Scientific Program
This year's schedule contains five main parts:
- A scientific conference aimed at a wide audience of mathematicians and statisticians. More details below.
- Workshops in three categories (scientific research, profesional development and teaching&learning) will be offered by leading experts.
- Two plenary sessions. This year's keynote speakers are Stephen Boyd (Stanford University) and Doron Zeilberger (Rutgers University).
- A Graduate Roundtable to offer an opportunity to graduate students to discuss common issues around graduate education.
- A banquet and other social opportunities to meet and discuss with your peers.
Scientific Conference
In an effort to promote the widespread diffusion of ideas, we have designed the conference to create an exciting opportunity for all to hear great talks and get a chance to practice their skills as speakers.
This year's schedule offers enough time for over 100 scientific talks given by participants. Speakers will be required to submit abstracts outlining the content of their proposed talks. These abstracts will be reviewed by the organizing committee and published in the conference programme and on the conference website. According to the conference goals, speakers will be asked to tailor their presentations for a wide audience of mathematicians and statisticians and focus on having strong take-away messages instead of detailed technicalities.
The format for the talks is 20 minutes, please send us your abstract by April 10.
Panel Discussions
This year the conference will feature two panel discussions.
The first one will revolve around collaboration in mathematics. The panel will feature Alejandro Ádem, José Gómez (both UBC Math, Topology), Christoph Hauert (UBC Math, Game Theory), Jennifer Jacquet (UBC Fisheries Centre) and will be lead by Eric Cytrynbaum (UBC Math, Math Biology). The panel discussion will be held on Tuesday, from 1:00pm to 2:30pm in room A201.
The second panel will discuss teaching mathematics at the university level and will feature several award-winning UBC Math faculty members. We are pleased to announce the participation of Fok-Shuen Leung, Philip Loewen, Greg Martin and Mark MacLean. Our panel leader will be Djun Kim and the discussion will be held on Wednesday, from 1:00pm to 2:30pm in room A201.
Workshop
In parallel to the panel discussion offered on Tuesday we will offer a workshop presented by the Carl Wieman Science Educuation Initiative Fellows in Mathematics. Warren Code, Joseph Lo and Sandra Merchant will talk about: "How People Learn: Implications for Teaching Mathematics".
Abstract:
Fellows of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at UBC Math are happy to present a workshop that introduces some of the recent findings about how people learn, and follows that with some practical implications for teaching mathematics. The workshop will include a primer on the current science of learning: what are the best general practices for the teacher and the student to promote learning? We will discuss the idea of feedback in university mathematics courses - why it matters, what it looks like now, and practical ways it could be improved. Our session will also feature work on establishing clear expectations for students with a chance for you to practice setting learning objectives in sample situations. Our goal is for participants to take away some helpful, evidence-based ideas and links to further useful resources about teaching.
This workshop will be held on Tuesday, from 1:00pm to 2:30pm in room A202.
Plenary Speakers
We are also extremely pleased to be hosting two distinguished mathematicians as plenary speakers. The plenaries are being invited for their reputations for giving excellent talks and are asked to speak on topics of relevance to young researchers in mathematics and statistics. The speakers are:
- Stephen Boyd, Stanford University
Title: Recent Advances in Convex Optimization
Abstract: Joint work with Michael Grant, Jacob Mattingley, Yang Wang Convex optimization---a special type of mathematical optimization problem---is now widely used in automatic control systems, signal processing, networking, communications, machine learning, finance, combinatorial optimization, and other fields. In this talk I will give a brief overview of the basic idea of convex optimization, and describe a few recent advances. The first is the development of specification and modeling languages specifically for convex optimization, which allow very rapid development of applications based on convex optimization, and enhance learning and teaching of the methods. The second is automatic code generation for convex optimization solvers, which can be used to develop solvers fast enough for use in real-time and embedded applications. - Doron Zeilberger, Rutgers University
Title: Title: (2n)!/(n!(n+1)!)
Abstract: The unity and diversity of enumerative combinatorics will be illustated in terms of the Catalan Numbers.
Social Night
On Wednesday night you'll get a chance to mingle and network with your peers. We will gather at Thea's Lounge in the Graduate Student Building starting from 6pm for a burger & salad buffet (vegetarian option available). We'll also provide non-alcoholic beverages and our own professional bartender will let you order beer or wine as you wish.