Q&A with the AustMS 2022 Women Plenary Speakers
Serena Dipierro (Hanna Neumann Lecturer)
What is your name and what do you do?
My name is Serena Dipierro and I am Professor of Mathematics at the University of Western Australia. My work is in the field of partial differential equations, with focus on nonlocal equations, minimal surfaces and free boundary problems.
Why do you do mathematics?
Because I like it! I think that all mathematicians do mathematics for the fun of it.
What is a typical work day like for you?
I don’t have a particular routine, it depends on the day. I like to start my day with a plentiful breakfast and some good physical exercise. Then I have to take care of emails, which nowadays contain plenty of mostly unnecessary bureaucracy, but thankfully very often a number of scientific exchanges with colleagues, which are a great stimulus for mathematical creativity. Some time spent sitting down, or walking around, and thinking. And several, very pleasant, face-to-face discussions with collaborators and students, to push a bit further, day after day, our knowledge on the little problem we are working on. And, depending on the days, teaching and office hours, which can be a good opportunity to profitably interact with students, outreach activities with schools and kids, seminars to attend and to deliver, planning future scientific activities.
What keeps you in research? Have you had to overcome any barriers or problems?
What keeps me in research is simply my passion, the pleasure I get from doing research and interacting with my collaborators, which also provides thrust to overcome the scientific difficulties that mathematical problems offer on a daily basis.
A researcher’s life however has sometimes to face academic problems of less scientific flavour, such as political intrigues by lousy people and lobbies trying to protect their privileges, or a general atmosphere of disappointment for a university system which is too often chasing material rewards more than scientific and cultural values. But such is life, and I take it as one of my most challenging and more important duties to overcome these difficulties, by forming and consolidating a sound network of researchers who join their forces and roll up their sleeves to expand and transmit knowledge, even when the surrounding environment is less than prosperous or even hostile.
How important is travelling?
I think travelling is truly essential for mathematicians, to work together with our collaborators, to talk to colleagues, to present our results, to meet new people and new research directions. And forget about online meetings: of course, they provide a great resource, especially in periods when travelling is not possible, and I do have online meetings almost on a daily basis with my collaborators abroad; but nothing can replace working together at the blackboard!
Do you have any advice for others who are starting a mathematical career?
Do what you like.
Be inclusive. But be also intolerant of bull***t.
Be a leader. But don’t be bossy.
Listen to everybody. But be able to maintain your strong and honest opinion even when everybody else thinks otherwise.
Be involved, be part of a community. But don’t lobby, and don’t exchange favours to pursue your own interest.
Push hard and put your best effort. But don’t play tricks.
Be passionate, be romantic, believe in a better future.
Do what you love. And love what you do.
Judy-anne Osborn (Joint Dr Yunupingu Lecturer)
What is your name and what do you do?
My name is Dr Judy-anne Osborn, and I am an Academic in the School of Mathematics at Monash University. The job involves thinking deeply about Maths, sometimes about particular Maths and sometimes about Maths in general and what it means to different people. The latter includes teaching and community-building. For the last few years, a particular focus of my “research life” has been working towards an understanding of what it might mean to Indigenise University Mathematics, and how one might go about it.
Why do you do mathematics?
I do Mathematics because it’s a way of seeing beauty. It makes me feel centred and fully engaged. It’s a world of its own but also with echoes throughout the natural world, sharpening my attention for beauty there too. That beauty can be in simplicity or complexity. There is also the pleasure of surprise, and of understanding dawning after lots and lots of effort.
What is a typical work day like for you?
Some days seem to consist of endless emails. Others are full of fascinating conversations. Yet others are intense solo concentration: arranging, combining, writing, symbolising — seeking an arrangement that “clicks” and “makes sense”. The processes of doing detailed Maths and the processes of trying to address some more “human scale” challenges such as creating an inclusive creative environment have surprising commonality. All the time I am trying to fill in big patterns in the back of my mind. Everything flows best if I can bring about in myself a state of sensitivity to the (conceptual and other) “landscapes” that I am metaphorically walking in, and their inhabitants.
