The 2006 André-Aisenstadt Prize in Mathematics

The 2006 André-Aisenstadt Prize is awarded jointly to Iosif Polterovich of the University of Montreal, and Tai-Peng Tsai of the University of British Columbia.

After completing his B.Sc. at the National Taiwan University in 1991, Dr. Tsai obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1998 under the supervision of Vladimir Sverak. Following a three year postdoc at the Courant Institute, and a further year at the Institute for Advanced Study, Dr. Tsai began as an assistant professor at UBC in 2002.

Dr. Tsai is an outstanding researcher in non-linear partial differential equations. In recent work with Kang and Gustafson, Tsai obtained the optimal partial regularity result for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equation. Even more remarkably he proved the non-existence of self-similar blow-up solutions (as proposed by Leray in 1934) with finite local energy in three dimensions. Tsai has also embarked on a deep and detailed study of long-time asymptotics in nonlinear Schrödinger equations with several coauthors. These papers reveal a variety and subtlety of behaviours, and are becoming quite influential.