Mona Merling Wins 2025 Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry

Mona Merling, Associate Professor of Mathematics, has been awarded the 2025 AWM Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry by the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM). Merling was recognized for her “innovative and impactful research in algebraic K-theory, equivariant homotopy theory, and their applications to manifold theory.”
 
According to the AWM award citation: “Merling is an exceptional researcher whose work in algebraic topology has both depth and breadth. She is a recognized authority on equivariant homotopy theory and its applications to equivariant manifolds. Her recent work generalizes and reinterprets results in differential topology in the equivariant context. Her work is the first progress seen in decades on certain foundational questions about equivariant manifolds.”
 
Prior to joining Penn in 2018, Merling, who grew up in Bucharest, was a J.J. Sylvester Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University. She received her Ph.D. in mathematics at The University of Chicago in 2014. She has also been a research member at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley and a guest at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn.
 
The AWM Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry was established in 2013 to highlight the outstanding contributions by women in the field and to advance the careers of the prize recipients. First presented in 2015, the prize is awarded every other year and is made possible through funding from Joan Birman, a mathematician specializing in low dimensional topology, and her husband, Joseph, who was a theoretical solid-state physicist.