PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Jill Pipher, vice president for research at Brown University and a longtime professor of mathematics, has been elected the next president of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), an organization of more than 28,000 members worldwide dedicated to furthering mathematics research, scholarship and education.

Pipher will serve a two-year term beginning in 2019, succeeding Kenneth Ribet, a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, whose term ends next year. Pipher will become the third woman to lead the organization, which is headquartered in Providence.

“I am very honored to be elected and I look forward to working with dedicated staff and members in service to the society’s mission,” Pipher said. “I especially hope to help the AMS be an advocate for mathematical research in public, private and government sectors. I have a tremendous personal as well as professional interest in ensuring that the AMS is a welcoming society for all mathematicians and that it be fully engaged in supporting every member of our community.”

The Elisha Benjamin Andrews Professor of Mathematics and a Brown faculty member since 1989, Pipher is the founding director of Brown’s Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM), one of eight National Science Foundation mathematics institutes in the nation.

Her primary research interests are in areas of mathematics that have broad applications in the physical and life sciences, including harmonic analysis and partial differential equations. Her joint work in the field of cryptography, with Brown faculty members Jeffrey Hoffstein and Joseph Silverman, led to the development of a patented public key encryption system and a startup company called NTRU Cryptosystems, which was acquired by a major security software company in 2009. The NTRU concept is widely used today and is considered one of only a handful of cryptographic systems resistant to attacks from future quantum computers.

From 2011 to 2013, Pipher served as president of the Association for Women in Mathematics. In 2012, she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. She is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship and a Presidential Young Investigator Award. In April 2015, she was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies.

Founded in 1888 to further mathematical research and scholarship, the American Mathematical Society fulfills its mission through programs and services that promote mathematical research and its uses, strengthen mathematical education, and foster awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and to everyday life.