Judit Muñoz Matute, winner of one of the Vicent Caselles Mathematical Research Awards

• The Spanish Royal Mathematical Society and the BBVA Foundation award these prizes with the aim of supporting and stimulating young professionals working in the field of mathematical research

• Judit Muñoz Matute obtained her bachelor’s degree, master’s and doctorate in Mathematics at the University of the Basque Country. She is currently a postdoc researcher at the Basque Centre for Applied Mathematics - BCAM

• She works in the area of numerical methods in partial differential equations and, according to the jury, "has made a fundamental contribution to the construction of variational formulations with applications in the area of goal-oriented adaptability using unconventional error representations"

Six young researchers have been awarded the Vicent Caselles Mathematical Research Prize by the Spanish Royal Mathematical Society and the BBVA Foundation. Since 2015, both institutions award these prizes with the aim of supporting and encouraging young professionals working in the field of mathematical research.

Among the winners is Judit Muñoz Matute, a postdoctoral researcher at the Basque Centre for Applied Mathematics - BCAM. Judit works in the area of numerical methods for the simulation of equations in time-dependent partial derivatives. Her contribution focuses on the construction of time-variant formulations to design adaptive methods to simulate diffusion and wave propagation problems. According to the jury, her work has contributed "in a fundamental way" to the construction of this type of formulations.

The researcher, who has already collaborated in several European projects and has carried out research stays in universities in the USA, Chile and Australia, says she feels "very fortunate" to have won the prize and stresses that this award is a huge stimulus to continue her research career.

Spanish candidate for the best thesis in Europe and future researcher at one of the most important institutes in the USA

Judit Muñoz Matute graduated in Mathematics in 2014 and obtained a Master's degree in Mathematical Modelling and Research, Statistics and Computing in 2015, both from the University of the Basque Country. In October 2019 she defended her doctoral thesis at the UPV/EHU and joined BCAM as a postdoctoral researcher.

Currently she is part of the research line in Wave Propagation Simulation (SIWP) of the center, whose main research objective is the use of computing as a tool to solve mathematical models derived from various real life problems.

She will soon join the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, which is directed by the renowned mathematician Leszek F. Demkowicz, thanks to a post-doctoral grant from the Basque Government. This prestigious institute belongs to the University of Texas at Austin (USA) and is one of the most important institutions at an international level in the field of interdisciplinary applications of mathematics. Karen Ulhenbeck also works, who became the first woman to win the prestigious Abel Prize awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters in 2019, works at that  same university.

In addition, the Spanish Society of Applied Mathematics (SeMA) recently announced that Judit's doctoral thesis had been selected as the Spanish candidate for the ECCOMAS award for the best European thesis in 2019 in the field of Computational Methods in Applied Science and Engineering.