March is Women's History Month! This selection of some of the current women in leadership share about their roles here and how they believe SIAM is making a positive impact. Thank you to all of the many women - past and present - who have made the organization what it is today.
Vice President for Education
Kathleen (Katie) Kavanagh, Clarkson University
I am the current SIAM Vice President for Education. My interest in applied mathematics education covers the entire spectrum. All of the educational efforts that SIAM supports require collaborations, committees, and team work with mathematicians in academia and industry. I work with other SIAM members to provide opportunities and resources for graduate students such as tutorials on emerging research topics and information about careers. The SIAM Education Committee organizes undergraduate research sessions at conferences as well as sessions to support applied mathematics faculty in workforce preparation. SIAM has just recently begun sponsoring a mentoring and professional development program for new applied math faculty (MAA’s Project NExT program). I regularly give professional development workshops about mathematical modeling to K12 teachers that are supported by SIAM, Mathworks, and Math for America. One of my favorite roles at SIAM is involvement in the Mathworks Math Modeling Challenge, which inspires juniors and seniors in high school to solve real-world problems. No matter where your interests lie in applied math education, SIAM provides a pathway for you to connect with like-minded people, contribute, and make a difference.
SIAM Secretary
Susan E. Minkoff, University of Texas at Dallas
As SIAM Secretary I serve on several committees including the President's Cabinet and the Executive Committee of the Council. However, my primary responsibilities include chairing the Block Community Lecture Committee for the SIAM Annual Meeting and chairing the Committee on Committees and Appointments (or CCA). The CCA makes recommendations to the SIAM President about SIAM members whom we believe would successfully contribute to 13 SIAM committees and several joint committees with other professional societies.
SIAM provides its members with endless opportunities to interact with applied mathematicians and computational scientists at all levels at conferences, through its student chapters, and with committee work. Throughout my career, SIAM has provided me with the chance to meet and serve on committees with interesting, supportive, accomplished professionals who have served as mentors and role models to me. I not only made friends through this service work, but I found it to be some of the most satisfying and enjoyable of my career.
Board of Trustees Chair
Margot Gerritsen, Stanford University
Serving on the SIAM Board has been wonderful the last two years and a great way to give back to an organization that has meant much to me, my colleagues, and our students. I’d love to stay on the board for another term. My main foci are education (undergrad through postdocs) as well as diversity. I’ve become very interested in ethics, fairness, transparency, and accountability related to computational math and data science in particular.
SIAM has been my professional home since my student days and is an incredibly active and friendly society. I am so glad to be able to give back as part of SIAM Council, SIAM Board of Trustees, organizer of the SIAM Annual Meeting in 2014 and SIAM Geosciences in 2015 conferences, and now Chair of the Board.
Editor-in-Chief (SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems)
Evelyn Sander, George Mason University
Throughout my career, I have felt SIAM, and particularly the Dynamical Systems activity group, have been welcoming and inclusive. The atmosphere and technical excellence at the SIAM conference on Applied Dynamical Systems makes it a highlight of my conference list. People come from all over to share their ideas. I am extremely honored to have been able to serve in many leadership positions within the SIAM organization and, as part of these leadership roles, am quite mindful of diversity issues. In 2017 when I organized the SIAM Conference on Mathematics of Data Science (MDS20) with Martin Wechselberger, with the help of a number of others, we introduced the Icebreaker Session and the mentoring lunch. The goal of the session was to make sure that students and young researchers feel welcome during their first time at the conference.
While the whole profession still has a long way to go, I believe that SIAM makes an institutional commitment to considering diversity of all kinds, including gender and geographic diversity. Whenever I have been tasked with picking conference speakers as a conference organizer or Associate Editors for a journal EIC, SIAM sends a reminder to consider diversity issues and follows up by having all decisions go through an approval process. I feel that this makes me and others more mindful of such issues. There are many excellent researchers to pick from, and by having a reminder of such issues, as well already having a large amount of diversity among people in leadership positions, one is more likely to pick someone of equal excellence with a more diverse background.
In focusing on women in math again, I also wanted to mention how thankful I am that although I happen to be the first woman EIC of the SIADS journal, I am very thankful that I am not the first woman in any other sense within the SIAM dynamical systems community: specifically I am incredibly indebted to all the women who have been trailblazers and were already part of the community before I became involved.
Past President and 2019 John von Neumann Prize Recipient
Margaret H. Wright, NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
I've been involved with SIAM in various ways since I was a Ph.D. student. I served first on the Council, then as Vice President at Large, and then as president in 1995-96. Since 1996 I have served on the Board of Trustees, as Editor-in-Chief of SIAM Review, and as Associate Editor for the SIAM Journal on Optimization and the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing. One of the things I am most proud of is to have joined with other SIAM members to create activities supporting diversity. In particular, in 1995 Richard Tapia and I worked together closely to organize the first Diversity Day, which has evolved today intoWorkshops Celebrating Diversity at our annual meetings. The SIAM Community Lecture series, an integral part of our annual meetings, also started in 1995 with a brilliant lecture by Charlie Van Loan about Copernicus. My SIAM activities have not ended---I am chair of the Book Committee and last summer I was chosen to receive SIAM's Von Neumann Lecture prize.
My belief has always been that SIAM's strength derives from its connections across a broad and diverse community that includes applied mathematics, computer science, computational science and engineering, and engineers and scientists in all areas, encompassing researchers, practitioners, and educators.