Sherry Gong

Gong was born in New York City as the daughter of two mathematics professors, Guihua Gong and Liangqing Li, both affiliated with the University of Puerto Rico. She grew up in Toronto, Puerto Rico, and New Hampshire.[2]

She received her AB in Mathematics from Harvard College, and became a graduate student in mathematics at MIT. She completed her Ph.D. there in 2018; her dissertation, Results on Spectral Sequences for Monopole and Singular Instanton Floer Homologies, was supervised by Tomasz Mrowka.[3]

Gong is the second U.S. woman (after Alison Miller won in 2004[4]) to win a gold medal in the International Mathematical Olympiad, which Gong won in 2007, earning a tie for seventh place out of 536 participants[5] (she scored a 32). She was the only woman on the U.S. team that year, and also one of only three women ever to make the U.S. team.[5] She also tied for first place in the China Mathematical Olympiad for Girls in 2007.[5] Gong attended a mathematics Olympiad for the first time when she was in the sixth grade — the 3rd Olympiada Matematica de Centroamerica y el Caribe, in Colombia.[2] There she received a silver medal and also a special award for the most original solution. It was the first such award in the history of that Olympiad.[2]

Gong participated in IMO five times, winning HM in 2002, bronze in 2003, silver in 2004 and 2005 and gold in 2007. In 2005 she was named the 2005 Clay Olympiad Scholar; the Clay Olympiad Scholar Award recognizes the most original solution to a problem on the US American Mathematics Olympiad (USAMO).[2] In 2006 she earned a silver medal at the 2006 International Physics Olympiad.[6] She was a winner (top twelve) at the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad in 2005, 2006, and 2007, including placing 2nd in 2007.

As a Harvard freshman, Gong scored over 100 in Harvard’s famous problem solving course, Math 55, which required perfect scores on all assignments, tests, bonus problems, and the final exam.[7] In 2010 Gong helped coach the U.S. team that competed in the China Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad; five team members won gold medals.[8] In 2011 she won the Alice T. Schafer Prize for Excellence in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Woman.[8]