What keeps you in research? Have you had to overcome any barriers or problems?
I am in research because I want to understand, because understanding is joy. Furthermore it is a joy that can often be shared; and sharing exponentiates the joy of understanding. Furthermore, sharing often changes and grows the understanding, as other peoples’ perspectives come in.
How important is travelling?
Building relationships and collaborations is super-important. Travel is often a good way to do that; but another possibility is to bring others to visit oneself. That can be hard to do early in a career — organising conferences is one way to go about it.
Do you have any advice for others who are starting a mathematical career?
Do what you care about and do not worry too much about fashions. But also find good friends you can talk with who appreciate you, and be a good friend.
Lisa Piccirillo
What is your name and what do you do?
My name is Lisa Piccirillo, I am an assistant professor at MIT. I am a topologist, in particular I study 3 and 4 dimensional manifolds.
Why do you do mathematics?
I do mathematics because I find 3 and 4 manifolds inherently super fascinating. I also do mathematics because when I work well, meaning that I think clearly and really challenge my understanding of some phenomenon, I feel a strong sense of self actualization.
Was there someone in particular who motivated you to do mathematics?
Well, I took calculus in college. The placement exam put me in integral calculus, but I hadn’t taken differential, and I was doing super poorly in the class. I had to go talk to the professor, Eli Grigsby, rather often to get extra help or learn basic concepts. I only managed a b in the course, but she encouraged me to take linear algebra, and once I made it to intro to proofs I was pretty hooked.
What is a typical work day like for you?
Well, I am very fortunate to have a fellowship which allows me not to teach. So recently in the morning I make a list of math I might do (discrete tasks or questions for specific projects), and a list of math chores I might/must do (eg student/postdoc meetings, write a talk, organize that thingy, deal with inbox…) and pick a few from each, and block them out in ~1.5 hour blocks over the day. I set alarms to to know when to change tasks.
But also, I usually blow off the alarm at least once a day because I’m super sucked into something. I also usually get a 1.5 hour block of fun, which is probably either running, swimming, or ceramics. Between blocks I try to take walks.
Has this changed between the different stages of your career?
Yes, it changes every few years based on my priorities and business. Early in my career I was much less deliberate about what I worked on, I just let myself launch into whatever was at the front of my brain. I also used to work in longer stretches, but I think that in fact I usually make the most progress in the first 1/2 hour or getting into something, and after that I’m often just running the same circuits.
What keeps you in research? Have you had to overcome any barriers or problems?
I guess what keeps me in research is that the bits of the job that I really love outweigh the bits that I don’t like. Maybe that’s a boring answer? Talking about math with a collaborator is the most fun thing, and I’m beginning to really enjoy advising graduate students. I also enjoy teaching (when it takes < 10 hours a week). The other bits (writing down the details, writing and giving talks, admin) can be smashed into a smallish amount of time if you have fortunate circumstances and are super deliberate about it.
About barriers/problems: sure there have been a few.
Probably the most likely I ever was to leave math was early on; as an undergraduate I didn’t have (m)any peers who were interested in math, and I believed these myths that one has to be “brilliant enough” to make it in math. It was also the case that most of the math folks I knew or knew of seemed very different from me in terms of personality and background. I also received some explicit discouragement from senior faculty about my future in math, and went to a couple of undergrad conferences that had fairly toxic cultures. So it was very unclear to me whether I could actually be semi-successful at math, and it was unclear whether I wanted to spend my career among socially unpleasant people I didn’t relate to. Retrospectively, I’m not really sure why I decided to try graduate school, given my experiences. I do remember that I was considering going to a school that wasn’t a good research fit for me, because it was in a location I liked and I didn’t really expect to make it as a researcher anyway. I only decided to go to UT when learned I had gotten this graduate (NSF) fellowship; that was the first time I really felt that maybe I could actually be successful in this field. And at UT, I was in a community of graduate students who were wonderful compelling people, and the math was super compelling. Once all that happened, staying in academia became a much more natural path to me.
