Sparsity and Computation to be Examined at Annual Program for Women and Mathematics

A lecture during the 2010 Program for Women and Mathematics

For the 18th consecutive year, 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 on Sparsity and Computation, sponsored by the Institute and Princeton University, will be held from May 16 to May 27.

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.

Mathematicians are being deluged routinely with huge datasets that they want to understand, from networking and scientific computation to sensing and modeling an environment. In order to learn from these data, and to store, transmit or use this information, new ways to uncover and work with structures hidden in these massive datasets are being developed, drawing on a range of different disciplines within mathematics and computer science. These issues will be explored at both beginner and advanced levels in this year’s research topic, Sparsity and Computation.

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 23.

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

Faculty members for the Beginning Lecture Course include Rachel Ward of New York University and Becca Willett of Duke University, and for the Advanced Lecture Course, Sofya Raskhodnikova of Penn State University and Anna Gilbert.

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

For information, visit http://www.math.ias.edu/wam/2011.