20th Annual Program for Women and Mathematics Explores Combinatorics and Graph Theory
PRESS CONTACT: Katherine Belyi, (609) 951-4406
This May, the annual Program for Women and Mathematics will mark its 20th year, bringing together research mathematicians and undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral women studying mathematics for an intensive residential mentoring program. The 2013 lecture series will focus on combinatorics and graph theory, covering recent developments and open problems. The program will take place May 13–24 on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study and is sponsored by the Institute and Princeton University, with support from the National Science Foundation.
The Program for Women and Mathematics seeks to inspire talented women from undergraduate through postdoctoral levels to achieve their educational goals, as well as to address the isolation and lack of support many women face in mathematics. In addition to lectures and seminars on a focused mathematical topic, the program includes mentoring, discussions on peer relations, an introduction to career opportunities and a series of seminars about women in science.
“The theme of this year's program is immensely popular—we received well over 200 applications,” says Christine Taylor, a Member in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study and Senior Lecturer at Princeton University, who is one of the organizers of the program. “In addition to 60 full-time participants from a wide range of institutions, we are also looking forward to welcoming 20 visitors who will serve as guest lecturers and panelists. These visitors, from academia, industry and beyond, are great role models and career resources for young women mathematicians.”
In addition to Taylor, the 2013 program is organized by Sun-Yung Alice Chang, Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University; Antonella Grassi, Professor at University of Pennsylvania; and Dusa McDuff, Helen Lyttle Kimmel ’42 Professor of Mathematics at Barnard College, Columbia University.
The focus of the program will be combinatorics, the study of finite or countable structures, and developments in graph theory related to the structure of a certain family of graphs. The combinatorics course will feature as lecturers Margaret Readdy of the University of Kentucky and Lauren Williams of the University of California, Berkeley, and the graph theory course lecturers will be Maria Chudnovsky of Columbia University and Penny Haxell of the University of Waterloo.
For more information, visit www.math.ias.edu/wam/2013.
About the Program for Women and Mathematics
The Program for Women and Mathematics grew out of the Park City Mathematics Institute, an outreach program of the Institute for Advanced Study that provides professional development for the mathematics community. In 1994, a program called the Mentoring Program for Women in Mathematics was formed with the long-term goal of giving women the support needed to remain in the field of mathematics. Now known as the Program for Women and Mathematics, the program’s participants include undergraduate and graduate students as well as postdoctoral scholars and senior researchers. Collaborations and mentoring relationships are formed during the program and are maintained long afterward.
About the Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities—the original, often speculative thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by a permanent Faculty of approximately 30, and it ensures the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.
The Institute, founded in 1930, is a private, independent academic institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Its more than 6,000 former Members hold positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world. Thirty-three Nobel Laureates and 40 out of 56 Fields Medalists, as well as many winners of the Wolf and MacArthur prizes, have been affiliated with the Institute.