Mathematics Colloquia
The Mathematics Colloquium Series features talks by faculty or invited guest speakers on various topics in mathematics and mathematics education. These talks are open to the public.
Turning Word Problems You Can’t Solve into Math Problems You Can: Formulating Robotics Problems into Tractable Constrained Optimizations
Geordan Gutow
Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Michigan Technological University
Thursday, Dec 4, 2025, 4:10– 5:10 p.m., Swart 217
A large part of what an engineer does is figure out how to turn desires stated in words into problems expressed as math. Often, the resulting math problem is a constrained optimization problem, in which the engineer seeks to maximize or minimize a quantity (like profit or mass), while respecting constraints on the design of the engineered solution. This talk describes a number of seemingly disparate problems of interest to roboticists and their transformation into constrained optimization problems using ideas from differential geometry, probability, and operations research.
Geordan completed his PhD in 2022 at the Georgia Institute of Technology under Professor Jonathan Rogers, and his Bachelor’s degree in 2018 at Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on developing robotics algorithms that can reason about the properties and capabilities of the embodiments on which they operate. Such algorithms are made tractable by finding ways to exploit structure in the underlying mathematics, particularly hybrid discrete-continuous formulations, upper and lower bounds, and convexity. Dr. Gutow’s work has received Best Paper nominations at DARS and ICRA, an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellowship, an NSF GRFP Honorable Mention, and a Georgia Institute of Technology Presidential Fellowship.
WI High School Mathematics Teaching and Learning During and post-COVID and What it Means for our Students
Math Professors Jen Szydlik and Steve Szydlik
Tuesday, April 29, 2025, 4– 5 p.m., Swart 101
The global pandemic that began in earnest in the United States in 2020 transformed mathematics teaching and learning across the nation. Wisconsin schools were not exempt from the impacts of COVID-19, and the disruptions brought on by remote learning have continued to echo in our students since that time. In a fall 2024 sabbatical project funded by the Universities of Wisconsin, we interviewed 32 high school mathematics teachers from across Wisconsin about their experiences teaching during and since the global pandemic. In this talk, we describe those experiences and highlight teachers’ observations of their post-pandemic students’ mathematical work, behaviors, and attitudes. We also report on state-wide trends by providing quantitative data on college readiness and student engagement among our state’s high school students. These data provide a context for understanding the challenges faced by our UWO mathematics students and for a discussion on how best to support them.
A Computerized Search For Integral Unilateral Equitransitive Tilings
UWO Student Fatima Muniz
Thursday, November 14, 2024, 4 – 5 p.m., Swart 127
A plane tiling is a countable family of closed sets that covers the plane without overlaps. A tiling is called unilateral if no two tiles of the same size share a common side, and equitransitive if all congruent tiles can be mapped to each other by a symmetry of the tiling. A unilateral equitransitive tiling by squares is denoted U ETn, where n denotes the number of square tile types used. In this talk we consider the open problem of finding all integral U ETn for n > 4. We describe an algorithm that generates signatures for these tililngs and pieces them together without repeats or violations of unilaterality or equitransitivity
An Introduction to Mathematics in the Video Games Industry
UWO Math Graduate Logan Lang
Wednesday, October 30, 2024, 4 – 5 p.m., Swart 127
Mathematics plays a pivotal role in the development of video games, from physics simulation to computer graphics, and everything in between. This presentation provides an accessible introduction to the common mathematical concepts used in the games industry. We’ll explore the use cases of areas such as linear algebra trigonometry, calculus, and beyond. No advanced math background is required!
The GLn-harmonic polynomials and the Gini index
Grant Kopitzke, Math Professor at University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, and UWO math graduate
Tuesday, October 10, 2023, 4- 5 p.m., Swart 126
The Gini index is a function that attempts to measure the inequality in the distribution of a resource throughout a population. Commonly used in economics to measure income or wealth inequality, the Gini index has found widespread applications in fields ranging from biology to political science. In this talk, we will discuss a discretization of the Gini index, connections to the representation theory of the symmetric and general linear groups, and some results in algebraic combinatorics.
The Basics of Neural Networks
Math Professor Alex Lavrentiev
Associate Professor of Math for Fox Cities Campus
Wednesday, April 3, 2019, 4:10 – 5:10 p.m., Swart 217
Nov. 28, 2018, Colloquium: Number Talks
UW-Oshkosh Math Professor Jen Szydlik and Associate Professor Amy Parrott
Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2018, 4:10 – 5:10 p.m., Swart 217
April 16 Colloquium: Math in German Schools and Museums
Math Professors Eric Kuennen and John Beam
Monday, April 16, 2018, 3 – 4 p.m., Swart 217
In Spring Interim 2017, we took a group of fourteen UW Oshkosh students to Germany for three weeks to study mathematics education from an international perspective. We visited German schools, observed math classes and talked with teachers, and paired with a class for pre-service mathematics teachers at Marburg University. We also visited many outstanding museums that feature some really neat mathematics.
