The Farmington Forum at the University of Maine, Farmington (UMF) will host a Pi Day Celebration with a keynote presentation by Dr. Carrie Diaz Eaton, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Unity College, on Friday, March 14, in the Emery Community Arts Center, 113 Academy Street, Farmington, Maine. Entitled House of Cards: Understanding Sustainability Issues through Mathematics, the presentation by Diaz Eaton will focus on understanding sustainability issues through mathematics and begin at 3:30 p.m.  An audience question and answer session will follow her presentation.  Admission is free and open to the general public.  The schedule for the forum series is online at http://math.umf.maine.edu/.

Sustainability science requires the tools of multiple disciplines and a transdisciplinary framework to tackle the issue of complex systems, Diaz Eaton explains.  Complex systems are characterized in part by the interconnectedness of multiple contributors.  For example, ecosystems involve many trophic levels of organisms, from bacteria to plants to mammals.  These organisms are connected not just directly, but through interactions with common environments, physical properties of environments, and evolutionary properties of life.  Examples of complex systems can also be found in business, economics, and the internet.  The presentation by Diaz Eaton will explore how mathematics is helping humanity to grasp the consequences of actions in the context of a complex system.

A full listing of Pi Day and related events at UMF is available online here.

Diaz Eaton is an Associate Professor of Mathematics in the Center for Biodiversity at Unity College, where she has been since 2010.  She has a B.A. in Mathematics with a minor in Zoology and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Mathematics, both from University of Maine, where she studied computational neurobiology and neuronal networks.  She received her Ph.D. in Mathematics from University of Tennessee with a concentration in Mathematical Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.  Her current research involves network perspectives of coevolution and consequences for sustainability.  She is also active in research in undergraduate interdisciplinary education.

She is the Program Chair of BIO SIGMAA, a special interest group of the Mathematical Association of America, and on the editorial board for Letters in Biomathematics, an open access journal for biomathematics education and research.

Diaz Eaton has emerged as a strong voice for interdisciplinary mathematics education, developing partnerships and collaborations among educators to advance 21st century environmental problem solving.

Friday, February 28, 2014