The award, sponsored by the International Congress for Basic Science (ICBS) in Beijing, China, honors outstanding research achievements from the past five years. Professor Thurston was recognized for co-authoring the paper, “Bordered Heegaard Floer homology,” published in the journal Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society in 2018, with co-authors Robert Lipshitz of the University of Oregon and Peter S Ozsváth of Princeton University. 

The inaugural International Congress of Basic Science was held in Beijing this past summer under the theme of "Advancing Science for Humanity," bringing together leading scientists from around the world in an effort to promote collaboration and knowledge exchange. The Congress focuses on three branches of basic science: mathematics, theoretical physics, and theoretical computer and information sciences. The opening and award ceremonies of the ICBS were held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, and the Congress featured hundreds of lectures, satellite meetings, and engaging exchange events.

“This work develops and thoroughly explains a three-dimensional analogue of the celebrated four-dimensional Donalson-Seiberg-Witten-Floer theory together with its corresponding invariants,” said Christopher Connell, Professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics. “These constructions and new three-manifold invariants have generated a great amount of excitement in geometric topology in part due to their fundamental advances and connections to diverse topics such as knot theory and surface theory.” 

Thurston is the author or co-author of dozens of scholarly articles on complex mathematics. He runs the Mathematics department’s Research Experience for Undergraduates program at IU Bloomington, an eight-week summer session for advanced undergraduates from around the country who come to the Bloomington campus for guided individual research projects, augmented by other group activities. (IU students are eligible for this program.) He has taught at IU Bloomington since 2013.