Associate Professor Shirshendu Ganguly has been named a Miller Research Professor for the 2025-26 academic year at UC Berkeley's Adolph C. and Mary Sprague Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science.

Ganguly's research focuses on probability theory, statistical physics, and related areas, including the Geometry of Polymers and other aspects of Disordered Environments, Phase Transitions in models of Self-Organized Criticality, Random Matrices, the Study of Sparse Combinatorial Structures, Markov chains, and Random walks.  

"Congratulations to Professor Ganguly on this well-deserved honor," said Statistics Chair Haiyan Huang. Statistics and the Miller Institute have a long-standing relationship that encourages interdisciplinary research, and we are excited to further that relationship with Shirshendu's upcoming professorship.”

The Miller Professorship allows members of the UC Berkeley faculty to join the Institute's interdisciplinary community and pursue new research directions. Appointees are encouraged to follow promising leads that may develop during their research efforts, whether or not they fall within the original research outline. In addition to a Professorship, the Miller Institute offers fellowships, visiting professorships, and senior fellowships. Ganguly was a Miller Fellow from 2016 to 2018, jointly with Statistics and Mathematics.

”I have had a relationship with the Miller Institute since I arrived in Berkeley as a Miller fellow. Subsequently, I have mentored Miller fellows like Reza Gheissari and Lingfu Zhang. I am excited about the upcoming professorship and looking forward to interacting and potentially collaborating with the other members of the institute across all walks of research in basic science on campus,” said Professor Ganguly. 

In 1943, Adolph C. and Mary Sprague Miller entered into a trust with the Board of Regents of the University of California to establish an institute "dedicated to the encouragement of creative thought and conduct of research and investigation in the field of pure science," which would become the Miller Institute. Candidates are chosen by the Miller Institute’s Advisory Board, which includes Statistics Professor Alistair Sinclair as well as the current UC Berkeley Chancellor. 

Previous Miller Institute members from Statistics include Steve Evans, David Freedman, Lucien Lecam, Jerzy Neyman, Philip Stark, Bin Yu.

-Alex Coughlin