Allan Sly

Allan Sly is a probabilist and statistician known for his work on the analysis of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, spin glasses, and percolation. He is a Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University.

Sly's research focuses on understanding the computational complexity of problems in statistical physics. He has made significant contributions to the study of the Glauber dynamics for the Ising model, proving in many cases that mixing times are exponential, thus establishing computational hardness. This work connects theoretical computer science with statistical physics and probability theory.

He is also recognized for his work on the Potts model, the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model, and the mean field theory of spin glasses. In percolation theory, he has studied the scaling limits of critical clusters.

Sly received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009 under the supervision of Elchanan Mossel. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Rollo Davidson Prize in 2012, the Linearity Prize in 2015, and the European Prize in Combinatorics in 2015. He was also an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2018. His work has had a significant impact on the fields of probability, statistics, and theoretical computer science.