Events
Department Events
Keep up with department happenings by checking out our Facebook page.
Recent events in 2022:
Our Student Mathematics Colloquium returns for Fall 2022. All colloquium meetings will be in Glynn 109 from 10:05-11am. Here is a list of our upcoming speakers:
Friday, October 21: Dr. Darren Narayan, Professor of Mathematics at Rochester Institute of Technology
Friday, October 28: Dr. Haydee Lindo, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd College
Friday, November 11: Dr. Jane Cushman, Chair and Associate Professor at Buffalo State College
Wednesday, November 30: Dr. Hossein Shahmohamad, Professor of Mathematics at Rochester Institute of Technology
Friday, December 2: Dr. Sahana Balasubramanya, Visiting Assistant Professor at University at Buffalo
Past Mathematics Department events:
Thursday, April 21, at 12pm, in Glynn 312: Student Mathematics Colloquium talk by Johanna Mangahas (UB)
- Title: Infinity, and then some
- Abstract: Let’s start with a riddle: consider a count of all the earth’s grains of sand. How does their number compare to the ways you can hold just one stone in your hand? This gets us in the vicinity of pondering infinity, so consider all the rhymes one might write, in theory. Innumerable, or rather, too many to count? There’s a difference! And more than just slight. There’s unlimited prose to (hypothetically) compose, but that seems to me far fewer than the sounds in a slide from one note to the next on one string of a violin. Now I promise my talk will not be in rhyme!!! But if you do choose to come, you’ll hear of counting, of infinities plural, and of Cantor and the continuum.
Friday, April 1, at 3pm, in Glynn 312: Student Mathematics Colloquium talk by Bernard Badzioch (UB)
Friday, March 4, at 13pm, in Glynn 312: Student Mathematics Colloquium talk by Lars Winther Christensen (Texas Tech)
- Title: The ultra secret
- Abstract: In August 1945, evidence of the most spectacular contribution of Physics to the war effort came in the form of a mushroom cloud. The grand contribution of Mathematics, however, remained secret well into the 1970s. It was the effort to crack the German Enigma cipher machine.
In the talk I will give a brief survey of this momentous effort. It is an entertaining story of elementary mathematics with nontrivial implications for world history.
Thursday, February 17, at 12pm, in Glynn 312: Student Mathematics Colloquium talk by Caitlyn Parmelee (Keene State College)
- Title: Using network structure to understand activity in neural networks
- Abstract: With the advancement of the technology used to map neural networks and record brain activity, there is increasingly more data for the construction of connectomes, or complete maps of neural networks. C. elegans, a tiny roundworm with 302 neurons and around 7,000 synapses, was the first organism for which scientists mapped a complete connectome in 1982. Since then, further progress has been made on the connectomes for other organisms such as flies, zebrafish, and mice. Despite the wealth of connectivity information available, an important question remains unanswered: How does the structure of neural connectivity affect the behavior of the network? Using a particular neural network model called the Combinatorial Threshold-Linear Network model, we will explore how particular patterns of connections can lead to different patterns of firing rate activity with the goal of predicting neural activity from network structure.
Thursday, February 10, at 12pm, in Glynn 312: Student Mathematics Colloquium talk by Ryan Gantner (St. John Fisher College).
- Title: Combinatorial Games under Auction Play
- Abstract: In this interactive presentation, we'll get to play a few simple mathematical games. For the game of Hackenbush, we'll look at the way values are assigned to different configurations, as set out by John Conway and others. But the real fun begins when we alter the way in which turns are taken to involve auctions. Doing this can turn even mundane games into real thinking battles. While we'll just scratch the surface, this subject involves math from unexpected areas coming together. This presentation should be accessible to a general mathematical audience.
Friday, January 28, at 3pm, in Glynn 312: Student Mathematics Colloquium talk by Dr. Carl Lutzer (RIT).
- Title: Psychology + Fluid Flow + Zombies = ?
- Abstract: In the early part of this century, an Australian civil engineer combined ideas about fluids with hypotheses about the ways that human behave. The result was a continuum model of crowd movement, which is the subject of this talk. I will bring together mathematical tools and ideas from the undergraduate curriculum to highlight important features of the model, and explain some shocking features of solutions that, although with reach of the undergraduate curriculum, most students never encounter. Along the way we will see cameo appearances of the famous physicist Richard Feynman and zombies (but not Richard Feynman as a zombie), and if time permits, we will identify a critical limitation of the model at the nexus of mathematics and meaning.
December 2, 2021, at 12pm in Glynn 301: Student Mathematics Colloquium talk: Summer Math Opportunities, led by Joel Louwsma and Peder Thompson
October 27, 2021, at 12pm in Glynn 301: Student Mathematics Colloquium talk by Dr. Saziye Bayram (SUNY Buffalo State). Title: "Modeling infectious diseases with mathematical models and the COVID-19 pandemic"
MAA Seaway Section Distinguished Lecture by Dr. David Brown of Ithaca College. Monday, October 1 at 4:00pm in Castellani Art Museum. This is part of NU's October Speaker Series.
Game night in the first week of September 2018.
Summer opportunities informational meeting in Fall 2017: led by Dr. Louwsma and Dr. A. Mangum.
Special faculty lecture: Dr. Barg spoke about the mathematics of how diseases are spread.
Guest lecture in Spring 2016: Dr. Johannes of SUNY Geneseo spoke about the 4th dimension in popular culture.
Pi Day (3/14 each year): enjoy pie with friends, and maybe even pie a professor!
Day of Recognition (late April each year): math students are honored for outstanding work.
Conferences
Below are links to some of the premier annual mathematics conferences in the U.S.