A Magical Sabbatical

Even though it’s only been a month since I moved back to Maine, pre-tenure leave seems like a distant memory. I expected that the change would be abrupt, especially since I was traveling and trying to do research pretty much until the day I got in my car in Austin, Texas to drive back to Portland. But I did not expect to feel this busy and overwhelmed. In this post, I share a few thoughts on the return to my regular life after my magical sabbatical.

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MCA 2013: On attending the first Mathematical Congress of the Americas

The auditorium for plenary talks, right before the inaugural and awards ceremony.

The auditorium for plenary talks, right before the inaugural and awards ceremony.

A few weeks ago I attended my last conference of the summer, the Mathematical Congress of the Americas in Guanajuato, Mexico. This is the first conference of its kind, and brought together about one thousand mathematicians from around the globe (but concentrated mostly in the Americas, of course). For me personally, it was a great opportunity to see some great talks, meet new people, and catch up with old friends, all in the beautiful setting of Guanajuato. In this post, I will share my experiences at this great conference.

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Conference madness, part III: IdeaLab 2013

A photo of the whole group on the last day of the workshop. Photo courtesy of ICERM.

A photo of the whole group on the last day of the workshop. Photo courtesy of ICERM.

After Sage Days (technically, though, I left a day early), I headed to Providence for the IdeaLab 2013 workshop. This was the first workshop of its kind at ICERM. Modeled after a similar program in France, the IdeaLab invited about 20 early career mathematicians to work on two relevant applied math problems, in the areas of climate change modeling and cryptography. I think the idea was to invite many people and then have them pick which problem they would rather work on (and this might be the spirit of it in the future, from what I heard there). But given that the two problems were so different, I think the organizers knew that they were inviting people so that roughly half would go to each problem. It was pretty clear that for me, as a number theorist, the cryptography project made a lot more sense.

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Posted in conferences, ICERM, networking, research, workshops | 1 Comment