This weekend, over 400 mathematicians will flock to Bowdoin for the 2016 Fall Eastern Sectional Meeting of the American Mathematical Society. Some visitors will hail from as far as the United Kingdom and several Bowdoin students will be giving presentations. As the host, Bowdoin has made several changes to the conference, widening its audience and emphasizing undergraduate research.
Professor of Mathematics Jennifer Taback has led coordination of the national conference and its corresponding activities throughout the past few months.
“The way the conference works is that there are three plenary talks and then lots of little talks which are organized into what are called special sessions on very narrow research topics,” she said.
The structure of the event remains unchanged from previous years, but according to Taback, Bowdoin’s hosting of the conference will be unusual for several other reasons—most notably for the emphasis placed on undergraduate research.
“That’s what we do here, right? That’s what we’re interested in,” Taback said. “There are five or six Bowdoin students who are speaking about their summer work and then students from many other colleges and universities who applied and got selected.”
Olivia Cannon ’17 will present the research she conducted over the summer on number theory and its related functions.
“Even though I’m really, really nervous about the conference, I’m also just excited to have the experience of participating,” she said. “It’s so cool that they’re having a special section of the conference devoted to undergraduates because that’s something which is pretty rare."
Cannon said she hopes that incorporating student presentations will encourage student interest in the event.
“I want undergraduates to come and get the idea that you can do math, you can do research and you can be excited about it, rather than it just being something for professors,” she said.
Taback shares Cannon’s goal of broadening the conference’s audience. In her planning, she prioritized opening the event to the community.
“Something else that makes our conference different is that we’re having a community lecture on Saturday night given by Dr. Michael Kleber of Google,” Taback said. “Clearly, most of the talks are not appropriate for the average person on the street, but this evening lecture is one that will be interesting and accessible to lots of people.”
Kleber’s discussion of efficient search algorithms through large data sets is titled “Poisoned Wine, Not Enough Rats.”
Taback, who works closely with local schools, added that she is excited to welcome a group of junior high students who will be attending the conference this year.
“That’s probably never happened before,” she said.
Also taking place for the first time is a meal for all conference attendees—more specifically, a lobster bake.
“Thorne does such a nice lobster bake, I just thought we had to,” Taback said.