Stephanie van Willigenburg remembers being told by a PhD adviser that women’s brains aren’t wired to do math.
Now a professor of mathematics and Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Science at the University of British Columbia, van Willigenburg was recently awarded the 2023 David P. Robbins Prize for he research. She’ll visit the University of Oregon campus April 10-11 to discuss both graph theory and why mathematics is for everyone who has a passion for it as part of the UO Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Distinguished Speaker Series.
van Willigenburg was named an American Mathematical Society Fellow in 2023 and has received numerous awards for her research and teaching in mathematics, including the Krieger-Nelson Prize from the Canadian Mathematical Society. She is the co-founder of the Algebraic Combinatorics Research Community, an initiative whose goal is to facilitate both research and mentorship for women in algebraic combinatorics. Her research interests include combinatorial representation theory, graph theory, posets, symmetric functions and their generalizations, and tableaux combinatorics.
Declawing Graph Theory
April 10, 4-5 p.m.
, Tykeson 260
The talk will begin with historical tales, including the four-color map problem and the chromatic polynomial. It will then address the chromatic symmetric function, dating from 1995, which is a generalization of the chromatic polynomial. A famed problem on it, called the Stanley-Stembridge (3+1)-free problem, has been the focus of much research lately, and the talk will address van Willigenburg’s award-winning research on the subject. This talk requires no prior knowledge and will provide a gentle introduction to coloring graphs, suitable for a broad audience including undergraduates.
Q&A Session: Not Wired That Way
April 11, 12-1 p.m., Gerlinger 302
One of van Willigenburg’s PhD supervisors believed that women's brains were not wired to do mathematics. In this talk, she will discuss why mathematics is for everyone with a passion for it, as well as the importance of strong and positive mentorship. She will also discuss how the mathematics community around the world has been addressing the gender gap in mathematics, from proactive hiring at universities to focused conferences and workshops, as well as smaller but equally meaningful ways the gap can be addressed.
The UO AWS chapter invites women mathematicians to give talks accessible to graduate students and upper-level undergraduate students. The series aims to increase the visibility of women researchers in the mathematical sciences; provide a forum for the discussion of mathematics and its practice from a feminist perspective; and spark interest in mathematics, particularly among women and historically underrepresented groups.