Catharina Stroppel appointed as new director at MPIM

Catharina Stroppel has been appointed as the new director of MPIM. From December 1, 2025, to February 28, 2026, she will perform her duties on an adjunct basis. She is employed at the University of Bonn until she takes up her full-time position at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in March 2026.

Catharina Stroppel, born in 1971, studied mathematics in Freiburg (Germany) and received her doctorate in 2001 under Wolfgang Soergel. She was Postdoc at the University of Leicester before becoming an assistant professor at Aarhus University in 2003/2004. In 2004 she moved to Glasgow University, where she became a lecturer in 2005 and a reader in 2007. In 2007/08, she was a Von Neumann Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She has been a professor in Bonn since 2008.

In 2007, she received the Whitehead Prize. In 2010, she was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad. In 2022, she gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians. In 2023, she was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. In 2025, she received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University.

Catharina Stroppel works on representation theory of groups and algebras with applications in geometry, topology and combinatorics.

Photo © David Ausserhofer