Speakers

Keynote Speaker: Lindsay Erickson, Computational Mathematician at Moebius Logic

Unexpected Mathematics in Puzzles, Games, and Graphs

Abstract: Some mathematical questions begin with a surprisingly simple idea: Can you cross every bridge exactly once? Can you connect houses to utilities without crossing any lines? How many colors are needed to color a map? Can you find a winning strategy for a game that seems to depend entirely on luck?

Questions like these lead to mathematics that is far richer than the equations and formulas we typically encounter in school. In this keynote, mathematician Lindsay Erickson will explore graph theory, combinatorics, and game theory through a collection of puzzles and problems that reveal unexpected structures hiding in seemingly simple questions. Along the way, students will encounter graphs that cannot be drawn without crossings, discover surprising strategies for mathematical games, explore what happens when familiar ideas are pushed toward infinity, and see how mathematicians turn puzzles into new mathematics.

Lindsay will also share pieces of her own path through mathematics, including the problems and ideas that kept drawing her deeper into the subject. Her journey from student to researcher, professor, and computational mathematician illustrates one of the things she loves most about mathematics: the freedom to follow an interesting question wherever it leads.

Many of the ideas we will encounter were developed long before anyone could imagine the problems they would eventually help solve. Graph theory began with questions about bridges and maps; today, graphs are used to understand everything from computer networks to complex systems. Mathematics often gives us powerful ways of thinking long before we know what we will use them for. Sometimes the most interesting questions are the ones that seem, at first, to have no practical purpose at all.

Lindsay Erickson is a researcher and computational mathematician whose career has taken her from pure mathematics and university teaching to research and development in applied mathematics. She earned her Ph.D. in mathematics from North Dakota State University, specializing in graph theory, combinatorics, and game theory.

Lindsay spent more than a decade as a professor of mathematics, where she taught mathematics at a variety of levels, conducted research, worked with students, and contributed to curriculum development. Her work in mathematics also took her to conferences and collaborators around the world, providing opportunities to travel, learn from other mathematicians, and become part of a broad mathematical community.

Today, Lindsay works as a computational mathematician at Mobius Logic, contributing to research and development for a variety of defense projects. Her work combines mathematics, statistics, and computation to investigate problems that often look very different from the mathematics she studied in graduate school.

Throughout her career, Lindsay has remained fascinated by difficult questions, unexpected patterns, and the creative process of figuring out why something is true. She believes mathematics is much more than the algebra and formulas most students encounter in school. It is a creative discipline that gives us the freedom to explore ideas simply because they are interesting—and sometimes produces ideas that become useful in ways their creators could never have imagined.

Mathematics

Email: christina.fischer@ndsu.edu Phone: (701) 231-8171 Page Manager