AWM-SIAM Workshop and Kovalevsky Lecture, 2014

Association For Women In Mathematics, Inc., Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

This project will fund a named lectureship and a workshop for early-career women at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in Chicago, Illinois. The Sonia Kovalevsky Lectureship features significant contributions by women to applied areas of the mathematical sciences. These lectures reach a broad audience, highlight important contributions by women, and serve as inspiration for those entering the profession. The workshop, organized by the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), is part of a series of interconnected conferences and workshops designed to create sustainable networks, encourage mentoring relationships, and promote research collaborations. The 2014 AWM-SIAM workshop will focus on numerical algorithms for nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs). Nonlinear PDEs arise in many different fields and have been a core research area of theoretical and numerical analysis for many decades. Due to the nonlinearity, solutions to these PDEs may have singularities and thus cannot satisfy the equations in the classical sense. In recent years, numerical simulations have dramatically enhanced our understanding of the properties and behaviors of such solutions. The workshop will focus on numerical methods for some of the most widely studied PDEs. This project is designed to address issues that frequently cause women in the mathematical sciences to leave the profession or fail to thrive. Studies show that increasing the visibility of women scientists, providing mentoring and networking opportunities to combat isolation, and offering resources for launching careers are key to combating this problem. The AWM workshops, which include both research talks and panel discussions on career development, provide a natural environment for establishing mentoring relations and research collaborations. Contacts formed at these meetings lead to greater integration of the participants into the broader research community. The Kovalevsky Lecture is an opportunity to display outstanding work by accomplished female mathematicians, providing both role models for younger women and visual reminders to the broader community of the significant contributions being made by female mathematicians.