Young Mathematicians Conference

I had the best time presenting at the Young Mathematicians Conference in Ohio last week! It was so exciting to see what other REUs have been working on this summer. Even though some of the talks went over my head, I really enjoyed meeting other undergrads and talking with faculty.

One of my favorite talks was by Ryan Hynd (UPenn), who spoke about dynamic games involving large numbers of interacting agents, using tools from game theory, probability, and partial differential equations. I was definitely lost at times, but I found the ideas fascinating. It definetly inspired me to look over my copy of Evans again afrewards haha.

I also attended a fantastic talk by Cary Malkiewich (Binghamton University) on the scissors congruence problem. I hadn’t encountered anything like it before, so it was especially interesting. It was my first time seeing the kind of proofs mathematicians use for problems like this, and I learned a lot.

Overall, the conference was a great experience. It gave me a chance to explore different fields, hear about the grad school application process, and learn how various faculty members found their way into their areas of research. What stood out to me was how many of them arrived at their fields by coincidence rather than having everything figured out as undergrads. Honestly, that was reassuring to hear. While my experience at SMALL made me realize that I'm especially drawn to Analysis and PDEs side of things, I think it is nice to be able to look around and see what else is happening in the math community. Looking forward to what comes next!

Special thanks to the YMC organizers, OSU faculty, Cookie Monster and all the people who came to our talk!