Union welcomed 300 students and faculty from nearly 50 colleges and universities on Saturday, April 5, when it hosted the annual Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference.
The largest conference of its kind in the U.S., its goal is to provide undergraduates with the experience of attending and/or presenting at a professional mathematics meeting.
Isobel (Izzy) Petersen '27, Audrey Benson '25 and Richard (Ricky) Farina '27 were among the Union students and faculty who participated in the annual Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference, hosted by the College.
Topics covered included abstract algebra, analysis, data science, graph theory and statistics.
This year’s conference featured 90 talks, from “Might You Wake Up and Find that Your Bank Has Collapsed?” to “Musically Mathematical: How Math Permeates Every Part of Music Theory.”
Union students who presented were Baibhav Barwal ‘25, Audrey Benson ‘25, Sydney Berger ‘24, Hunter Gould ‘26, Grace Newcombe ‘25, Ziayan Omer ‘28, Atharv Tekurkar ‘25 and Josh Vaidman ‘25. Grant Moles, visiting assistant professor of mathematics, also gave a talk.
A number of Union faculty and students chaired various sessions, including Sean Carney, Christina Tønnesen-Friedman, Jeff Hatley, Jeff Jauregui, Rylan Gajek-Leonard, Phanuel Mariano, Grant Moles, Kim Plofker, Jenn Qian, Jue Wang and Fanhui Xu from the Department of Mathematics; and Frankie Morone ‘26, Nabeel Naqvi ‘27 and Britney Quito ‘28.
Additionally, there were two panel discussions: “Making the Most of One’s Undergraduate Mathematics Experience,” with panelist Audrey Benson '25 and moderators Frankie Morone '26 and Tremaine Richardson '26; and “Careers/Life After a Math Major” featuring three Union alumni: Dan Anderson ‘02, Mark Mortensen ‘85 and Katie Schuff ‘12, and moderated by Xu.
The keynote speaker was Álvaro Lozano-Robledo, professor of mathematics at the University of Connecticut. He spoke on “Math in the Age of Social Media.”
For a list of all the talks, visit the conference website.
The conference was founded in 1994 by Union, Siena, Skidmore and Williams colleges. This was the fifth time Union hosted the conference. The previous years were 1998, 2003, 2009 and 2015.
“Hosting HRUMC reinforces Union College's, and the math department's, position as a leading scholarly community that cares deeply about undergraduate research and education,” said Paul Friedman, senior lecturer in mathematics and chair of the steering committee for the conference.
The conference was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.