further into pop culture so that people enjoy and appreciate it in the same way they enjoy music, sport or literature. She makes videos about science and biology on her YouTube channel, Shed Science, and has worked closely with companies such as General Electric and Discovery to share her passion for science to an audience of millions. Her PhD was on fruit flies and how family ties affect how they behave towards one another.

You can follow her work here:

Website: https://sallylepage.co.uk/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sallylepage
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sallylepage/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9AUeAvdEVJfyS9rd9pvp8g
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/sallylepage 

Recorded at the IET, you can watch the rest of the Ada Lovelace Day Live 2019 playlist here.

Could Jurassic Park happen? – Dr Suzi Maidment, 2018

Dr Susannah Maidment looks at the science behind Jurassic Park, and explores where fiction diverges from reality. 

Dr Susannah Maidment is a dinosaur researcher and the curator of dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum in London. Her research focuses on the relationships of the bird-hipped dinosaurs, how dinosaurs walked and moved, and dinosaur diversity in the Upper Jurassic, 150 million years ago. Prior to working at the Natural History Museum, she was Senior Lecturer in Geology at the University of Brighton, a Research Fellow at Imperial College London, and also spent two years living overseas and working as an Exploration Geologist in the oil industry. She has a PhD in vertebrate palaeontology from the University of Cambridge, and a degree in Geology from Imperial College London.

You can follow her work here:

Website: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/departments-and-staff/staff-directory/susannah-maidment.html
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tweetisaurus
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/susannah-maidment-406158146 

Recorded at the IET and sponsored by Digital Science, you can watch the rest of the Ada Lovelace Day Live 2018 playlist here.

The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed, Dr Helen Scales

The deep sea is the last, vast wilderness on the planet. For centuries, myth-makers and storytellers have concocted imaginary monsters of the deep, and now scientists are looking there to find bizarre, unknown species, chemicals to make new medicines, and to gain a greater understanding of how this world of ours works. With an average depth of 12,000 feet and chasms that plunge much deeper, it forms a frontier for new discoveries.

The Brilliant Abyss tells the story of our relationship with the deep sea – how we imagine, explore and exploit it. It captures the golden age of discovery we are currently in and looks back at the history of how we got here, while also looking forward to the unfolding new environmental disasters that are taking place miles beneath the waves, far beyond the public gaze.

Throughout history, there have been two distinct groups of deep-sea explorers. Both have sought knowledge but with different and often conflicting ambitions in mind. Some people want to quench their curiosity; many more have been lured by the possibilities of commerce and profit. The tension between these two opposing sides is the theme that runs throughout the book, while readers are taken on a chronological journey through humanity’s developing relationship with the deep sea. The Brilliant Abyss ends by looking forwards to humanity’s advancing impacts on the deep, including mining and pollution and what we can do about them.

Order the book on Bookshop.org.uk here and your purchase will support a local independent bookshop of your choice!

You can follow her work here:

Twitter: @helenscales
Website: helenscales.com