Chelsea Walton

{{short description|African-American mathematician & academic}} {{Infobox scientist | honorific_prefix = | name = Chelsea Walton | honorific_suffix = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | image = Chelsea Walton MFO 2014.jpg | image_size = | image_upright = | alt = | caption = Walton at Oberwolfach in 2014 | birth_name =  | birth_date = {{birth year and age|1983}} | birth_place = Detroit, Michigan, U.S. | death_date =  | death_place = | death_cause = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates =  | other_names = | siglum = | fields = Mathematics | workplaces = Rice University | patrons = | education = | alma_mater = {{ublist|Michigan State University|University of Michigan}} | thesis_title = On Degenerations and Deformations of Sklyanin Algebras | thesis_url =  | thesis_year = 2011 | doctoral_advisors = {{ublist|Toby Stafford|Karen E. Smith}} | academic_advisors = | doctoral_students = | notable_students = | known_for = | influences = | influenced = | awards = {{ublist|Sloan Research Fellowship|André Lichnerowicz Prize}} | author_abbrev_bot = | author_abbrev_zoo = | spouse =  | partner =  | children = | signature =  | signature_alt = | website = {{URL|https://math.rice.edu/~notlaw}} | footnotes = }} '''Chelsea Walton''' is an American mathematician whose research interests include noncommutative algebra, noncommutative algebraic geometry, symmetry in quantum mechanics, Hopf algebras, and quantum groups. She is a full professor at Rice University and a Sloan Research Fellow.{{r|sloan}}

==Education and career== Walton is African-American,{{r|mgb}} originally from Detroit, Michigan,{{r|gizmodo}} and was educated in the Detroit public schools.{{r|whm}} As a child she made a letter frequency table from her children's dictionary,{{r|sloan}} and as a high school student, seeking a way to "do logic puzzles all day and get paid for this",{{r|mgb}} she was already planning a career as a mathematics professor.{{r|gizmodo}}

She graduated from Michigan State University in 2005,{{r|uiuc}} and completed her PhD at the University of Michigan in 2011. Her dissertation, ''On Degenerations and Deformations of Sklyanin Algebras'',<ref>Walton, C. M. (2011). ''On degenerations and deformations of Sklyanin algebras'' (Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan).</ref> was jointly supervised by Toby Stafford and Karen E. Smith,{{r|mgp}} and based in part on her work as a visiting student at the University of Manchester, where Stafford had moved.{{r|cv}}

Walton did postdoctoral research at the University of Washington and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and became a C. L. E. Moore instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2012 to 2015.{{r|cv}} She came to Temple University as Selma Lee Bloch Brown Assistant Professor of Mathematics in 2015 {{r|sloan}}. She moved to the University of Illinois in 2018.{{r|uiuc|whm}} She joined the faculty at Rice University in 2020.{{r|ricepage}}

==Recognition== Walton was named a Sloan Fellow in 2017, becoming the fourth African-American to win a Sloan Fellowship in mathematics.{{r|sloan}} Walton was also recognized by Mathematically Gifted & Black as a Black History Month 2017 Honoree.{{r|mgb}} In 2018 she won the André Lichnerowicz Prize in Poisson geometry, the first woman to be awarded this prize.{{r|alp}} The award citation noted her research on Sklyanin algebras in Poisson geometry, on the actions of Hopf algebras, and on the universal enveloping algebra of the Witt algebra.{{r|alp2}} She was elected as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, in the 2025 class of fellows.{{r|fams}}

==References== <references>

<ref name=alp>{{citation|url=https://www.mathunion.org/cwm/news-and-events/2018-08-20/chelsea-walton-and-brent-prym-win-2018-andre-lichnerowicz-prize|title=Chelsea Walton and Brent Prym win 2018 André Lichnerowicz Prize in Poisson Geometry|date=August 20, 2018|publisher=International Mathematical Union Committee for Women in Mathematics}}</ref>

<ref name=alp2>{{citation|url=http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/sites/default/files/lichnerowicz2018_2.pdf|title=André Lichnerowicz Prize in Poisson geometry|year=2018|publisher=Fields Institute|access-date=2018-10-19}}</ref>

<ref name=cv>{{citation|url=https://math.rice.edu/~notlaw/CV6.pdf|title=Curriculum vitae|access-date=2020-07-01}}</ref>

<ref name=fams>{{citation|url=https://www.ams.org/fellows_by_year.cgi?year=2025|title=2025 Class of Fellows of the AMS|publisher=American Mathematical Society|access-date=2024-11-01}}</ref>

<ref name=gizmodo>{{citation|magazine=Gizmodo|title=These Black Female Mathematicians Should Be Stars in the Blockbusters of Tomorrow|first=Rae|last=Paoletta|date=March 8, 2017|url=https://gizmodo.com/these-black-female-mathematicians-should-be-stars-in-th-1792636094}}</ref>

<ref name=mgb>{{citation|url=http://mathematicallygiftedandblack.com/honorees/chelsea-walton/|title=Chelsea Walton|work=Mathematically Gifted and Black: Black History Month 2017 Honoree|access-date=2018-10-18}}</ref>

<ref name=mgp>{{mathgenealogy|id=153627}}</ref>

<ref name=sloan>{{citation|url=https://news.temple.edu/news/2017-03-07/chelsea-walton-2017-sloan-research-fellow|title=Temple mathematician Chelsea Walton named a 2017 Sloan Research Fellow|publisher=Temple University|magazine=Temple Now|date=March 7, 2017}}</ref>

<ref name=uiuc>{{citation|url=https://www.las.illinois.edu/news/article/?id=27449&key=/news/2018/newfaculty18/|title=New faculty join the College of LAS|publisher=University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences|date=September 13, 2018|first1=Jessica|last1=Bursztynsky|first2=Dave|last2=Evensen|access-date=2018-10-19}}</ref>

<ref name=ricepage>{{citation|url=https://math.rice.edu/~notlaw/|title=Chelsea Walton|access-date=2020-07-06}}</ref>

<ref name=whm>{{citation|department=Women's History Month|first1=Margaret A.|last1=Readdy|first2=Christine|last2=Taylor|url=https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201803/rnoti-p248b.pdf|title=Chelsea Walton|pages=296–297|journal=Notices of the American Mathematical Society|volume=65|issue=3|date=March 2018}}</ref>

</references>

==Further reading== *{{citation|url=https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201802/rnoti-p164.pdf|journal=Notices of the American Mathematical Society|volume=65|issue=2|date=February 2018|pages=164–166|title=Chelsea Walton Interview|first=Alexander|last=Diaz-Lopez|doi=10.1090/noti1631|doi-access=free}}

==External links== {{wikiquote}} *[https://math.rice.edu/~notlaw/ Home page]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Walton, Chelsea}} Category:1983 births Category:Living people Category:21st-century American mathematicians Category:African-American mathematicians Category:Michigan State University alumni Category:University of Michigan alumni Category:MIT School of Science faculty Category:Temple University faculty Category:University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty Category:Sloan Research Fellows Category:21st-century American women mathematicians Category:21st-century African-American women Category:21st-century African-American people Category:20th-century African-American people Category:20th-century African-American women Category:Fellows of the American Mathematical Society

Chelsea Walton

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