In 1990, Popa was an
invited speaker at the
International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in
Kyoto, where he gave a talk on "Subfactors and Classifications in von Neumann algebras". He was a
Guggenheim Fellow in 1995. In 2006, he gave a plenary lecture at the ICM in
Madrid on "Deformation and Rigidity for group actions and Von Neumann Algebras". In 2009, he was awarded the
Ostrowski Prize, He is one of the inaugural fellows of the
American Mathematical Society. In 2013, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the Spring of 2025 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. == Selected publications ==