In this presentation, we will present and discuss several of the demonstrations and exhibits that we experienced in these German museums, including an “Infinity Clock”, how to multiply using a parabola, and other interactive experiments at the Mathematikum in Giessen, some early calculating machines from the Arithmeum in Bonn, and solving a problem from an ancient Egyptian mathematics text at the Neues Museum in Berlin. We will also show photos and discuss our experiences in German schools and at Marburg University, and underscore the rich learning experiences available to students and their professors alike through study-abroad programs.
March 5 Colloquium: A Modular Mathematical Mystery
Dr. David Penniston, UW Oshkosh Mathematics Professor
Monday March 5, 2018,4:10-5:10 p.m., Swart 217
In the last twenty-five years modular forms have held a prominent place in number theory research. Most famously they played a central role in Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, a problem that remained unsolved for over 300 years. In this talk we will explore how modular forms were used to answer a question that arose in my own research, a process that involved a good bit of detective work and offered some interesting twists and turns. The talk will be aimed at a general audience, and no knowledge of modular forms will be assumed – the only prerequisite is an interest in mathematics.
Nov. 10 Colloquium: Mathematical Models in Blood Clotting
Dr. Tyler Skorczewski, UW Stout Assistant Professor and UWO Math & Physics graduate
Friday Nov. 10, 2017, 3–4 p.m., Swart 217
Blood clotting, or hemostasis, is a vital process in the human body. Bleeding disorders, such as hemophilia, arise when hemostasis occurs on too slow of a timescale or not at all. On the other end of the spectrum, if clotting occurs too rapidly (thrombosis), pathological clots, or thrombi, can form, leading to heart attacks and strokes. Understanding how blood clotting occurs requires knowledge of biophysical and biochemical processes which take place over multiple scales in both time and space. Fluid flow is an integral component of the blood clotting system. Blood flow brings platelets and chemical reactants required for clot growth to a vascular injury site. In addition this flow imposes mechanical stresses that affect the formation and breaking of molecular bonds. In this talk we will discuss how the immersed boundary method can be used as a mathematical modeling framework to study both the fluid structure interactions of platelets moving in a blood vessel and how the platelets bind to the vessel wall in response to injury.
Oct. 24 Colloquium: Creating Research Projects In and Out of the Classroom
UW Milwaukee Mathematical Sciences Professor Gabriella Pinter
Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 4:10 – 5:10 p.m., Swart 217
Finding just the right research project for students can be challenging at all levels. However, working on one’s own project could provide powerful motivation, and can turn out to be a transformative experience, so we strive to have more and more students participate in some form of research.In this talk we are going to present a few different research projects that grew out of a mathematical modeling class, an undergraduate bio-math program and some Math Circles. We illustrate ways of finding/creating projects and show how simple-looking problems could go further and further and lead to surprising connections and results.
October 24 Colloquium: Dynamical Systems and your Car Odometer
Dr. Lori Alvin, Assistant Professor, Bradley University (and a graduate of UW Oshkosh)
Monday, Oct. 24, 4:10 – 5:10 pm, Swart 127
One device that we take for granted within our cars is the odometer. The function is simple: for every mile that is driven, the odometer increases by 1. Since we work in a base ten world, if our car has 99,999 miles, when we add one, we say it “rolls over” to 100,000 miles. It turns out that this action of “addition by one with carry” appears frequently within dynamical systems.
We will show how the concept of the car odometer can be generalized into an interesting collection of dynamical systems called “odometers” or “adding machines.” We will then talk about how these dynamical systems can change if we “speed them up” by considering “addition by X with carry” where X is allowed to be larger than one. This is joint work with Drew Ash (Davidson College) and Nic Ormes (University of Denver).
Matters of State: The Mathematics of Power in the Electoral College
Dr. Stephen Szydlik
Tuesday October 11, 2016, 3:00 – 4:00 pm Swart 217
“Power is a lot like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location.”
-Frank Underwood, House of Cards
Your vote counts. Of course it does. But does it count as much as a vote in California or Alaska? Issues of power and control in our government have been a part of the national conversation since our country’s inception, and the Electoral College has been a focus of much of that controversy. In this presentation, we will take a brief tour of the Electoral College and examine some of the mathematics behind its complexities. We’ll consider the question of whether any states have unfair advantages when it comes to power in the College, and we’ll work on answering one of the fundamental questions in any democracy: how much does my vote really matter?
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