Alumna presents lecture at international conference 

University of Delaware alumna Nilima Nigam was an invited speaker at the prestigious 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) meeting in Philadelphia. 

Nigam earned her doctorate in applied mathematics in 1999; she was advised by Carl Rees Professor Emeritus of Mathematics George Hsiao. 

She is currently a professor and numerical analyst at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. Her research interests are in the areas of PDE and numerical analysis, with applications in computational electromagnetics and micromagnetics. Specifically, she works on the development and analysis of numerical methods for exterior scattering problems, including FEM and integral equation methods. She is also interested in the use of computational techniques in material science and biology. 

Nigam’s ICM presentation examined the process of eigenvalue approximation — a central challenge in numerical analysis and scientific computing — from the perspective of computational spectral geometry. 

ICM brings together the world’s top mathematicians every four years. The Fields Medal, the discipline’s top honor, is awarded during the event.

“An invitation to speak at ICM is one of the highest professional honors in mathematics and shows that Dr. Nigam is recognized as a leading researcher in numerical analysis,” said Mark Gockenbach, UD’s math department chair. “I am delighted that one of our graduates was honored in this way!”