Speaker Series

Once a semester, we invite and host a female mathematician from another university to give a technical research talk and a more general talk about their journey in mathematics.
The aim of this series is to give students the chance to interact with female mathematicians and motivate them in their way.

As part of the RTG: Algebra, Geometry and Topology funded by the NSF award #1246989, we have funds to invite one more speaker in pure math every semester.

Future Speakers

Date Description
March 22, 2022 Mary Silber from University of Chicago
Mary Silber is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Chicago who studies applications of bifurcation theory to 'tipping points' and to spontaneous pattern formation in physical systems, especially as it relates to the Earth's climate and ecosystems.
April 6, 2022 Kristin Lauter from Facebook
Kristin Lauter is the West Coast Head of Research Science for Facebook AI Research, leading the Seattle and Menlo Park labs with groups in Core Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Robotics, Natural Language Processing, and other areas. Previously, she was on the senior leadership team at Microsoft Research.

Previous Speakers

Date Description
October 27, 2021 Deanna Needell from UCLA
Deanna Needell is a professor at UCLA with research interests in randomized algorithms, computational mathematics, machine learning, data science, and applications with community partners.
October 6, 2021 Jennifer Balakrishnan from Boston University
Jennifer Balakrishnan is a Clare Booth Luce Associate Professor at Boston University working in algorithmic number theory and arithmetic geometry.
April 8, 2021 Ryan Hynd from University of Pennsylvania
Ryan Hynd is an associate professor at the Univesity of Pennsylvania doing research in PDEs, specifically studyng PDEs arising from fluid mechanics, control theory, finance, and eigenvalue problems.
March 18, 2021 Ila Varma from University of Toronto
Ila Varma is an assistant professor at the Univesity of Toronto and was previously an assistant professor at University of California, San Diego. She was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Columbia and Harvard, and she received her Ph.D. from Princeton University advised by Manjul Bhargava and Richard Taylor. She is the leader for one fo the research projects in Women in Numbers 5, director of PROMYS India, 2020 Sloan Fellow, and has worked with AWM and EDI initiatives throughout her career.
November 17, 2020 Christine Berkesch from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Christine Berkesch is an associate professor at the Univesity of Minnesota working at the intersection of commutative algebra and algebraic geometry studying homological questions about the structure resulting from group actions on algebraic varieties.
November 3, 2020 Nilima Nigam from Simon Fraser University
Nilima Nigam is a professor at Simon Fraser University with research interests in PDEs and numerical analysis with applications in computational electromagnetics, mathematical physiology, and mechanics.
February 27, 2020 Bianca Viray from University of Washington (RTG)
Bianca Viray earned a B.S. from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. She works on number theory and arithmetic geometry and is an associate professor at the University of Washington. Viray is a member of the Steering Committee for Women in Numbers (WIN), the Diversity Committee of the Western Algebraic Geometry Symposium (WAGS), and the board of directors of Girls' Angle. She also serves as the chair of the Diversity Committee at the University of Washington.
February 4, 2020 Katy Craig from University of California, Santa Barbara
Katy Craig is a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara with research interests in nonlinear PDEs, optimal transport, calculus of variations, and numerical analysis.
November 7, 2019 Genevieve Walsh from Tufts University
Genevieve Walsh got her PhD at the University of California, Davis, under the advisement of William Thurston. She is now a professor at Tufts University doing research in Geometric Topology, Hyperbolic Geometry, and Geometric Group Theory.
November 1, 2019 Agnès Beaudry from University of Colorado Boulder (RTG)
Agnès is at CU Boulder. She is on the diversity committee at CU Boulder and a member of Women in topology.
February 19, 2019 Adriana Salerno from Bates College
We commonly think of mathematicians primarily as researchers and teachers. This is natural, as these have historically been the aspects of our job that are most prominent. However, previously reclusive mathematicians are starting to develop public personae with recent widespread use of social media (tweets, blogs, facebook posts, op-eds, etc.) and gaining both notoriety and admiration. In this talk, I will highlight some of the social benefits of making public the scholarship of mathematicians, the boundaries that some have pushed, the conversations that have been sparked by controversy, my own journey into a life aspublic mathematician, and some of the backlash that some people have had to endure. In particular, we will explore the question: What are the rights and responsibilities of mathematicians as public intellectuals?
December 4, 2018 Becca Thomases from UC Davis
March 27, 2018 Candice Price from the University of San Diego
In February 2017, Erica Graham, Raegan Higgins, Shelby Wilson and myself created the website “Mathematically Gifted and Black” to highlight the contributions and service of Black Mathematicians to academia, education, government, industry and society. This website hit on the importance of representation, knowing our history and knowing our impact. In this presentation, I will tell you about my mathematical journey through the reflective lens of my participation in the creation of the website www.mathematicallygiftedandblack.com.
August 31, 2017 Moon Duchin from Tufts University
Moon Duchin has recently lead a summer conference on gerrymandering.
November 15, 2016 Rachel Pries from Colorado State University
Dr. Rachel Pries is a professor in the mathematics department at Colorado State University. She developed her research expertise in number theory and arithmetic geometry as an undergraduate at Brown University, as a graduate student at University of Pennsylvania, and as a postdoc at Columbia University. She is one of the founders of the Women in Number Theory (WIN) network whose goal is to increase research by women in number theory. In her free time, she likes to hike in the mountains and visit new places with her family.