Si Ying Lee
Si Ying Lee is a Singaporean mathematician who specializes in number theory, particularly arithmetic geometry and the Langlands program. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the National University of Singapore. In 2025, she won the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize for her contributions to the theory of Shimura varieties.
Early life and education
Lee completed her undergraduate studies at the National University of Singapore in 2017. She earned her PhD in Mathematics from Harvard University in 2022 under the supervision of Mark Kisin. Her doctoral thesis focused on Eichler-Shimura congruence relations for Shimura varieties of Hodge type.
Career
After completing her PhD, Lee held a position at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn from 2022 to 2023. She then served as a Szegö Assistant Professor at Stanford University from 2023 to 2025. At Stanford, she taught courses including Topics in Number Theory (MATH 249C), Calculus (MATH 21), and Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory (MATH 113).
Lee returned to the National University of Singapore as an Assistant Professor, where she continues her research in number theory.
Research
Lee's research focuses on arithmetic geometry and the Langlands program, with particular emphasis on the theory of Shimura varieties. Her doctoral thesis established Eichler-Shimura congruence relations for Shimura varieties of Hodge type, extending classical results to a broader class of varieties.
In her prize-winning work, Lee developed "a new approach to a problem in the Langlands program" and made significant contributions to understanding Shimura varieties, which serve as "a special type of classifying spaces that can connect number theory and geometry".
Awards and honors
In 2025, Lee received the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize, which includes a $50,000 award. The prize citation recognized her "for contributions to the theory of Shimura varieties". Upon receiving the award, Lee stated: "Winning this prize was both a validation of my research and a real honor since it is named in the honor of Maryam Mirzakhani". She acknowledged her collaborators, her mentor Richard Taylor at Stanford, and her doctoral adviser Mark Kisin at Harvard.
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