More on why Infinite Possibilities was so cool..

The Infinite Possibilities Conference (IPC) is a national conference that is designed to promote, educate, encourage and support minority women interested in mathematics and statistics.

The conference is important because African-American, Hispanic/Latina, and American Indian women have been historically underrepresented in mathematics. In 2002, less than 1% of the doctoral degrees in the mathematical sciences were awarded to American women from underrepresented minority groups. Even professionals who have succeeded in completing advanced degree programs in science and engineering fields can face inequities within their professional lives with respect to advancement and salaries. 

 In 2012 IPC was called "Building Diversity in Science and Mathematics", it happened 30-31st March at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD and I had the honor of being one of the two keynote speakers. Many of the mathematicians I met there seemed to be working with mathematical Biology,  I was the only speaker talking from a Computer Science,  programming languages perspective.

My talk was entitled ``Edwardian Proofs for Futuristic Programs" and besides the required description of my career path so far,  talked about the birth of Mathematical Logic in the early years on the 20th century and how Proof Theory, one of the main strands of Mathematical Logic got a big impulse via the advent of Computing for all, through the (still today!) poorly recognized Curry-Howard Isomorphism and its more mathematical incarnations. 

This is a difficult talk to give, even for people interested in Computer Science, let alone for a generic mathematical audience. So I reckon I need to keep working on making it more accessible. It's a tall order, as Category Theory seems to scare people off, even mathematicians. The slides are available here, if you want to have a look.