Uncovering the multiple facets of mathematics
Members of Montreal’s eclectic mathematics community will get together at Concordia’s Sir George Williams campus this weekend to crunch more than numbers.
From January 12 to 14, Concordia is hosting the annual Seminars in Undergraduate Mathematics in Montreal (SUMM), a bilingual conference aimed to bring mathematics students together to network and share ideas, interests and research.
Undergraduate students in mathematics from Concordia, McGill University, Université de Montréal and Université du Québec à Montréal team up every year to organize the event. Over the course of the three days, more than 30 students will give talks pertaining to different areas of interest in math or statistics.
“I hope that participants learn from each other and that it fuels their passion and curiosity for the immense array of potential research avenues in mathematics and connected subjects,” says Emilia Alvarez, a member of SUMM’s organizing committee and a Concordia undergraduate student in Mathematics and Statistics.
Since its first edition took place in 2010, SUMM has welcomed students from all over Canada. However, for the first time this year, international students from universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Utah will be attending.
“I've benefitted a lot from meeting international students at conferences in the USA, so I was keen to promote SUMM to American universities, in the hopes of having international student participants,” says Alvarez. “This year, at Concordia, I [also] wanted to make sure we would get a good turnout of students not just in Pure Math, but also in Statistics and even Actuarial math, which Concordia is known for.”
Along with student-hosted talks, there will be six plenary keynotes held by professors, including Dr. Galia Dafni, associate professor in Mathematics and Statistics at Concordia. Her talk, titled “A is for Analysis, B is for BMO, C is for Carleson, D is for Dyadic” will cover some of the objects and tools studied and used by harmonic analysts in their day-to-day research. The origins of harmonic analysis are very old, Dafni explains, going back as far as the study of ‘harmonics’ in music by the ancient Greeks. It has important applications in several areas of mathematics, physics, and engineering.
“We will start with basics familiar to those who have taken undergraduate analysis courses, and go on from there to uncover the meaning of the words in the title and the connections between them,” Dafni says. “The idea is to give the audience a bit of the feel and the fun of working with these objects.” Her talk will take place on Jan. 14 from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m in MB 1.210.
Beyond the diverse range of talks, SUMM gives students an opportunity make new connections. “I always enjoy meeting new people with similar interests—you never know who's going to be your future peer in grad school, or even a future collaborator,” Alvarez says.
“The importance of mathematics and statistics in the 21st century cannot be overestimated, and we want to position Concordia students at the forefront of current developments in these areas,” says Dafni. “I hope participants in this event gain an appreciation of the beauty and universality of mathematics, as well as its usefulness, and the enjoyment experienced by researchers when we are ‘doing math.’”
Be sure to check out the event schedule on the SUMM website.
Concordia event listing.
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