In 2020, the Collège de France awarded me the Peccot Lecture and Prize, which “[rewards] promising mathematicians under 30 who have distinguished themselves in theoretical and applied mathematics.” As part of the award, I was given the opportunity to hold a lecture at the Collège de France in front of a diverse audience. This was a great honor and I am thankful to the Collège de France, the committee, as well as the staff who went to great lengths to allow me to give the second half of my lecture when COVID restrictions started to lift.
I wrote lecture notes to go along my lecture, entitled Real Homotopy of Configuration Spaces. I submitted a pre-proposal for the publication of these notes in October 2020, which was pre-approved, then I submitted the book in March 2021 for consideration. I am glad to report that today, I received the approval from the editorial board of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Mathematics series and the series editors of the CEMPI Subseries! My book is thus going to be published sometimes in the coming weeks/months. This is of course a great pleasure and honor, for which I am thankful. I would like to take this opportunity to also thank all the people who supported me through this process.