The proposal requests funding for the New York Women in Mathematics Network (NYWIMN) Conference to be held at the New York City College of Technology (NYCCT), CUNY on May 2nd, 2008. The one-day conference will be the second in the series. The first NYWIMN Conference was held on December 9th, 2006 at the CUNY Graduate Center. The conference is being organized by Delaram Kahrobaei and Victoria Gitman of the NYCCT, who successfully organized the 2006 meeting. The conference will consist of invited talks by women mathematicians, a poster session by graduate and undergraduate women students, and a panel discussion of issues affecting women in mathematics.
The meeting will be in the fields of algebra, combinatorics, and logic, with added emphasis on interdisciplinary research and establishing connections between mathematics and computer science. The organizers will focus on the areas of combinatorial, geometric, and computational group theory, applications of model theory to algebra and combinatorics, computational complexity, and set theory. All these areas are relatively new to mathematics. They have developed in response to the deep interconnections discovered in the last century between theoretical mathematics, algorithmic processes, and formalizing our notions of information. Because these areas are so young and so wide in scope and application, the most fascinating questions still remain to be answered. These questions will determine how theoretical mathematics and the world of modern technology will reinforce each other in the near future. The first objective of the conference is to advance our knowledge in these areas by supporting women mathematicians who work in them and promoting research collaboration among them. The second more global aim of the conference is to increase the participation of women in the mathematical sciences.
