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MAA Distinguished Lecture Series

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Funded by the National Security Agency
Carriage House Conference Center, Washington DC

The MAA, with the generous support of the NSA, is proud to present a series of public lectures. The series features some of the foremost experts within the field of mathematics, known for their ability to make current mathematical ideas accessible to non-specialists, and provides a fabulous and fun learning opportunity for both professionals and students, as well as anyone interested in learning more about current trends in mathematics and the relationship between mathematics and broader scientific, engineering and technological endeavors.

The following lectures are scheduled for the fall and winter:

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MAA Distinguished Lecture: Kevin McCurleyThe process of applying mathematics to the real world is undergoing a radical change through our ability to gather data at a massive scale. This is particularly true at Google, where we routinely process petabytes of human language, and interact with many millions of users. In this talk I'll describe some surprising realizations that arose from this data while trying to improve part of our search quality. It turns out that everything I thought I knew about similarity was wrong, and I should have been talking to psychologists.

Kevin McCurley is a Research Scientist at Google, where he has worked since 2005. He previously held positions at IBM Almaden Research Center, Sandia National Laboratories, and University of Southern California. He has published in the areas of information retrieval, algorithms, parallel computing, cryptography, and number theory.

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MAA Distinguished Lecture: Tony DeRoseFilm making is undergoing a digital revolution brought on by advances in areas such as computer technology, computational physics, geometry, and approximation theory. Using numerous examples drawn from Pixar's feature films, this talk will provide a behind the scenes look at the role that math plays in the revolution.

Tony DeRose is currently a Senior Scientist and lead of the Research Group at Pixar Animation Studios. He received a BS in Physics in from the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1986 to 1995 Dr. DeRose was a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. In 1998, he was a major contributor to the Oscar winning short film "Geri's game", in 1999 he received the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, and in 2006 he received a Scientific and Technical Academy Award for his work on surface representations

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MAA Distinguished Lecture: Frank FarrisWhat if the universe had an edge? Since “universe” is construed to indicate “all that is,” such an edge would have to be inaccessible, “infinitely far away.”

In this talk, we travel to a hypothetical universe, whose inhabitants, along with all the matter they use to measure their space, shrink as they approach the edge. In this shrinking-ruler universe, that boundary is indeed inaccessible.

The picture of what we call “hyperbolic wallpaper” helps us imagine this cosmos: In the world of the shrinking ruler, all of the peacock fans are exactly the same distance across. All of them. And there are infinitely many copies hidden down there near the edge, unseen by our outsider eyes.

Frank Farris completed a five-year term as editor of Mathematics Magazine in 2005 and now serves again through 2009, aspiring to continue its tradition of challenging and inspiring teachers and students of mathematics at the undergraduate level. A native Californian, Frank did his undergraduate work at Pomona College and received his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1981. Awards include a Trevor Evans Award for his article “The Edge of the Universe” in Math Horizons and the David E. Logothetti Teaching Award at Santa Clara University, where he has taught since 1984.

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MAA Distinguished Lecture: Robert LangThe last decade of this past century has been witness to a revolution in the development and application of mathematical techniques to origami, the centuries-old Japanese art of paper-folding. The techniques used in mathematical origami design range from the abstruse to the highly approachable. In this talk, I will describe how geometric concepts led to the solution of a broad class of origami folding problems – specifically, the problem of efficiently folding a shape with an arbitrary number and arrangement of flaps, and along the way, enabled origami designs of mind-blowing complexity and realism, some of which you’ll see, too. As often happens in mathematics, theory originally developed for its own sake has led to some surprising practical applications. The algorithms and theorems of origami design have shed light on long-standing mathematical questions and have solved practical engineering problems. I will discuss examples of how origami has enabled safer airbags, Brobdingnagian space telescopes, and more.

Robert J. Lang is recognized as one of the foremost origami artists in the world as well as a pioneer in computational origami and the development of formal design algorithms for folding. With a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Caltech, he has, during the course of work at NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Spectra Diode Laboratories, and JDS Uniphase, authored or co-authored over 80 papers and 45 patents in lasers and optoelectronics as well as 8 books and a CD-ROM on origami. He is a full-time artist and consultant on origami and its applications to engineering problems but moonlights as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics. In 2009 he was awarded Caltech’s highest honor, the Distinguished Alumni Award for his work in origami.

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MAA Distinguished Lecture: Michael StarbirdThe fourth dimension sounds eerie, mysterious, and exciting; and it is. Untying knots, stealing gold bricks from closed iron safes, unfolding hypercubes and linking spheres are all part of the journey.

We are transported to this abstract domain by a powerful method of creating ideas, namely, thinking insightfully about the world that we know well. A deep understanding of the simple and familiar is the key to exploring the complex and mysterious, and the fourth dimension illustrates that principal magnificently.

Michael Starbird is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor at The University of Texas at Austin and a member of UT’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers. He received his B.A. degree from Pomona College and his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has been in the Department of Mathematics of UT except for leaves including one to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and one to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

He has received more than a dozen teaching awards including several that are awarded to only one professor at UT annually and including the Mathematical Association of America’s 2007 national teaching award. He is a popular lecturer, having presented more than a hundred invited lectures since 2000. Starbird’s books include, with co-author Edward B. Burger, the award-winning mathematics textbook for liberal arts students The Heart of Mathematics: An invitation to effective thinking and the trade book Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas. With David Marshall and Edward Odell he co-authored Number Theory Through Inquiry. His Teaching Company video courses in the Great Courses Series include Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear, Meaning From Data: Statistics Made Clear, What are the Chances? Probability Made Clear, and Mathematics from the Visual World. These courses reach tens of thousands of people in the general public annually. In 1989, Starbird was UT’s Recreational Sports Super Racquets Champion.

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