Written by Rosie Evans

On a very sunny Thursday in September, we hosted our 3rd PiFORUM! There was an excellent turn out from undergraduates all the way to postdoctoral researchers from universities all across the UK. In total, we had around 60 people in attendance. Today, we recap how the day went and talk about what we’d like to do next year to makes things even bigger and better!

Welcomes

We started with welcoming our attendees and talking a bit about why PiFORUM exists and what we wanted people to get out of the day. Our main goal was to provide a day where our community can come together and meet each other, make friends and break down some of the barriers between career stages.

Talks

During the day, we had talks from 26 people in a variety of topics. We ran sessions in parallel, with one pure and two applied streams.

Piscopia asked each speaker to begin their talk by speaking a little bit about how they got to where they were today. They also answered one of the following questions:

• What is one of your academic goals?
• What is a career challenge you’ve faced?
• What is your favourite thing about maths?

The aim of these intros was to encourage conversation beyond an individual’s research and to foster a friendly, community atmosphere by getting to know a bit about the people as well as their work.

At PiFORUM, I loved how before getting into research, everyone described how they arrived in the position they are in and what they found most challenging as it gave me a chance to empathise and see that I’m not alone in my struggles. PiFORUM was a safe space that allowed for community building but more importantly, provided a chance for research-inclined women and non-binary undergraduates to learn what research entails without the daunting atmosphere of big conference.

Rahma, University of Birmingham

Panel Discussion – Careers

The focus of the panel discussion was careers. We had panellists from academia and industry as well as a range of career stages. Our hope for this session was that people would go away feeling more confident about their career aspirations and have debunked some of the myths about what you can do with a PhD in Maths. Spoiler – you can do lots!

On our panel were:

• Emilia Alvarez, Mathematical Consultant
• Gemma Crowe, PhD Student
• Catherine Drysdale, Postdoctoral Fellow
• Olga Maleva, Professor of Mathematics
• Kamilla Rekvenyi, Postdoctoral Fellow
• Alexandra Tzella, Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics

I enjoyed the diversity of the speakers, I think it was helpful to represent people at different career stages, with different backgrounds, and who were currently in a variety of roles, from academia and industry, at early and more established career stages and everything in between. What stood out to me was the overarching theme of figuring out what do I want as this is a very difficult question! Being confident in what one wants can provide steer on how to say no, what opportunities to try out, and how to ‘wing it’ confidently.

Emilia, Smith Institute

Challenges in Academia Workshop

The workshop allowed our attendees to talk in small groups about some of the challenges that women and underrepresented genders have in academia. We introduced the idea of congressive and ingressive types as described in the book “X+Y” by Eugenia Cheng and directed discussion to how these types have an impact of various aspects of success, education and confidence.

I rediscovered that I really love mathematics, seeing many underrepresented people going through various scales of barriers was impressive and inspiring.

Attendee, Piforum23

Poster Competition

15 people entered our poster competition. This time, the judges weren’t the only ones to have their say, we also had a popular vote! During this session, presenters would stand by their poster and answer any questions as people walked around.

I loved attending PiFORUM23 – it was a great chance to meet women and non-binary mathematicians from all over the UK and see the amazing research being done in my own, as well as other, fields. Presenting a poster to a range of mathematicians with a diverse research background gave me a lot of confidence in my work, and gave me a lot of questions to think about! I thought the conference was really well organised, and especially enjoyed the mindful Spirograph social at the end.

Bethany, Imperial College London

Winners

The prizes were chocolate oranges with knitted Highland cow covers (knitted by me) and £10-£20 gift cards.

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Mindful Spirograph

Finally, after all that hard work, we got round to some Mindful Spirograph! Led by Rachel Evans, aka SpirographGirl, everyone spent an hour making little canvasses and learning about the maths behind Spirograph. See below for some of the beautiful artwork our attendees to come up with, not bad for mathematicians!

PiFORUM stands out as one of the best conferences I’ve attended. It provided a welcoming and stimulating environment where students at various stages of their academic journeys (undergrads, postgrads, post-docs) could showcase their research and expertise in their fields to a broader STEM audience, with an emphasis on mathematics and related subjects. While Piscopia’s primary aim is to empower women and non-binary students by offering them a networking platform, the conference was still of high scientific value. A highlight for me was the opportunity to connect with people from diverse institutions and disciplines, gaining insights into their research and their unique journeys into STEM. On a lighter note, the spirograph session was uniquely refreshing—it was like getting a spa but for your brain! How cool is that? Now I expect every conference to end with a relaxing session lead by the Spirograph Girl!

HouDa, Newcastle University

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Where next?

The high volume of talk applications and attendees convinced us that our next PiFORUM event should span over multiple days. Several of our sessions were squeezed into a one-hour slot but we’d really like to extend the amount of time we spend on them, so in the future we could definitely fill 2-3 days with quality activities.

Our attendees came from 20 different universities, but we’d still like to expand out further. We’ve drummed up lots of interest for new committees to begin which will help us reach more students, and we plan to reach out to more universities over the coming year to increase attendance from undergraduates in particular.

One of our lovely committees has already suggested that the next PiFORUM could be hosted at Newcastle University!

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Thank you

We’d first like to thank The Heilbronn Small grant scheme which allowed us to fund the travel and accommodation of lots of our attendees. They also paid for lunch! We also had support from the London Mathematical Society and the Edinburgh Mathematical Society. We also thank the University of Birmingham for letting us take over the Watson Building for the day with our antics!

Finally, we’d like to thank all those who came to PiFORUM23! The event would not have been the same were it not for our friendly and welcoming community. We hope to see you next year if not before at our local university events! We asked people what they felt they had gained from the day, and here are just some of the things people said:

If you’re interested in getting involved, either by starting a local committee or helping with our national initiatives, then please get in touch with us via email or through our social media! And as always, tell your colleagues, friends and anyone who will listen about us!