2026 AWM Schafer Prizes 

In 1990, the Executive Committee of the AWM established the annual Alice T. Schafer Prize for Excellence in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Woman. The prize is named for Alice T. Schafer (1915–2009), one of the founders of AWM and its second president, who contributed greatly to women in mathematics throughout her career. 

In 2026, AWM awarded Schafer Prizes to Khyathi Komalan, Chloe Marple, and Saskia Solotko.

Khyathi Komalan

Citation

Khyathi Komalan is a sophomore at Caltech majoring in mathematics. She has demonstrated extraordinary mathematical talent and resilience. Khyathi has been self-studying undergraduate and graduate-level mathematics since high school. She is interested in many topics including category theory, algebraic quantum field theory, and topological data analysis, with three single author preprints on arXiv and two more in preparation. As a freshman Khyathi won the Caltech Morgan Ward Prize for her independent work in non-hermitian ribbon fusion categories. During summer 2025 she was a visiting researcher at the Topos Institute in Oxford.

Khyathi is also a gifted expositor and educator. Her seminar talks have been praised for clarity, creativity, and originality. Mentors describe her as one of the most promising students they have ever encountered. She is described as an incredibly resourceful, driven, gifted, and creative student.

Response from Komalan

I am honoured and humbled to have been selected as a recipient of this year’s Alice T. Schafer Prize. I am grateful to those at AWM who strive to encourage the next generation of women in mathematics.

The past few years have brought both challenges and growth, and I feel that the person I am today is almost unrecognizable from who I was just a year ago. This journey has taught me resilience, patience, and gratitude for the people and ideas that have shaped me along the way.

I’m profoundly grateful for Professor Matthew Gherman’s presence in my life. At Caltech, where the quarter system can make you feel like The Flash, my conversations with him have been a rare constant — he’s equal parts mentor, friend, and voice of reason. This past year, he’s listened to my “solutions” to weekly crises and my unsolicited L.A. food reviews with the same patience. His passion for teaching continues to inspire my pursuit of compassionate mathematics.

My mathematical journey began at the Ross Mathematics Program. I’m grateful to Professor Jim Fowler for creating such a supportive environment, and to my counselor, Brantley Vose, whose belief in me changed everything. I still cherish a late-night email exchange with Professor Fowler — after I sent him a rambling message about struggling to memorize definitions, he replied with a long, thoughtful note and a link to Freeman Dyson’s Birds and Frogs, which changed how I think about mathematics.

After a difficult year when I wasn’t sure I still had a place in mathematics, the Topos Institute helped me find my way back. I’m grateful to Dr. Brandon Shapiro for introducing me to Topos and guiding my path in category theory, to Dr. Brendan Fong for his constant encouragement and belief in me, and to Dr. Tim Hosgood and everyone at Topos Institute Oxford for their warmth, conversation, and support. I’m also thankful to the steering committee and organizers of the Adjoint School for the opportunity to collaborate with my group on a project that deepened my interest in categorical approaches to quantum theory, to write a blog post for the n-Category Café, and to my collaborator Dr. Andrew Krenz, with whom I look forward to many more mathematical conversations. Without these opportunities and the broader category theory community, I don’t think I would feel so at home in mathematics.

I owe more than I can say to Dr. Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Ventures, and to Dr. Shruti Rajagopalan, who worked tirelessly to get me funding to continue my undergraduate education at Caltech. I am extremely grateful to my benefactor for their support, particularly their faith in me, which inspires me to become the best mathematician I can.

Finally, I’d like to thank my closest friends, who have stuck with me through the highest highs and lowest lows. I’m grateful for my mother’s effort to understand my love for mathematics, and for being a guinea pig of sorts every time I test how accessible my talks are.

Chloe Marple

Citation

Chloe Marple is a mathematics major at Pomona College and a 2025 Goldwater scholar. Her research experiences are extensive, having participated in REUs at Williams College and the Fields Institute, as well as in summer research projects at Claremont McKenna College and at her alma mater. Chloe has co-authored three manuscripts, all at the professional/non-undergraduate level; one of them has been published in Contemporary Mathematics and two of them have been submitted for publication. She also has three papers in preparation. Her research expands a variety of topics, including quantized Weyl algebras and representations of groups, knot theory, C*-algebras, and quantum topology. Chloe’s mentors remark that she is an exceptional researcher and mathematician with impressive depth of technique and broad foundations. She is creative and driven, and advances the research further with hard work and brilliant ideas.

Chloe has showcased her research through talk and poster presentations in venues such as the JMM, MAA meetings and SACNAS conferences. She is highly regarded for her work as a teaching assistant in upper-level courses in Linear Algebra, Abstract Algebra and Real Analysis. She is an integral part of the Pomona College math community, assisting in the development of events and programs that give greater accessibility to students for opportunities in mathematics during and after their undergraduate studies.

