Conference: Women in Mathematics

In the context of the International Day of Women in Mathematics, join us for an inspiring conference dedicated to celebrating and promoting the contributions of women in mathematics. This event provides a unique opportunity for students, researchers, and faculty members to engage with accomplished women mathematicians, explore a broad range of mathematical fields, and foster meaningful discussions on research and career development. While all speakers will be women, we warmly welcome all participants to attend and be part of this enriching experience.

About the Conference
The conference aims to highlight the contributions of women mathematicians. Our goal is to create an engaging and inspiring environment for students while fostering discussions on both research and career development. We invite women mathematicians, ideally based in Switzerland, to give plenary talks and contribute to the discussions. We aim to cover a broad range of mathematical fields, both pure and applied. Beyond gathering leading researchers and presenting recent achievements in Switzerland, the conference will offer valuable opportunities for students to engage with role models in the field. The roundtable discussions will foster a highly inclusive and supportive environment for students to interact with professors and engage in meaningful discussions during the dinner.

Event Details
    •    Conference: Women in Mathematics
    •    Dates & Location: May 15–16, 2025, EPFL
    •    Audience: Open to all master’s students, PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty members
    •    Room: MED 0 1418

 

Program Overview
    •    The event will start with lunch on Thursday, May 15, and conclude with lunch on Friday, May 16 (two half-days and one evening).
    •    Four colloquium-style plenary talks given by women professors (two on Thursday, two on Friday).
    •   Approximately ten contributed talks by women PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, scheduled after the plenary sessions.
    •    A roundtable discussion before dinner on May 15, featuring the plenary speakers and designed as an interactive session with the audience, addressing universal topics related to research and career progression.

Plenary Speakers

Why Attend?
Attending the Women in Mathematics conference is an opportunity to connect with inspiring researchers, engage in discussions on a wide array of mathematical topics, and build a supportive professional network. Whether you are a student looking for role models, a researcher eager to discuss your work, or a faculty member interested in mentoring the next generation, this event offers a welcoming and stimulating environment. The roundtable session will provide valuable insights into academic and professional pathways, while the contributed talks will highlight exciting research from emerging scholars. Don’t miss the chance to be part of this dynamic and inspiring conference!

Submit Your Talk Proposal
We encourage women researchers and other underrepresented genders in mathematics—including PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and junior faculty members—to apply to give a contributed talk at the conference. This is a fantastic opportunity to present your research to a broad audience, receive valuable feedback, and expand your professional network.

If you are passionate about your research and eager to inspire others, we invite you to submit your talk proposal by filling out the form before April 12.

Register
Late registration is still possible directly at the venue, but only for attending to the talks. Registration to lunches and diner is closed.

Schedule

Thursday 15    
11:30 AM Welcome Lunch  
1:00 PM Plenary Talk Antonietta Mira
2:00 PM Junior Researcher Talks Elise Dumas
Daria Sakhanda
Tengyingzi Ma
Rajita Chandak
3:20 PM Coffee Break  
3:50 PM Plenary Talk Susanna Zimmermann
4:50 PM Junior Researcher Talks Rea Dalipi
Eleonora Vercesi
Dijana Kreso
5:50 PM Break  
6:00 PM Roundtable  
7:00 PM Free Time  
7:30 PM Dinner  
Friday 16    
8:30 AM Plenary Talk Francesca Da Lio
9:30 AM Junior Researcher Talks Silvia Sconza
Nezhla Aghaei
Micol Bassanini
10:30 AM Coffee Break  
11:00 AM Plenary Talk Donna Testerman
12:00 PM Junior Researcher Talks Mengdi Wang
Marilena Palomba
Elsa Maneval
1:00 PM Closing Lunch  
     
     
 
