State of the Sciences: Live!

At State of the Sciences: Live! at Hunt Library in April, Associate Professor Lorena Bociu, Assistant Professor Khai Nguyen, and graduate students Lucas Castle,  Amanda Laubmeier, Nick Myers, Marcella Noorman, and Michael Ruddy ran “Math Doesn’t Bug Me”, an insect-themed education program which explored ideas from combinatorics, cryptography, and topology.

Assistant Professor Tye Lidman showcased his collaboration with local dance company Black Box Dance Theater to use dance as a means of exploring and teaching mathematics to a wide range of audiences.

Professor Alun Lloyd’s group (Brandon Hollingsworth (BMA grad student), Michael Vella (BMA grad student), Jaye Sudweeks (math undergrad)) organized a hands-on exhibit at State of the Sciences: Live! at Hunt Library in April, about mosquitoes and the diseases that they transmit. Brave participants could put their hand into a cage containing mosquitoes — don’t worry, nobody got bitten because the cage only had male mosquitoes, and it’s just females that bite.

Assistant Professor Radmila Sazdanovic presented on “Visual Mathematics: the Role of Visualizations in Math Research”. The talk featured vignettes illustrating the role of visualizations in algebraic topology and topological data analysis, knot theory, and a new and rapidly developing mathematical discipline, diagrammatic categorification.