Events
Math Fest
The first week of April, we saw the Department of Mathematics hold Math Fest - a celebration of all things mathematical, highlighting the math activities of our math majors.
The Math Lounge was transformed into the Mathenarium, showcasing undergraduate math research posters and an exhibition, ”Light, Flow, Interact” highlighting the power and beauty of mathematics to model - via differential equations - how phenomena flow and evolve.
Events over the week included talks by Dr. Hales on ”Turning a Sphere Inside-out” and Dr. Gartside on “Math Art in the GPU,” and the very popular ”All-Hands' show-and-tell of undergraduate math research.”
Congratulations to Mariya Savinov and Isaac Dobes, winners of the poster award!
Association for Women in Mathematics Panel
This past April 16, the Pittsburgh Chapter of AWM (Association for Women in Mathematics) organized a lunch discussion on challenges faced by women in academia. The speakers included the people below.
Dr. Mengying Xiao, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, College of William and Mary
Dr. Rachel Bezanson, Professor, Department of Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Kay Brummond, Professor, Department of Chemistry and Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs, University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Marta Lewicka, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Jonathan Rubin, Professor and Chair, Department of Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh
The purpose of this activity was to acknowledge and discuss the difficulties faced by women in STEM and to develop a space where students and panelists could share ideas and possible solutions to change this reality.
The Association for Women in Mathematics is a professional society whose mission is to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment of women in the mathematical sciences. The AWM was founded in 1971; by now it has approximately 5200 members, including over 250 institutional members, such as colleges, universities, institutes, and mathematical societies. It offers numerous programs and workshops to mentor women and girls in the mathematical sciences and much of its work is supported through federal grants.
The University of Pittsburgh Chapter of AWM was started in April 2019 by the student governance committee consisting of: Abby Pekoske Fulton (president), Astrid Berge (vice-president), Pamela Delgado (treasurer) and the faculty sponsor Professor Marta Lewicka.
We hope that you can join us for future AWM events.
-Pamela Delgado and Marta Lewicka
Structure Preserving Conference
The conference Structure Preserving Discretizations: FEMs, Splines, and IGA will be held from May 31 to June 1, 2019 at the University of Pittsburgh, Department of Mathematics. This conference, organized by Associate Professor Michael Neilan, will discuss current trends of smooth structure preserving discretizations for various PDE models. Twelve talks will be given by leading experts with a specific focus on the intersection of finite element analysis, multivariate spline theory, and algebraic geometry and their applications to produce high-fidelity computational methods that exactly enforce conservation laws. The conference is supported by the NSF, the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, and the Pitt Mathematics Research Center.
2019 Pitt Integration Bee
On March 29, the 2019 Pitt Integration Bee took place in Alumni Hall 343. There were 15 Pitt undergraduates who competed, and five of them made it through two rounds of integration to head in the lightning rounds. These finalists were first challenged by the "tricky square root integral." None of the five contestants obtained the answer within the 6-minute mark. They then raced through the "reasonable square root integral."
The first winner and recipient of the 2019 Integration Champ t-shirt (and a door prize) was Shoulammite Sokou, who majored in Bioengineering and is currently taking Math0230. The second-place finisher was the applied math major Yanxin Fan, who was also the second winner in 2018. Rounding out the prize-winners were Maxwell Gravitte, Yuanlin Li, and Connor Schwartz. All of the winners shared $200 in book store certificates, generously donated by the Honors College, as a
reward for their integration performance. Congratulations to all of them and to all the competitors, who showed impressive integration talent!
Thank you to everyone who participated in this event in any way! It was great to have such enthusiastic contestants and audience members, who added to the atmosphere and, in some cases, walked away with top-notch door prizes. This event was made possible due to the volunteer efforts of Angela Athanas, Thomas Everest, Tongtong Li, Richard Misura, Jeremiah Morgan, Derek Orr and his fiancée Sarah Kols, Roxana Popescu, Evgueni Trofimov, Anna Vainchtein, Sheng Xiong, Miao Yang, and the recruiting efforts of many TAs and faculty members. Finally, as always, thanks to the Honors College and Math Department for funding this competition.