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A 'Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity'

Erkki Somersalo

Instead of teaching this academic year, Case Western Reserve Professor Erkki Somersalo, PhD, is a Guggenheim fellow. He's focused fully on research, spending time in Italy and Finland, as well as Cleveland, collaborating with mathematics colleagues.

He's one of just 171 people this year to receive a Guggenheim award—among the most prestigious honors academics or artists can receive—and the only applied mathematician. "It's an amazing feeling," he said.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation award allows him to spend the academic year on his career's work: exploring inverse problems with real-world applications. It's the mathematical equivalent of reverse engineering: Observe an outcome and create calculations to explain it.

"This will intensify the pace of research," said Somersalo, who plans to spend half his time abroad.

Somersalo is most interested in developing computational tools for medical imaging to help, for example, isolate what part of the brain is activated with experiences from meditation to strokes to depression to better target treatment.

"We need a mathematical model for seeing what's happening," he said.

While the award doesn't set work or reporting requirements, "this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Somersalo said, "and I will not waste it."