Maria Colombo, born in 1989 in Luino, Italy, earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Mathematics from the University of Pisa, followed by a PhD from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa in 2015. After holding positions at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, she joined EPFL Lausanne in 2018, where she currently serves as a Full Professor of Mathematics and directs the Chair of Mathematical Analysis, Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations.

Colombo's research focuses on regularity theory and the analysis of singular solutions in elliptic PDEs, geometric variational problems, transport equations, and incompressible fluid dynamics. Her contributions, which involve collaboration with a diverse network of researchers, have earned her prestigious awards, including the 2023 ICIAM Collatz Prize, the 2022 Peter Lax Award, the 2023 De Giorgi Prize, the 2019 Bartolozzi Prize from the Italian Mathematical Union, and the 2015 Michele Cuozzo Prize for her PhD thesis.

Her recent work centers on the study of irregular solutions to fundamental equations in fluid dynamics, such as the Euler, transport, and Navier-Stokes equations within the turbulence framework. In 2022, she constructed nonunique Leray-Hopf solutions of the forced Navier-Stokes equations, utilizing a background solution unstable in self-similar variables. Additionally, she contributed to the construction of wild, nonunique solutions of the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations via convex integration methods. Furthermore, she obtained the first partial regularity theorem for the supercritical surface quasi-geostrophic equation, demonstrating that solutions are smooth outside a set of quantified Hausdorff dimension. Her research also includes well-posedness results for the semi-geostrophic and Vlasov-Poisson equations.

In the realm of variational problems' regularity, Colombo's work initiated the study of optimal regularity for double-phase functionals, which have seen remarkable advancements. She also explored the structure of singularities in the obstacle problem and minimal surfaces, contributing to the development of the log-epiperimetric inequality.