Professor Yuji Nakatsukasa receives Frontiers of Science Award

Among the research celebrated this year was that of Yuji Nakatsukasa, member of Christ Church and Associate Professor in the Oxford University Mathematical Institute.

Professor Nakatsukasa is among the first-ever researchers to be recognised in the ICBS’s Frontiers of Science Awards, given to those whose work in the past five years is ‘excellent’ and ‘of outstanding scholarly value’. He received the award in recognition of his paper ‘The AAA algorithm for rational approximation’ and shares the prize with co-authors Professor Olivier Sète (University of Greifswald) and Professor Nick Trefethen (University of Oxford).

The celebrated paper, which was first published in the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing in 2018, introduces a numerical algorithm ­­– the AAA algorithm – that can be applied to many problems in scientific computing. According to Professor Nakatsukasa, the algorithm ‘allows you to find an approximation to an unknown complicated function, so that further manipulations become easy’ and is ‘robust, flexible, and easy to use’. 

Upon receiving the award, Professor Nakatsukasa remarked: ‘I’m honoured and delighted that the paper received the inaugural ICBS award. It’s thrilling to see our work having some impact in other areas (the vast majority of our papers don’t!). The AAA algorithm has been used in ways I never imagined’.