Response from Marple

I am honored to have been selected as a recipient of the Alice T. Schafer prize. I want to thank the AWM for sponsoring this award and for all the work they do to support women in mathematics.

I am immensely grateful to the Pomona College math department for providing me with an environment in which I have been able to flourish mathematically. I want to acknowledge all the professors at the Claremont Colleges who taught and supported me as I explored math research. Thank you to Professor Konrad Aguilar for believing in me and nominating me for this award, for advising my first research project and several projects since then, and for encouraging me to present my research at conferences. Thank you to Professor Helen Wong for guiding me through the process of reading math papers for the first time, and for giving me the freedom to formulate my own research questions. Thank you to Professor Stephan Ramon Garcia for being a great research mentor and giving very detailed notes on my mathematical writing. I also want to express my gratitude to the Pomona students with whom I have collaborated on research projects: I have learned so much from you.

I am deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in summer research programs. I would like to thank Professor Colin Adams for making SMALL a fun and challenging REU where I learned a lot and grew as a researcher. Thank you also to the SMALL 2024 knot theory group: You are all inspiring people, and I am lucky to have worked with you. In addition, I want to thank Professor Hadi Salmasian for being an excellent research supervisor at FUSRP and the FUSRP 2025 cohort for being wonderful collaborators.

Finally, thank you to my parents and my brother for your love and support, and for patiently listening to me talk about knots.

Saskia Solotko

Citation

Saskia Solotko is a mathematics major at Tufts University with remarkably broad research achievements in combinatorics, algebraic geometry, and group theory.  She has participated in NSF-funded REUs at Bryn Mawr College (MathILy-EST), Texas State, and the University of Minnesota, as well as collaborating with her professors.  Her work on classifying prime graphs of finite groups will appear in Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra. Her other three papers concern multitriangulations on the half-cylinder, curves in projective space, and fold-and-punch constructions in mathematical origami.  Her research mentors describe a student already working at a very high level, praising her creativity, insight and relentless hard work, and describing unexpected and elegant results.

Saskia is celebrated for her excellent mathematical communication skills, and has spoken about her work twice at the JMM, as well as at the China-US Group Theory Conference and at Women in Mathematics in New England.  At Tufts, she has been an active member of the community, including as a Teaching Assistant and Course Assistant and REU mentor at the VERSEIM REU, and has been recognized by her department with a Guterman Award for academic achievement.  Her nominators agree that Solotko shows great promise as a future leader in mathematics.

Response from Solotko

It is an honor to be selected for the Alice T. Schafer Mathematics Prize. I would like to thank the AWM for uplifting women in mathematics.

The department at Tufts has provided a uniquely tight-knit and collaborative community. My gratitude goes to the many undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, and professors who have pushed me to do my best work over the past four years. My advisors Dr. Diane Souvaine and Dr. Loring Tu have continuously inspired me and broadened my mathematical horizons– Dr. Souvaine through unexpected algorithmic and computational connections, and Dr. Tu through his excellent lectures and expository writing. Graduate students Grace Chen, Vittoria Cristante, Hikaru Jitsukawa, and William Jones have enriched my mathematical education through their curiosity and enthusiasm for mathematics. I am especially grateful for the mentorship of Dr. Carl Lian, who has shaped my interests and future goals through many insightful conversations in algebraic geometry and combinatorics.

I am lucky to have had the opportunity to participate in three summer research programs. At the Mathily-EST REU, I was mentored by Dr. Nate Harman and Dr. Joshua Mundinger, who showed me the beauty of representation theory and introduced me to research in an exceptionally supportive environment. I was mentored by Dr. Thomas Michael Keller at the Texas State REU, where I learned the value of teamwork and persistence in tackling difficult problems. Most recently, I participated in the Twin Cities algebra and combinatorics REU– my gratitude goes to Dr. Ayah Almousa and Dr. Victor Reiner for organizing a wonderful program and for their generosity in answering many questions, and to problem mentors Dr. Pavlo Pylyavskyy and Dr. Christine Berkesch for their encouragement and selection of problems that have continued to shape my research interests.

I would like to thank my coauthor Katherine Tung for continuously inspiring me with her creativity, determination, breadth of knowledge, and passion for mathematics. I am additionally indebted to Ilani Axelrod-Freed, whose mentorship deepened my understanding of many topics in combinatorics and laid the foundation for later research successes. Finally, I am deeply grateful to Dr. sarah-marie belcastro for enriching my mathematical education and introducing me to many wonderful ideas as a high school student.