Lisa Piccirillo


Lisa Piccirillo is an American mathematician who works on geometry and low-dimensional topology. In 2020, Piccirillo published a mathematical proof in the journal Annals of Mathematics determining that the Conway knot is not a slice knot, answering an unsolved problem in knot theory first proposed over fifty years prior by English mathematician John Horton Conway.

Education

Piccirillo earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Boston College in 2013 and a PhD in low-dimensional topology at the University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of John Luecke in 2019, followed by postdoctoral research at Brandeis University.

Work

The slice property of the Conway knot was a long-standing unsolved problem in knot theory. The knot was named after its discoverer, English mathematician John Horton Conway, who first wrote about the knot in 1970. The Conway knot was determined to be topologically slice in the 1980s; however the nature of its sliceness, and whether or not it was smoothly slice, eluded mathematicians for decades up until Piccirillo's breakthrough. Piccirillo's work on the Conway knot completed the classification of slice knots with under thirteen crossings, as the Conway knot had been the last outstanding knot in its group fully unclassified.
Following the publication of Piccirillo's proof in Annals of Mathematics, she was offered a tenure-track position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology set to begin fourteen months after the completion of her doctorate.