Lillian Pierce received a BA in Mathematics and graduated as valedictorian of Princeton University in 2002. She earned an MSc by Research at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 2004, and a PhD from Princeton in 2009. After postdoctoral positions at the Institute for Advanced Study and University of Oxford and a year as a Bonn Junior Fellow at the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM), Pierce took a faculty position at Duke University, where she is presently the Nicholas J. and Theresa M. Leonardy Professor of Mathematics. In 2022, Lillian Pierce was named a Bonn Research Chair. The Bonn Research Chairs (BRC) program of the HCM provides visiting positions for eminent scientists. Pierce’s research combines techniques of analytic number theory and harmonic analysis, with particular interests in Diophantine equations, exponential and character sums, class groups, oscillatory integrals, and singular integrals. Lillian Pierce’s work has been recognized by a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a Simons Fellowship, a Joan and Joseph Birman Fellowship, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a von Neumann Fellowship, a Marie Curie Fellowship, and most recently, in 2023, a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. She was an invited speaker, representing number theory and analysis, at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2022. Lillian Pierce is also deeply invested in making the mathematics community a better place for women, gender minorities and underrepresented groups in mathematics. She created and organized innovative events like “Re:boot Number Theory”, “A room of one's own” as well as a variety of supporting events in her local community, and has been running two successful iterations of GROW. In addition, she has been organizing many conferences (for example ENFANT & ELEFANT) and three summer schools in Bonn, and was one of the organizers of the HIM trimester program on Harmonic Analysis and Analytic Number Theory.
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a non-profit organization founded in 1971. The AWM currently has more than 3500 members representing a broad spectrum of the mathematical community — from the United States and around the world. Since its founding in 1971, the AWM has grown into a leading society for women in the mathematical sciences, and is one of the societies comprising the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences. AWM’s programs not only support those who participate in them directly, but also help influence the mathematics culture more generally, so that young women entering the field today encounter an environment in which they can thrive in their mathematical endeavors. AWM wants to promote equitable opportunity and gender-inclusivity, and to increase the presence and visibility of women in the mathematical sciences.