Speaker Series

Once/twice a semester, we invite and host a 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 mathematicians and motivate them in their career trajectories.

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.

Upcoming Spring 2025 Speakers

Date	Description
March 25, 2025	Julia Pevtsova from University of Washington
April 8, 2025	Claudia Miller from Syracuse University

Previous Speakers

Date	Description
Spring 2024	Dr. Carolyn R. Abbott from Brandeis University Dr. Carolyn R. Abbott is a mathematician currently serving as an Assistant Professor at Brandeis University. Dr. Abbott’s research interests lie in geometric group theory, particularly in groups that act by isometries on hyperbolic metric spaces. Her research focuses on acylindrically hyperbolic groups and their various acylindrical actions on hyperbolic spaces, hierarchically hyperbolic groups and spaces, and actions of groups on hyperbolic spaces.
Spring 2024	Dr. Ami Radunskaya from Pomona College Dr. Ami Radunskaya is a distinguished mathematician and musician, currently serving as the Lingurn H. Burkhead Professor of Mathematics at Pomona College. She has been with Pomona since 1994. Dr. Radunskaya specializes in dynamical systems and the applications of mathematics to medicine, such as the use of cellular automata to model drug delivery. Her areas of expertise also include mathematical modeling of tumor growth and treatment and analysis of non-linear models of power systems. She is a former president of the Association for Women in Mathematics (2017-2019), and she is the President of the EDGE (Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education) Foundation.
Fall 2023	Dr. Melody Chan from Brown University Dr. Melody Chan is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Brown University. She specializes in combinatorial algebraic geometry, particularly algebraic curves and their moduli, graph theory, and tropical geometry. Dr. Chan has been recognized for her work with several awards, including the Alice T. Schafer Prize, the AWM–Microsoft Research Prize in Algebra and Number Theory, and a 2018 Sloan Research Fellowship.
Fall 2023	Dr. Matt Menickelly from Argonne National Laboratory Dr. Matt Menickelly is a Computational Mathematician at Argonne National Laboratory. He specializes in numerical optimization problems, particularly those in which derivative information of objective/constraint functions are not explicitly available (derivative-free optimization), and problems in which the objective and constraints are subject to inherent uncertainty (robust and/or stochastic optimization). His work is largely motivated by problems in both simulation optimization and artificial intelligence/machine learning.
Spring 2023	Dr. Ellen Eichen from University of Oregon Dr. Ellen Eichen is a mathematician at the University of Oregon. While she has broad interests, her research especially focuses on number theory. She also enjoys connecting with people and communicating about math. Recent projects include creating the APAW workshop to facilitate diverse research collaborations, organizing the Creativity Counts exhibit at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art to share a creative side of math with the broader public, and serving on the Advisory Board of the Seattle Universal Math Museum. She is supported by an NSF CAREER grant.
Spring 2023	Dr. Blerta Shtylla from Pfizer Dr. Blerta Shtylla is a Research Fellow at Pfizer. She serves as the team lead for the Quantitative Systems Pharmacology team supporting the oncology portfolio.Dr. Shtylla’s work involves using mathematical models to simulate interactions among medications and their targets. Prior to Pfizer, Dr. Shtylla was an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Pomona College. Her academic research focused on development and analysis of mathematical models applied to cancer therapies, autoimmune disease, bio-mechanical circuits involved in cell division, as well as control mechanisms involved in early development/morphogenesis.
Spring 2023	Dr. Autumn Kent from University of Wisconsin-Madison Dr. Autumn Kent is an esteemed mathematician specializing in topology and geometry. She is currently a Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dr. Kent received her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 1999 and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006. Dr. Kent’s work revolves around low-dimensional topology and knot theory. In addition to her academic contributions, Dr. Kent is a promoter of trans rights and served on the Policy and Advocacy Committee for the Association for Women in Mathematics from Feb 2019- Jan 2022.
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.
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.