Principal Investigator Alexei Borodin
Co-investigators Lie Wang , Scott Sheffield
Project Website http://www-math.mit.edu/research/pure/probability.php
Following the work of Kolmogorov and Wiener, probability theory after WW II concentrated on its connections with PDEs and harmonic analysis with great success. It deserves credit for some of the most delicate results in modern harmonic analysis; it provides the foundation on which signal processing and filtering theory are built in engineering; and it played a critical role in the mathematical attempts to rationalize quantum field theory. Combinatorial branches of probability theory were overshadowed during that period but are now returning to the fore. Probability theory lies at the crossroads of many fields within pure and applied mathematics, as well as areas outside the boundaries of the mathematics department. Statistics is a mathematical field with many important scientific and engineering applications.