MƒA teachers can register for this event on the Small-World Network. Other guests can register here.
Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium
160 Fifth Avenue, 2nd Floor
The MƒA Thursday Think Speaker Series brings accomplished speakers who dive into cutting-edge topics in STEM education to MƒA. These talks, held once a month throughout the school year, invite MƒA teachers and the general public to learn and engage with these thought leaders and professionals in mathematics, science, and education.
Legend has it that when Walt Disney designed Disneyland in the 1950s, he was remarkably intentional about the placement of trash cans. Disney decreed that trash cans should be placed throughout the park so guests are never more than 30 feet from the nearest receptacle, theorizing that this was the maximum distance a guest would hold onto their garbage before littering. Today’s electric vehicle companies must also decide on optimal placement—of charging stations—considering how to meet specific distance requirements while balancing costs. Whether choosing the placement of Disneyland trash cans or electric vehicle charging stations, it is imperative to minimize the resources used while still meeting the strict distance requirements. But how? The answer lies in the mathematical concept of a dominating set.
In this talk, Dr. Pamela Harris and Jillian Cervantes explore resource allocation problems through graph theory concepts, including domination theory and its generalizations.
Jillian Cervantes (she/they) is a fourth-year undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, where she studies mathematics and computer science and researches graph theory dominating sets. In the summer of 2023, she participated in the MSRI-UP research experience for undergrads in Berkeley, CA, conducting research in topological data analysis and machine learning. Jillian plans to start a doctoral program in the fall of 2024 and hopes to become a mathematics professor after completing her Ph.D., seeking to inspire other Latinx mathematicians to remain persistent in pursuing their goals.
Dr. Pamela E. Harris is a Mexican-American mathematician and an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She received her B.S. from Marquette University and M.S. and Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Dr. Harris's research is in algebraic combinatorics, and she is the author of over 70 peer-reviewed research articles in internationally recognized journals. She is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and the Association for Women in Mathematics. Dr. Harris is an award-winning educator, receiving the 2022 MAA Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Excellence in Mathematical Education, the 2020 MAA Northeast Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching, the 2019 MAA Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Beginning College or University Mathematics Faculty Member, and the 2019 Council on Undergraduate Research Mathematics and Computer Sciences Division Early Career Faculty Mentor Award. She is the President and co-founder of Lathisms: Latinxs and Hispanics in the Mathematical Sciences and co-hosts the podcast "Mathematically Uncensored."
