Math Dept 2020-2021 Newsletter 8
Monday, 8 February 2021
Past newsletters can now be reached via the department website.
[Click on “About” and then “News and Events”].
Newsletter is sent out when there is something new.
Please send entries
by the end of the workweek –Ed.
MEETINGS AND SEMINARS
IN THE DEPARTMENT
Mondays
Combinatorics Seminar
TBA
Coordinator: Louis
Shapiro
WEDNESDAYS
Math team/Math Club
meetings
Please contact organizers for zoom link.
Organizers: Jill McGowan (math club), Lou Shapiro (math team)
Thursdays
Seminar on
Topological Semigroups
To start, Dr. Justin Moore
of Cornell will talk about some of his recent work.
Time Thursdays at 2pm. Seminar will meet using Zoom. Please contact coordinator for
a link.
Coordinator Dennis
Davenport
Graduate Student
Seminar
Meeting from 4 to 5pm
on Thursdays. Contact coordinator for link.
Coordinator: Matthew
Cavallo
Fridays
Geometry Seminar
TBA
Coordinator: Roberto
de Leo
Mathematics
Department Colloquium
This semester our
Colloquium talks are shared between us and Cornell's Colloquium.
This week no
colloquium is scheduled as of this writing, but we had two special colloquia on
combinatorics last week, by Laura Colmenarejo
of University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Samantha Dahlberg of Arizona
State University.
Next Tuesday there
will be a special colloquium by Sam Hopkins of the University of
Minnesota, also on combinatorics.
TALKS AND WORKSHOPS OUTSIDE DEPARTMENT
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1. Our dear former colleague Louise Raphael
writes to strongly recommend to our students a Data Science Class that is being
offered for free to Howard students by Prof. David Banks of Duke University, on
saturdays at noon: https://www2.stat.duke.edu/~banks/SaturdayClass.html
2.
Virtual office hours with NSF DMS (Division of Mathematical
Sciences)
Monthly information session, this time including discussion
of combinatorics, foundations, and mathematical biology programs.
Feb 23 from 2 to 3pm. Registration website.
3. (Thanks to Aziz
Yakubu and Henok Mawi)
David Blackwell summer research
institute (UCLA/Berkeley)
Information and
Application forms
This program aims to honor
Blackwell’s legacy by attempting to increase the number of undergraduate
students who aspire to achieve his level of excellence and widen participation
of African-American men and women in obtaining PhDs in
the mathematical sciences. This will take place on the UCLA and UC Berkeley
campuses, from June 21 to July 30, 2021. The last week of the program includes
a trip to Berkeley, where all program participants will meet with each other
and share their work, hosted by the Simons Institute for the Theory of
Computing. African Americans comprise 4% of PhDs in engineering and 3% of PhDs
in mathematics granted from 2010-2020.
The David Harold
Blackwell Summer Research Institute will be led by Profs. Todd Coleman (UCSD
Bioengineering), Wilfrid Gangbo (UCLA Math), and
Jelani Nelson (UC Berkeley EECS), who will mentor the students directly.
4. (Thanks to Dennis
Davenport)
David Blackwell
summer research institute (Illinois)
Students interested in learning more about statistics, data
science, and mathematics are invited to apply to a paid intensive six-week
program - beginning May 24, 2020, and ending July 2,
2020. The initial program is taking place remotely via online sessions and
seminars with faculty, graduate students, and affiliate campus units.
For more information
about this program, please visit https://stat.illinois.edu/alumni/david-blackwell
5. (Thanks to Mohammad
Mahmood) QEM/NSF Talent Development and Innovation Sciences (TDIS) Summer Internship
The ten-week, virtual
summer internship opportunity (May 24 – July 30, 2021) is made possible through
a grant to the Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network from the National
Science Foundation (NSF). The internship will provide $6,000 (undergraduate)
and $7,000 ( graduate) taxable stipend, payable in
three installments during the summer.
Application at:
https://form.jotform.com/QEMNetwork/2021-TDISIntershipapplicationform
Application Deadline – Final deadline Wednesday, March 12, 2021
Decision Notification – Friday, April 2, 2021.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. Katie Gurski writes: Have you thought about
applying to MAA for funds to support an academic research program with
undergraduate students? Preparation for
contests? Math Club? The deadline is Feb 12 for applying for funding
to MAA for such activities.
2. (From our friend Edray
Goins): Number Theory/Algebraic Geometry Summer REU
Know an undergrad interested in summer research in algebraic
geometry or number theory? Tell them about the Pomona Research in Mathematics
Experience (PRiME)! It will run virtually from June
13 through August 27, 2021. Applications due February 15.
3. (Also from Edray Goins, via
Tristan Hubsch) April Strom and I are forming a subgroup of the MAA Congress to
look at widening the membership in the MAA. In particular, we're looking
into how to increase members from (1) Community Colleges, (2) Historically
Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and (3) Research I Universities.
But we need your help!
We're looking for voices from these underrepresented communities to serve on
this committee. In particular, we'd like to have:
· 2 members from
Community Colleges
· 2 members from HBCUs
/ MSIs
· 2 members from
Research 1s
We expect this subgroup to meet throughout Spring and Summer
2021, then present some action items at the MAA Congress meeting at MAA MathFest 2021. If you have an interest, please feel free to
send me an e-mail at edray.goins@pomona.edu.
SCHOLARSHIP AND
FELLOWSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
(from various
sources)
The 2021 application
cycle for the Roger Arliner Young (RAY) Diversity
Fellowship
is now open! The RAY Diversity Fellowship is a two-year (1 year with 1-year
renewal), full-time position with partner conservation and clean energy
organizations with the goal of increasing and facilitating environmentally-related
career pathways for emerging leaders of color. RAY Fellows have worked in a
variety of communications, climate, policy, research, education, fieldwork, and
philanthropic capacities.
Applications for the
2021 cycle are open and descriptions of Fellowship positions will be added on a
rolling basis through March. We anticipate scientific and policy research and
communications specific positions among others this year. Visit our website at http://www.rayfellowship.org/apply for application instructions and deadlines.
2. (Thanks to Louise Raphael) NSF Data Analysis and
Statistics Summer Internships
https://zintellect.com/Opportunity/Details/NSF-NCSES-Summer-2021
Deadline: March 31, 2021 4:00PM EST
This internship is for participants in a wide variety of
fields including, but not limited to: Business Management, Communications and
Graphic Design, Computer Sciences, Economics, Marketing, Mathematics and
Statistics, and Survey Methodology.
3. (Thanks to Aziz Yakubu) The Woods Hole Partnership
Program is accepting applications for the 2021 summer undergrad
internship research program. Application materials and
program information are available on the
The program dates are May 29 through August 7. Application deadline is February 13.
In previous newsletters
MAA funding opportunities
Summer Lab Internships at DHS
INTERESTING ARTICLES AND WEBSITES
By making the first progress on the “chromatic number of
the plane” problem in over 60 years, an anti-aging pundit has achieved
mathematical immortality.
2. Some teachable statistical moments from the election
Was
there only a one in quadrillion chance that Biden could have won?
Did
Biden get some 15 million more votes than he could possibly have?
I plan to talk about these in my Patterns class – Ed.
A possible student project
identifying outliers in vote data
3. (Thanks to Louise Raphael) Game that reveals limits of
mathematics.
The “busy beaver” game tries to find the maximum length of a
program with a fixed number of rules run by a Turing machine. It has also
yielded connections to some difficult problems. For instance, one particular
game can be used to check whether the Riemann hypothesis is true.