Robert W. Ghrist (born 1969) is an American mathematician, known for his work on topological methods in applied mathematics.
Ghrist received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Toledo in 1991, and in 1994 his master's degree and in 1995 his PhD from Cornell University under Philip Holmes with thesis The link of periodic orbits of a flow.
He works on the application of topological methods to dynamical systems, robots, hydrodynamics, and information systems, such as sensor networks.
[2] In 2002, Ghrist received a Presidential Early Career Award.
In 2013, he received the Chauvenet Prize for Barcodes: The Persistent Topology of Data[3] and in 2014 the Gauss Lectureship of the German Mathematical Society.