Stephanie van Willigenburg is a professor of mathematics at the University of British Columbia^[1] whose research is in the field of algebraic combinatorics and concerns quasisymmetric functions. Together with James Haglund, Kurt Luoto and Sarah Mason, she introduced the quasisymmetric Schur functions, which form a basis for quasisymmetric functions.^[2]

Education

Van Willigenburg earned her Ph.D. in 1997 at the University of St. Andrews under the joint supervision of Edmund F. Robertson and Michael D. Atkinson, with a thesis titled The Descent Algebras of Coxeter Groups.^[3]

Recognition

Van Willigenburg was awarded the Krieger–Nelson Prize in 2017^[4] by the Canadian Mathematical Society. She was named to the 2023 class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, "for contributions to algebraic combinatorics, mentorship and exposition, and inclusive community building".^[5]

Selected publications

• Bergeron, Nantel; Mykytiuk, Stefan; Sottile, Frank; van Willigenburg, Stephanie (July 2000), "Noncommutative Pieri operators on posets", Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, 91 (1–2): 84–110, arXiv:math/0002073, doi:10.1006/jcta.2000.3090
• Billera, Louis J.; Hsiao, Samuel K.; van Willigenburg, Stephanie (25 June 2003), "Peak quasisymmetric functions and Eulerian enumeration", Advances in Mathematics, 176 (2): 248–276, arXiv:0706.3486, doi:10.1016/S0001-8708(02)00067-1
• Haglund, James; Luoto, Kurt; Mason, Sarah; van Willigenburg, Stephanie (2011a), "Quasisymmetric Schur functions", Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, 118 (2): 463–490, arXiv:0810.2489, doi:10.1016/j.jcta.2009.11.002
• Haglund, James; Luoto, Kurt; Mason, Sarah; van Willigenburg, Stephanie (2011b), "Refinements of the Littlewood-Richardson rule", Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, 363 (3): 1665–1686, arXiv:0908.3540, doi:10.1090/S0002-9947-2010-05244-4