Israeli mother of 11 wins Israel's Krill prize for significant contributions to geometry research

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Ten outstanding researchers in Israel were honored with awards for their ‘Excellence in Scientific Research.’ Among the recipients, Dr. Chaya Keller stands out not only for her significant academic contributions but also for being a mother to 11 children, as reported by Ynet News.

The Wolf Foundation awarded Keller with the Krill Prize, including a $10,000 reward, for her significant contributions to discrete and computational geometry. The contest holds high prestige in Israel, as it represents an important professional milestone in the researcher’s academic development.

Keller, 41, is a senior lecturer at Ariel University’s School of Computer Science in Samaria. Ariel is the fourth largest Jewish community in what is internationally known as the West Bank. Her work includes cellular antenna spectrum research and studies on locating COVID-19 patients while protecting their private information.

In 2022, Keller was part of an international team that solved the 60-year-old mathematical ‘Ringel’ problem in graph theory. Her academic bio reads: “My field of research is Combinatorial Geometry. Currently, I am most interested in Helly-type theorems, coloring problems in hypergraphs, and geometric graph theory.”

She is an alumna of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where her 2015 PhD thesis was entitled: ‘Extremal Problems in Geometric Graphs.’

Having earned multiple awards since her teenage years, Keller is an inspiration to other religious Jewish women. She actively encourages young girls to pursue math, a field traditionally considered male-dominated, and is involved in creating teacher-training courses.

Keller said the secret to her success is not trying to do everything at once.

“I try to separate the time devoted to family and children from the time dedicated to research because I’ve learned from experience that trying to do both simultaneously mainly results in frustration,” Keller told Ynet.
Another factor contributing to her success, apart from her remarkable intelligence, appears to be marrying a fellow academic.

Her husband, Prof. Nathan Keller, himself a previous winner of the Krill Prize, supports his wife by taking on the role of a “house husband” at times.

Keller explained: “Most of my research work is done in the morning (while the children are at school) at night, or on days when I am at the university and my husband is with the children.”

“Our research fields are not very distant, so we enjoy sharing the details of each other’s research, not just its outcome,” she said regarding Nathan. “In addition, we once collaborated during the COVID lockdown, working together via Zoom with five colleagues from various universities in the country.”

“It was a bit challenging with all the children at home, and a few geometric models we built ourselves from Lego bricks as part of the problem modeling we worked on served as an attraction for our children during that time,” she added.

An important part of Keller’s research involves theoretical mathematics with a focus on symmetry.

“This field has flourished in recent years and has found applications in various branches of mathematics. I believe it should also have practical applications, for example, in communication technology,” she said.