Of course there have been some bumps since. Maybe most notably, just after I started my job at MIT I had pretty severe atypical depression, but I didn’t yet understand that at the time. So I was pretty disinterested in math, and was beginning to think about changing careers to something I was actually interested in. But when my depression began to turn around, my interest in math came back, so I’m still here.
How important is travelling?
You get jobs because people know you and know your work and think well of it. There are probably ways to pull that off without traveling, but I went the standard rout of trying to get opportunities to speak and trying to give damn good talks so that people could actually internalize my stuff. I have been offered jobs after talks on several occasions, so I do think this method can work.
This wasn’t the question, but I do want to take a second to jump up and down on the point about giving good talks. Giving bad talks is rude and selfish; you’re wasting many people’s valuable time. Giving talks where people really internalize some little piece of your work establishes you in their mental map of mathematics. Practice giving talks often as early as you can (hello learning seminars!). Ask for explicit feedback from anyone who will give it to you. Accept that talk writing and rehearsing sucks and takes a long time, and don’t let yourself skimp on it (I have been guilty of this a bit recently, and have consequently given a few shitty talks). People rarely read papers, you should imagine that this is the only way that your work will be communicated, and so it deserves arbitrarily much time and attention.
Do you have any advice for others who are starting a mathematical career?
Some technical advice for grad students: Write something small early on to show that you have some technical chops and can complete a project. This also establishes your existence, and will allow you to participate in conferences and start meeting people earlier on. Then choose more substantial projects where, even if they fail, there will be something you can write up. The postdoc market is really competitive and it is getting hard to hire people on strong letters alone; you need to have stuff to show for yourself. In general, it is better if you are known for something rather than if you are prolific without a particular development that people recognize you for.
More generally: you won’t do good math unless you are happy and healthy. Also, it doesn’t matter ultimately whether you do good math, it matters that you are happy and healthy. So make choices of where to live and who to work with based on what feels good and works for your life. If you’re unhappy you’re also not doing the best math you could be doing, and that is hurting your career. This is hard advice to believe in the moment; it always feels like grinding your nose into the chalkboard is both the virtuous thing and will create the theorems. But actually, if you can manage to take this advice, it’s great; you get to be happy, you get to do cool math. And if building a life and routine that makes you happy doesn’t actually seem to involve you doing that much math, that’s great! There are so many compelling things to do with your life that aren’t math. I think it’s easy to put being an academic on a pedestal; our culture makes academic success seem more upstanding than other forms of success, but that’s nonsense. I think more people should actively happily leave graduate school as a consequence of being honest with themselves about whether they actually really like the good bits of this job more than they dislike the bad ones.
Makiko Sasada
What is your name and what do you do?
My name is Makiko Sasada. I am an associate professor in Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Tokyo, and a visiting researcher at the RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project. I am interested in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics that connects the laws of the microscopic world with phenomena in the macroscopic world, and I want to understand it in a mathematically rigorous way. I originally specialized in probability theory, but recently I have been also working with various techniques from other fields like geometry and integrable systems.
Why do you do mathematics?
From an early age, I liked logic quizzes and puzzles. I was always fascinated by the sudden moments of inspiration that completely changed the way I saw the problems. As I studied mathematics in university, I realized that mathematics is not about solving problems, but about finding and creating different and original perspectives. I was impressed by the freedom to consider any definition, and the amazingly rich world that can be created from simple definitions, so I decided to study more at graduate school. When I was a master’s student, unsure whether I wanted to become a researcher or not, I had a chance to meet Professor Marc Yor, who was visiting Japan to give a lecture. I was very impressed by his passionate talk to me about how fascinating mathematics is and how it is something worth devoting one’s life to. Since then, mathematics has continued to give me the opportunity to meet wonderful people. Thanks to these encounters, I have enjoyed the research of mathematics very much and continue to do it. Of course, research is very exciting!
What is a typical work day like for you?
The schedule changes from day to day. The main schedule includes teaching classes and their preparation, discussions with students, meetings with collaborators, attending research seminars, faculty/committee meetings of my department, handling tasks as an associate editor for journals, planning outreach activities, and so on. In between, I spend my time checking and responding to e-mails. The range of work is very broad and enjoyable, but unfortunately there is little time to concentrate on research.
