Luis Caffarelli
A current faculty member in UT Austin’s department of mathematics, Caffarelli is also widely recognized as the world's leading specialist in free-boundary problems for nonlinear partial differential equations. His work on Navier-Stokes equations, which describe the behavior of fluids in their environments, was groundbreaking—helping biomedical researchers describe how blood flows through the body and petroleum engineers predict the flow of oil. He is the winner of major international awards, including the Wolf Prize and the Shaw Prize.