Plenary Talks
 
Antonietta Mira
Title: On estimating and exploiting data intrinsic dimension 
Abstract: Real-world datasets often exhibit a high degree of (possibly) non-linear correlations and constraints among their features. Consequently, despite residing in a high-dimensional embedding space, the data typically lie on a manifold with a much lower intrinsic dimension (ID), which—under the presence of noise—may depend on the scale at which the data are analyzed. This situation raises interesting questions: How many variables or combinations thereof are necessary to describe a real-world dataset without significant information loss? What is the appropriate scale at which one should analyze and visualize data? Although these two issues are often considered unrelated, they are in fact strongly entangled and can be addressed within a unified framework.
We introduce an approach in which the optimal number of variables and the optimal scale are determined self-consistently, recognizing and bypassing the scale at which the data are affected by noise. To this end, we estimate the data ID in an adaptive manner. Sometimes, within the same dataset, it is possible to identify more than one ID, meaning that different subsets of data points lie on manifolds with different IDs. Identifying these manifolds provides a clustering of the data.
Examples of exploitation of data ID will be presented ranging from gene expression to protein folding, and pandemic evolution, all the way to fMRI, financial and network data. All these real-world applications show how a simple topological feature such as the ID allows us to uncover a rich data structure and improves our insight into subsequent statistical analyses.
 
Susanna Zimmermann
Title: Birational transformations: fun symmetries.
Abstract: Affine symmetries of the plane are made up of rotations, translations and reflections. We try to generalize the concept: instead of linear coordinates, we are allowed to have polynomial or even rational coordinates. These are called birational transformations of the plane and they make up a huge group. It does not have finite dimension, but still resembles somewhat linear groups.
In this talk, I’ll present some interesting properties of this symmetry group.
 
Francesca Da Lio
Title: The Search of Optimal Shapes
Abstract: The search for optimal shapes related to certain natural phenomena has raised
the interest of many physicists and mathematicians since old times. From the
mathematical point of view, this has corresponded to the investigation of critical
points of curvature functionals. These points are highly related to the determination
of special curves and surfaces, such as for instance geodesics, minimal surfaces,
elastica, and Willmore surfaces. All of these points are important objects not only
from a geometrical analysis perspective, but also in light of their applications in
applied mathematics, theoretical physics, and the natural sciences.
In this talk, we will present an overview of some well-known variational problems.
We will also mention some PDEs and functional analysis tools, that have been
crucial for solving such problems.
 
Donna Testerman
Title: Groups of Lie type : some classification results and open questions
Abstract: We motivate the study of the subgroup lattice of linear groups, which comprise the majority of the finite simple groups and of the simple linear algebraic groups.  All such groups are examples of groups of Lie type. We then describe how understanding this lattice naturally leads to questions in the representation theory of simple groups of Lie type. We state a few results in this direction and point out some open questions.

 

Contributed Talks

Thursday May 15 14:00-14:20 Elise Dumas EPFL Inference on sustained treatment strategies, with a case study on women with breast cancer
  14:20-14:40 Daria Sakhanda ETH Zürich Optimal Consumption Policy in a Carbon-Conscious Economy: A Machine Learning Approach
  14:40-15:00 Tengyingzi Ma ETH Zurich Markov decision process with observation cost in food production chain
  15:00-15:20 Rajita Chandak EPFL One-step Mean Square Consistency of the EM Algorithm for High-Dimensional Gaussian Mixture Models
Thursday May 15 16:50-17:10 Rea Dalipi University of Geneva Symplectic geometry of moduli space of hyperbolic metrics
  17:10-17:30 Eleonora Vercesi Università della Svizzera Italiana The Limits of Exact Solvers: Hard Instances for the Travelling Salesperson Problem
  17:30-17:50 Dijana Kreso University of Salzburg, Austria  
Friday May 16 9:30-9:50 Silvia Sconza University of Zurich Knot-based Key Exchange Protocol
  9:50-10:10 Nezhla Aghaei Unige mapping class group representation of super Chern-Simons theory
  10:10-10:30 Micol Bassanini EPFL Energy-stable spatial-temporal finite difference discretization of the two-fluid turbulent plasma model
Friday May 16 12:00-12:20 Mengdi Wang EPFL On polynomial Roth’s configuration
  12:20-12:40 Marilena Palomba Università della Svizzera Italiana Computational complexity of sum-of-squares bounds for copositive programs
  12:40-13:00 Elsa Maneval EPFL The non-coprime case of the Hausel-Thaddeus Conjecture and p-adic Integration

 

Contact
Should you require any additional information, feel free to contact Myrto Limnios or Xavier Morvan.