Rate My Professor Yanki Lekili

Yankı Lekili is Professor of Geometry in the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College London, a position he has held since 2023, following his role as Reader there from 2021 to 2023. Prior to joining Imperial, he served as Reader in Mathematics at King's College London from 2018 to 2020 and as Royal Society University Research Fellow at King's College London from 2013 to 2022. Earlier appointments include Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 2014 to 2015, Herchel Smith Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge from 2010 to 2013, and MSRI Postdoctoral Fellow in Symplectic and Contact Geometry and Topology from 2009 to 2010. Lekili earned his PhD in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009, advised by Denis Auroux, with a dissertation titled "Broken Lefschetz fibrations, Lagrangian matching invariants and Ozsváth-Szabó invariants." He previously obtained a Maîtrise in Pure Mathematics from École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in 2005 and a B.A. in Mathematics from Bilkent University in 2004.

Lekili's research specializes in symplectic topology and its applications to low-dimensional topology, encompassing Fukaya categories, homological mirror symmetry, Lagrangian and Legendrian invariants, Heegaard Floer homology, contact structures, mirror symmetry, and cluster categories. Key publications include "Duality between Lagrangian and Legendrian invariants" with Tobias Ekholm (Geometry & Topology, 2023), "Derived equivalences of gentle algebras via Fukaya categories" with Alexander Polishchuk (Mathematische Annalen, 2020), "Generating the Fukaya categories of Hamiltonian G-manifolds" with Jonny Evans (Journal of the American Mathematical Society, 2019), "Fukaya categories of the torus and Dehn surgery" with Timothy Perutz (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011), and "Wrinkled fibrations on near-symplectic manifolds" (Geometry & Topology, 2009). He received the London Mathematical Society Whitehead Prize in 2023, the Charles and Jennifer Johnson Prize from MIT in 2009, and held prestigious fellowships such as the Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2013-2022) and Herchel Smith Research Fellowship (2010-2013). Lekili has supervised PhD students including Daniil Mamaev, Ilaria Di Dedda, and Matthew Habermann, hosted postdocs, taught advanced courses like MSci Elliptic Curves and Commutative Algebra at Imperial College London, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Topology since 2024. His research has attracted significant funding, including an EPSRC Standard Grant from 2022 to 2026 worth £854,187.