Tomorrow's Mathematicians Today

I spent last weekend at the online conference Tomorrow's Mathematicians Today, hosted by the University of Greenwich and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.  This is a conference for undergraduate mathematicians to present to their peers on mathematical topics that excite them - this might be their own project work, or something they have come across in the curriculum or outside it that has fascinated them.  The conference was created in 2010 by Noel-Ann Bradshaw when she taught at the University of Greenwich, and has been held in various venues since.

We hosted it physically at Greenwich in 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019, and before Saturday I was apprehensive that the conference would not work online.  At the physical conferences what made the event so exciting was the atmosphere - friendly and supportive of the speakers, with great enthusiasm from audience and presenters.  Would this work online? 

Well, it was obviously different, but the enthusiasm was certainly present, and the online networking sessions were well attended and worked far better than I had imagined.   Here are the words the attendees chose to describe their feelings:

The quality of student presentations was outstanding: the judges of the GCHQ Prize for the Best Presentation had an extremely difficult task deciding the winner.  The winning paper by Yanqi Cheng (UCL) was remarkable not only for its content but for Yanqi's sangfroid in managing a seamless transition to live delivery when the computer playing her pre-recorded video crashed early in the presentation.  "Honourable Mentions" were awarded to Yousra Idichchou (Greenwich) and Oscar Holroyd (Warwick), and the other shortlisted papers by Finley Wilde (Bristol), Kaiynat Mirza (Keele), Muhiyud-Dean Mirza (Warwick) and Sheeru Shamsi (Keele) were all excellent, as indeed was every single student talk.

The conference also benefited from two contrasting keynotes by established mathematicians - Colva Roney-Dougal on random games with groups and Kit Yates on the mathematics of epidemics.  It was surprising to hear from Colva how the Riemann Hypothesis turns up in group theory!

Like its predecessors the conference was inspiring in showcasing the enjoyment today's students are taking from mathematics.  It totally proved the point made by IMA President Nira Chmberlain in opening the conference when he said that the presenters were not "tomorrow's mathematicians" but are already fully qualified for the title of mathematician.

I obviously hope future TMT conferences will be held physically again, but the online conference was as friendly and inspiring as we could have hoped!