Overview
Title: Fostering interdisciplinary communication through teaching, mentorship, and public science
Abstract: Communicating mathematics accessibly is broadly valuable, and here I will discuss some ideas for how we teach and mentor students to write and speak about math accessibly across disciplinary boundaries and in public-science settings. This will include sharing some ways that I have encountered for designing undergraduate research experiences that give students hands-on experience with collaboration and public-science communication. I’ll also reflect on some ways to incorporate training in communication and collaboration into mathematical-biology and modeling courses.
Bio: Alexandria Volkening is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering (by courtesy) at Purdue University. Prior to joining Purdue, she was an NSF-Simons Fellow in the NSF-Simons Center for Quantitative Biology and the Department of Engineering Sciences & Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University for two years and a postdoctoral fellow in the Mathematical Biosciences Institute at Ohio State University for two years. She received her PhD in Applied Mathematics at Brown University in May 2017 with Björn Sandstede and her BS in Mathematics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2011. Her research is in applied mathematics, dynamical systems, and mathematical biology. With an application-driven perspective, she combines predictive modeling and analysis to better understand a wide range of areas in complex systems and emergent behavior, including pattern formation, election dynamics, and crowd movement.
The NSF-Simons National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology Seminar Series aims to bring together a mix of mathematicians and biologists to foster discussion and collaboration between the two fields. The seminar series will take place on Fridays from 10am – 11am at the NITMB in the John Hancock Center in downtown Chicago. There will be both an in-person and virtual component.