Emily Riehl

Dr. Emily Riehl serves as a Professor of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, where she has established herself as a leading authority in category theory and homotopy theory. After completing her AB at Harvard College in 2006, where she captained the rugby team and played viola in the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, she earned her Masters at Cambridge University in 2007, where she first fell in love with category theory. She completed her PhD at the University of Chicago in 2011 under J. Peter May, followed by positions as Benjamin Peirce and NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University from 2011-2015. Her groundbreaking research focuses on developing foundational theory of infinity-categories and homotopy theory, resulting in over 30 research publications and three influential books: "Categorical Homotopy Theory," "Category Theory in Context," and "Elements of ∞-Category Theory." Beyond mathematics, she has represented the United States in Australian rules football seven times, played bass in the band Unstraight, and actively contributes to mathematical outreach through platforms like the n-Category Café blog and Numberphile videos. Her exceptional contributions have earned her numerous honors, including the 2021 AWM Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize, fellowship in the American Mathematical Society, and the JHU President's Frontier Award.