Institute for Advanced Study Convenes Annual Program for Women and Mathematics

Participants collaborate at the 2009 Program for Women and Mathematics, photo by Cliff Moore

More than 60 women mathematicians from throughout the United States will gather at the Institute for Advanced Study this May for the Program for Women and Mathematics.  The 11-day residential program, sponsored by the Institute and Princeton University, will be held from May 17 to May 28, marking its 17th year on the Institute campus.   

The Program for Women and Mathematics is designed to inspire talented women from undergraduate through postdoctoral levels to pursue and achieve their educational goals, as well as to address the isolation and lack of support faced by many women in mathematics. It specifically addresses three transition periods for women: from undergraduate to graduate study; from advanced graduate work to research; and from postdoctoral work to tenure-track or permanent job identification outside academia.

The research topic this year is An Introduction to the p-adic Langlands Program. The program will focus on relating the p-adic representations of Galois groups with those of linear groups to solve problems in number theory. In the beginning course, the basic notions of p-analysis, of Galois groups and of representations of finite groups will be introduced. The advanced course for graduate students will concentrate on studying the p-adic representations of p-adic Galois or linear groups. There will also be review sessions, research seminars and two colloquium talks.
The Program for Women and Mathematics grew out of the Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI), which the Institute began sponsorship of in 1993.  Participants include undergraduate and graduate students as well as postdoctoral scholars and senior researchers.  A variety of activities, both formal and informal, will be offered to encourage interaction among participants.  In addition to undergraduate and graduate level lecture courses, there are research seminars, problem and review sessions, colloquia and Women-in-Science seminars.  A day of activities on the Princeton University campus is planned for Monday, May 24.

The program is being organized by Sun-Yung Alice Chang and Ingrid Daubechies of Princeton University; Antonella Grassi of the University of Pennsylvania; Tanya Khovanova of MIT; Chuu-Lian Terng of the University of California, Irvine; and Karen Uhlenbeck of the University of Texas at Austin.

Faculty members for the Beginning Lecture Course include Elena Mantovan of the California Institute of Technology and Rachel Ollivier of Université de Versailles, and for the Advanced Lecture Course, Ariane Mezard of Université de Versailles and Marie-France Vigneras of the Université Paris VII.

Support for the program has been provided by the National Science Foundation.

For information, visit http://www.math.ias.edu/wam/2010.