Lisa Piccirillo

Lisa Marie Piccirillo (born 1990 or 1991) is an American mathematician specializing in low-dimensional topology. She is a Professor and holds the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. She is known for solving a long-standing problem in knot theory by proving that the Conway knot is not smoothly slice.

Early life and education Piccirillo was raised in Greenwood, Maine, and attended Telstar Regional High School in Bethel, Maine. Her mother was a middle school math teacher. As a child, her hobbies included riding dressage, church youth group activities, drama, and band. Boston College professor Elisenda Grigsby noted Piccirillo's creativity as a key to her success, adding that Piccirillo did not fit the mold of a "standard golden child math prodigy" during her undergraduate studies. Following the publication of her proof on the Conway knot, she was offered a tenure-track position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she served as an assistant professor of mathematics from 2020 to 2024. In 2024, she returned to the University of Texas at Austin as a full professor.

Piccirillo's proof, developed while she was a graduate student, completed the classification of slice knots with fewer than 13 crossings.

Recognition For her work on the Conway knot, Piccirillo has received several prestigious awards:

In 2021, she was one of the inaugural recipients of the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize, which recognizes outstanding early-career women mathematicians. In 2021, she was awarded a Clay Research Fellowship, given to recent PhDs of unusual promise, and a Sloan Research Fellowship, which honors "early-career researchers of outstanding promise."

In 2020, the UK magazine Prospect included her on its list of "The world's top 50 thinkers for the Covid-19 age."