Hugo Duminil-Copin

Born on August 26, 1985, Hugo Duminil-Copin joined the Ecole normale supérieure in Paris after two years of preparatory classes at lycée Louis-le-Grand. After receiving a master’s degree from Université Paris-Sud, now Université Paris-Saclay, he earned a PhD under the supervision of Stanislas Smirnov, himself a 2010 Fields medalist, at the University of Geneva, where he later became a post-doctoral researcher.

In 2013 he became Assistant Professor at the University of Geneva, and has been a professor there since 2014. In 2016, he joined IHES as a permanent professor. Since 2017, he has been the principal investigator of the European Research Council – Starting Grant “Critical behavior of lattice models (CriBLam)”, funded by Horizon 2020, the European Union's research and innovation funding program. He is a member of the Laboratory Alexander Grothendieck, a CNRS joint research unit (CNRS / IHES).

Hugo Duminil-Copin's work focuses on the mathematical branch of statistical physics. He uses ideas from probability theory to study the critical behavior of various models on networks, such as the Ising, the Potts, the self-avoiding walk, and the percolation models. These mathematical objects describe a number of physical phenomena (such as magnetization, polymers, material porosity, etc.) by reframing them through random trajectories, sets or random graphs.

By using new connections between these models and by developing a theory of dependent percolation, Hugo Duminil-Copin has obtained major results on these classical models and their phase transitions, thus improving our understanding of critical phenomena in statistical physics at equilibrium.

Hugo Duminil Copin’s work has earned him numerous awards. In 2012, he receives the Rollo Davidson Prize, together with Vincent Beffara, and the Vacheron Constantin Prize. In 2013, he is awarded the Oberwolfach Prize, before receiving the "Early Career Award" by the International Association of Mathematical Physics. In 2016, he receives the European Mathematical Society Award, and in 2017 the Breakthrough Foundation awards him the New Horizons in Mathematics Prize, reserved for particularly promising young scientists. The same year, he is awarded the Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand of the French Academy of Sciences and the Loève Prize for outstanding research in the field of mathematical probabilities. In 2018, he is among the invited speakers of the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Elected member of the Academia Europaea in 2019, he receives the Dobrushin Prize that same year.