What keeps you in research? Have you had to overcome any barriers or problems?
There are many interesting topics that I would like to work on, which is why I continue my research. Non-equilibrium statistical mechanics is still far from complete understanding, and I would like to have a more universal and unified understanding of it using ideas and techniques from various fields of mathematics. Also, I recently found a surprising connection in completely different fields, yet I have no idea why. I would like to know what is behind it.
I have had two major difficulties in continuing my research. First, when I was an undergraduate/graduate student, I was the only female student in my grade in math, which was tough in many ways. Second, after giving the birth of my first child, my life as well as physical and mental condition changed drastically, and I was unable to do research for a while. I was very anxious about whether I would be able to get back.
How important is travelling?
Knowing the wider world is important not only to enrich your research, but also to enrich and ease your life. It allows us to re-evaluate what we took for granted and have new perspectives. Travelling, namely visiting different places, and meeting new people is a great way to know the wider world. But travelling is not necessary, as there are other ways to know the wider world nowadays. If for some reason you cannot travel, there is no need to give up on your research. Still if you have a chance, I strongly recommend doing it.
Do you have any advice for others who are starting a mathematical career?
Talk a lot with different people with different background, about math and beyond. Conversations with people are full of ideas, both about research and about other things.
Work on problems and topics that you find really exciting.
Don’t be bound by any thought like “this is the way it should be”. Keep your own pace and believe in yourself!
Anne Schilling
What is your name and what do you do?
Hi, my name is Anne Schilling. I am currently Professor and Department Chair at the Department of Mathematics at the University of California at Davis. My research interests include algebraic combinatorics, representation theory, mathematical physics and Markov chains. One of my favorite combinatorial objects are crystal bases, which originated in statistical mechanics and quantum groups and are a great tool to study representation theory.
Why do you do mathematics?
A few years ago, I wrote some snippets for the Story Collider. Here might be one that answers this question:
Scene: Beach on the Atlantic coast in France. We have summer holidays and I am 15 years old. My father writes the fundamentals of calculus in the sand. This is not like anything I had seen at school before. I soak up his scribbles before the waves wash the information away again. At night, I write up what I have understood and get hooked by the beauty of how mathematics is able to capture and describe nature.
What is a typical work day like for you?
On a typical day, I have research meetings with my collaborators, meetings with my graduate students, and committee meetings. I am also editor of various journals and I might need to find a referee for a paper or make a decision on a submitted paper. During the quarter, I teach classes (undergraduate and/or graduate classes). As Department chair, I need to deal with difficult situations every now and then. Each day, I try to reserve time for my research. For me it works best to have longer stretches of time where I can just think about my research. Om most days either before or after work, I reserve time for exercise which helps me to take a mental break.
What keeps you in research? Have you had to overcome any barriers or problems?
I enjoy solving problems, finding new structures, experimenting with the computer to find conjectures and then proving them. I also enjoy applying structures or results from one area in mathematics to another area. Sometimes it is hard to overcome “language” barriers when crossing different areas in mathematics. As Department chair I also find it hard to juggle the various demands on my time sometimes.
How important is travelling?
Traveling is important to meet people and exchange ideas. It can be very stimulating. Just before the pandemic, I traveled way too much and it became rather exhausting, so it is important to strike the right balance. My first in-person conference after the travel-free period during the pandemic was extremely stimulating. I was very thirsty again to talk to mathematicians and exchange ideas. It was one of the most fruitful conference I had participated in.
Do you have any advice for others who are starting a mathematical career?
It is important to work on problems that you enjoy since you are spending a lot of time on them. It is also important to surround yourself with collaborators that are fun to work with and that complement you in your skill sets. One danger that I see for younger people is that there are many collaborative programs out there now. It is important to develop your own research agenda and not to spread yourself too thin. It is probably better to be the leader in a project than to be associated with lots of projects and not be able to contribute much. It is important to write up and publish your results and to spend time to writing well. You will reach more people if your results are accessible.