John Schotland, who has made ground-breaking contributions to applied mathematics, was recently appointed the Zhao and Ji Professor of Mathematics, effective immediately.
He is a member of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) in the Department of Mathematics and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Physics.
Schotland joined the Yale faculty in 2020, having previously held faculty positions at University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania. His work lies at the nexus of applied mathematics and optical physics and is often motivated by applications that cross disciplinary boundaries. He is a world leader in the field of inverse problems and imaging, one of the most rapidly advancing areas in applied mathematics, and one of the pioneers of a new generation of mathematicians who are shaping the field.
His book, co-authored with Remi Carminati, “Principles of Scattering and Transport of Light” (Cambridge University Press, 2021) is shaping research agendas in the field. His current research is concerned with many-body problems in quantum optics.
His research program has been supported by major grants from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Mathematical Sciences, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the National Institutes of Health, reflecting the impact of his work across multiple disciplines.
Schotland was the founding director of the Michigan Center for Applied and Interdisciplinary Mathematics (MCAIM) at the University of Michigan. He was appointed as the Paris Sciences Chair at the École Superieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles and serves on the advisory board of the Academy of Finland. He sits on the editorial boards of the major journals in his field, including the Journal of the Optical Society of America and Inverse Problems.
At Yale, he offers courses on inverse problems, quantum field theory, waves in complex media, and other topics at the graduate and undergraduate level, and teaches students in Mathematics, Physics and Applied Physics.
Since arriving at Yale in 2020, he has served on the Physical Sciences and Engineering Tenure and Appointments Committee.
Schotland earned an M.D. and Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.
This article has been adapted from the Yale News article of December 20, 2024.