African Diaspora Joint Mathematics

The ADJOINT Workshop will take place at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, CA from June 21 to July 2, 2021. ADJOINT is a two-week summer activity designed for researchers with a Ph.D. degree in the mathematical sciences who are interested in conducting research in a collegial environment.   The main objective of ADJOINT is to provide opportunities for in-person research collaboration to U.S. mathematicians, especially those from the African Diaspora, who will work in small groups with research leaders on various research projects.  Through this effort, MSRI aims to establish and promote research communities that will foster and strengthen research productivity and career development among its participants. The ADJOINT workshops are designed to catalyze research collaborations, provide support for conferences to increase the visibility of the researchers, and to develop a sense of community among the mathematicians who attend.  The end goal of this program is to enhance the mathematical sciences and its community by positively affecting the research and careers of African-American mathematicians and supporting their efforts to achieve full access and engagement in the broader research community.  Each summer, three to five research leaders will each propose a research topic to be studied during a two-week workshop. During the workshop, each participant will:  conduct research at MSRI within a group of four to five mathematicians under the direction of one of the research leaders  participate in professional enhancement activities provided by the onsite ADJOINT Director  receive funding for two weeks of lodging, meals and incidentals, and one round-trip travel to Berkeley, CA  After the two-week workshop, each participant will: have the opportunity to further their research project with the team members including the research leader  have access to funding to attend conference(s) or to meet with other team members to pursue the research project, or to present results  become part of a network of research and career mentors * The 2021 on-site director is Dr. Jacqueline Hughes-Oliver, North Carolina State University. Eligibility Applicants must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, possess a Ph.D. in the mathematical sciences, and be employed at a U.S. institution. Selection Process The guiding principle in selecting participants and establishing the groups is the creation of diverse teams whose members come from a variety of institutional types and career stages. The degree of potential positive impact on the careers of African-Americans in the mathematical sciences will be an important factor in the final decisions. 2021 Research Leaders and Topics Danny Krashen (RutgersUniversity) "Adventures in Constructive Galois Theory" Understanding Galois extensions of fields is a central problem in algebra, with a number of open questions, accessible at a number of levels. At the core, Galois theory is an attempt to understand the arithmetic of fields, by studying the types of equations one can set up over a given field, and the structure and symmetries of their sets of solutions. (Click for full description) Nathan Broaddus (Ohio State University) "Steinberg Modules of Braid Groups" Many important groups of interest in topology are duality groups. As such they have an associated group cohomological object which we call the “Steinberg Module” of the group. We will begin with an introduction to the braid group and discuss a number of elementary descriptions of its Steinberg Module. Our first research goal will be to unify as many of these disparate descriptions as possible. (Click for full description) Emma K. T. Benn (Mount Sinai University) "Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Health: Applying a More Nuanced Inferential Framework" Reducing and eliminating health disparities is of utmost concern for many public health and biomedical researchers and has been a stated goal for Healthy People 2000, 2010, and 2020. However, when it comes to racial disparities in health, researchers have done well at describing differences, but have often struggled to identify mutable targets for intervention. This problem exists for a host of reasons, including the complex contextual factors surrounding racial disparities, however, this may also stem from the way in which we operationalize race in research. For the proposed project, we will first explore the operationalization of race as a “cause” when examining racial disparities in health based on multidisciplinary discourse around this topic from statisticians informed by the potential outcomes framework, epidemiologists, clinical investigators, and others. (Click for full description) Julie Ivy (North Carolina State University) "Using Decision Modeling to Personalize Policy in Complex Human-Centered Problems" The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of sequential decision making under conditions of uncertainty, learning as the future evolves, and effectively using data to inform decision making. The pandemic further highlights the significant role that mathematical modeling can and should play in addressing complex human-centered problems. This research project will consider these types of problems from a systems modeling perspective. The focus of this project will be decision making under conditions of uncertainty with the goal of modeling complex interactions and quantitatively capturing the impact of different factors, objectives, system dynamics, intervention options and policies on outcomes with the goal of improving decision quality. (Click for full description) ADJOINT Program Directors Dr. Edray Goins, Pomona College Dr. Caleb Ashley, University of Michigan Dr. Naiomi Cameron, Spelman College (2020 site Director) Dr. Jacqueline Hughes-Oliver, North Carolina State University (2021 site Director) Dr. Anisah Nu’Man, Spelman College