Mazzucato earned a master's degree in physics in 1994 from the
University of Milan, with a thesis on
topological quantum field theory under the supervision of
Paolo Cotta-Ramusino. However, during her studies she decided that she preferred the mathematics that she was studying to the physics, and took the advice of Cotta-Ramusino to switch to mathematics for her doctoral studies. She went to the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for doctoral study, initially planning to work in
quantum cohomology, but switched to
functional analysis with
Michael E. Taylor as her doctoral advisor. Her dissertation was
Analysis of the Navier-Stokes and Other Nonlinear Evolution Equations with Initial Data in Besov-Type Spaces; it studied the
Navier–Stokes equations and other
nonlinear partial differential equations. After postdoctoral research at the
Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (supported by a Liftoff Fellowship from the
Clay Mathematics Institute) and the
Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, and a term as Gibbs Instructor at
Yale University, she became an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University in 2003. She was promoted to full professor there in 2013. ==Recognition==