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Stefaan Vaes is a mathematician, full professor at KU Leuven and head of
the Analysis section of the department of Mathematics. In 2001, he
obtained his PhD as a research assistant of the Fund for Scientific
Research Flanders. For his PhD work, he was awarded the Robert Stock prize
of the Academische Stichting Leuven. After his PhD, he became postdoctoral
researcher and then research associate of the Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), affiliated with the Institute of
Mathematics of Jussieu in Paris. In 2005, he held the Peccot chair at the
Collège de France. In 2006, he returned to KU Leuven, where he now leads
the research group in Functional Analysis.
The research of Stefaan Vaes
focuses on operator algebras. These are abstract mathematical structures
arising in analysis, geometry and group theory and which are foundational
in quantum information theory. For his work on von Neumann algebras, he
was awarded in 2012 the prize of the Vlaamse Wetenschappelijke Stichting.
In 2015, Stefaan Vaes was awarded the Francqui Prize.
Stefaan Vaes is
editor of several scientific journals. In particular, he is one of the
editors-in-chief of Journal of Functional Analysis and one of the
coordinating editors of the Transactions and Memoirs of the American
Mathematical Society.
Stefaan Vaes was an invited speaker at the
International Congress of Mathematicians in 2010. In the spring of 2017,
he was a Rothschild Fellow at the Newton Institute in Cambridge. Stefaan
Vaes contributes to raising the awareness of mathematics among young
students and the public at large. He is coordinating the Junior College
STEM and he is regularly lecturing for high school students.
