Women and Mathematics 2021

The Institute for Advanced Study’s Women and Mathematics Program (WAM) will take place virtually May 22–28, 2021, with a total of 66 participants from around the world. This year’s theme is “Representation Theory: Categories and Combinatorics.”

Following a year-long hiatus due to the pandemic, the Institute is proud to resume this program which mentors, trains, and empowers young women at various stages of their academic careers to shape the future of mathematics research. The 2020 program, “The Mathematics of Machine Learning,” has been rescheduled for 2022.

There are 20 undergraduate and 22 graduate students, 16 post-docs, and 8 faculty members registered for this year’s program, which features a challenging week-long curriculum, a series of distinguished lectures, and access to long-term networking opportunities.

The Uhlenbeck Lecture, “Representation Theory and Categorification,” will be delivered by Catharina Stroppel of the University of Bonn. The Terng Lecture, “Representation Theory and Combinatorics of the Symmetric Group and Related Structures,” will be given by Monica Vazirani of University of California, Davis.

The 2021 program is organized by Sun-Yung Alice Chang, Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University; Dusa McDuff, Helen Lyttle Kimmel ’42 Professor of Mathematics at Barnard College; Elizabeth Milićević, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Haverford College; and Michelle Huguenin, Program Manager in the IAS School of Mathematics.

WAM is grateful for renewed funding from the National Science Foundation as well as a generous grant from Lisa Simonyi, which will enable WAM to enact many new initiatives to continue its mission to recruit and retain more women in mathematics.

For more about this year’s program, WAM, and upcoming programs visit www.ias.edu/math/wam.

About WAM
The Women and Mathematics Program (WAM) at the Institute for Advanced Study is an annual program with the mission to recruit and retain more women in mathematics and to unite women mathematicians at various stages of academic development including undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, and research mathematicians.

Cofounded by frequent Member and Visitor Karen Uhlenbeck and fellow Member Chuu-Lian Terng in 1993 as part of the Park City Mathematics Institute, WAM was established on the Institute’s campus in 1994 to address gender imbalance and success rates among women in the mathematics field. Since that time, Uhlenbeck and Terng have mentored hundreds of young women mathematicians through the program, resulting in a powerful network of nearly 1,500 participants to date.

About the Institute
The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world’s foremost centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. Located in Princeton, NJ, IAS is dedicated to independent study across the sciences and humanities. Founded in 1930, the Institute is devoted to advancing the frontiers of knowledge without concern for immediate application. From founding IAS Professor Albert Einstein to the foremost thinkers of today, IAS enables bold, curiosity-driven innovation to enrich society in unexpected ways.

Each year, the Institute welcomes more than 200 of the world’s most promising post-doctoral researchers and scholars who are selected and mentored by a permanent Faculty, each of whom are preeminent leaders in their fields. Among present and past Faculty and Members there have been 35 Nobel Laureates, 42 of the 60 Fields Medalists, and 21 of the 24 Abel Prize Laureates, as well as many MacArthur Fellows and Wolf Prize winners.