Sage Days 95: Women In Sage

July 9-13, 2018, Montréal, Canada

Target Audience

The Women in SageMath Days aim to initiate women from various backgrounds to SageMath use and development, as well as to build networks between established users of mathematical software and mathematicians with potential to use such software. We do not focus on any specific area of mathematics and want to involve women at all career stages, including undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers and faculty members. Women working in industry are also welcome to apply.

The choice to aim this event only at women was made because most developers are men, but also because we noticed intimidating attitudes from experienced men in other workshops. Even though these behaviours were probably unconscious, they have an impact on the confidence of female mathematicians when come the time of coding. To create a friendly environment, we plan to host the workshop in a rented house. Such circumstances foster longstanding connections between the participants. Because women form a minority of mathematicians, building broad and strong networks helps them to overcome the obstacles typically occurring on their career path.

Invited speakers

• Tania Allard is a research software engineer at the University of Sheffield (UK). She works with researchers to improve their code and to communicate them the general carpentry of a software. She knows well the infrastructure behind SageMath and is a partner of the European OpenDreamKit project, that aims to develop open-source pieces of software for research in mathematics.

• Jennifer Balakrishnan is a number theorist and Assistant Professor at Boston University (MA) and has organized several SageMath Days. She gives good talks about the use of SageMath for number theorists, and is also knowledgeable about the use of SageMath for other parts of mathematics.

• Emily Gunawan is a postdoctoral researcher in algebra and combinatorics at University of Connecticut (CT) and is deeply involved in the Sage-Combinat development. She will talk about the implementation of frieze patterns in SageMath.

Projects

See this framapad.

Status reports

You can see the work that has been accomplished during the days on this pad.

Accommodations:

The workshop will be held in a rented house in a small town near Montreal (at one hour and a half by car). The precise location is 124 Tour du lac, in Saint-Faustin-Lac-Carré. All participants will be accommodated in the house.

To reach the workshop:

There will be a group departure on Sunday 8: the meeting place is at Montmorency station between 6:15 pm and 6:25 pm. Don't be late, the bus leaves at 6:27 pm!

• Coming from Montreal downtown, take the orange line to reach the Montmorency metro station (which is the last station of the line). It takes around 40 minutes.
• Climb the stairs and go to the bus terminal.

• Find Pauline (a participant who will have a sign "Women in SageMath" or something similar). She will be there between 6:15 pm and 6:25 pm. Note that you don't need to buy bus tickets, Pauline will have yours with her.

• If you are not able to find Pauline, look for bus number 9 from CITL, going to Saint-Jérôme. Pauline should be around.
• Bus 9 takes you to Saint-Jérôme where you can take another bus to Saint-Faustin-Lac-Carré. Again, Pauline will have your tickets.

Tentative schedule:

The workshop will last five days and will focus on software development.

The schedule includes three plenary talks:

• Best practices for computational science and research, given by Tania Allard (University of Sheffield, UK)

• SageMath for number theory (even for non-number theorists), given by Jennifer Balakrishnan (Boston University, MA)

• Conway-Coxeter friezes, cluster algebras, and SageMath, given by Emily Gunawan (University of Connecticut, CT). Download Jupyter notebook frieze.ipynb and PDF slides days95.pdf

Since one of the goal is to develop the abilities of the participants, there will be every day coding sprints on elaborated projects. Participants will work in teams created according to their interests. We also plan some time for tutorials and proposed presentations in function of the needs. Each day will end with a status report session. Finally, we want to organize during the week a challenge where teams will compete to conquer coding exercises. Since the workshop will be held in a rented house, the activities will be both during the days and evenings. Therefore, some time will also be dedicated to team-building activities.

A more precise schedule will be announced later.

Registration:

Registration is now closed.

All local expenses will be covered for participants, and candidates will be informed of the traveling support they receive with their invitation. As we could probably fund in totality the transportation expenses of only some candidates, we encourage you to apply independently to the funding you have access to.

Organizers:

• Nadia Lafrenière (PhD student at Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)
• Élise Vandomme (Postdoc at Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)

Participants:

• Tania Allard (University of Sheffield, United Kingdom)
• Angelica Babei (Dartmouth College, NH, USA)
• Jennifer Balakrishnan (Boston University, MA, USA)
• Esther Banaian (University of Minnesota, MN, USA)
• Sara Chari (Dartmouth College, NH, USA)
• Chineze Christopher (Purdue University, IN, USA)
• Fatiha Djermane (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)
• Justine Falque (Université Paris-Sud, France)
• Alizée Gagnon (Université de Montréal, Canada)
• Marie Gasparoux (Université de Montréal, Canada)
• Emily Gunawan (University of Connecticut, CT, USA)
• Pauline Hubert (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)
• Nadia Lafrenière (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)
• Mélodie Lapointe (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)
• Jianping Pan (University of California, Davis, CA, USA)
• Yohanna Solomon (York University, Canada)
• Patricia Sorya (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)
• Manon Stipulanti (Université de Liège, Belgium)
• Élise Vandomme (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)

Sponsors:

• Laboratoire de Combinatoire et d'Informatique Mathématique, Université du Québec à Montréal
• Canada Research Chair in algebra, combinatorics and discrete mathematics
• Science Faculty of Université du Québec à Montréal
• Mathematics Department of Université du Québec à Montréal
• NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering (Quebec)

• European OpenDreamKit project