Skip to main content

Launch Point NC Math Conference

Registration is now open (and free) for Launch Point: NC Conference for Student Mathematicians!

This is a virtual math conference taking place April 10-11 and organized by the AWM and SIAM chapters at Duke, UNC, and Wake Forest. It is a great opportunity for NC undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics to learn, network, and grow community. The primary goals for the conference are to increase visibility for underrepresented groups in mathematics, provide short term support for future goals in academia or industry, and engage in making the math community equitable and accessible.

We have invited two amazing plenary speakers, Dr. Pamela E. Harris and Dr. Candice Price. See their talk abstracts pasted below. There will also be career and graduate school panels, and student talks. We highly encourage you to give a talk about your research or work! Note that priority will be given to students who belong to a historically underrepresented or marginalized group in math.

Register to attend the conference on the website: https://sites.google.com/view/launchpoint/home

Plenary Speakers:

Dr. Pamela E. Harris

Partitions and Juggling: A story of unifying parts and seeking balance in mathematics. Kostant’s partition function is a vector partition function that counts the number of ways one can express a vector as a nonnegative integer linear combination of a fixed set of vectors. Multiplex juggling sequences are generalizations of juggling sequences (describing throws of balls at discrete heights) that specify an initial and terminal configuration of balls and allow for multiple balls at any particular discrete height. In this talk, I will give an introduction to a combinatorial equivalence between Kostant’s partition function and multiplex juggling sequences. Throughout I will talk about how partitioning my authentic self from my mathematical work makes it impossible to juggle and find balance in my professional work.

 

Dr. Candice Price

Math in Everything and for Everyone. While my research portfolio includes studying problems/issues through a mathematical lens, my service mission as a mathematician is to support those historically excluded in STEM by creating and supporting programs that increase the visibility of those underrepresented in mathematics. In this presentation, I will describe my path to a career in mathematics through an exploration of my research in mathematical modeling as well as my involvement in programs that are working towards broadening participation in mathematics.