USTARS and IOWA CITY

It is super early

• I’m actually writing this after working on a paper submission, just before heading to sleep. It’s been a week!
• I just got back from presenting a poster at USTARS, which is the Underrepresented Students in Topology and Algebra Research Symposium. It’s my first time, it was in Iowa City, and I have to say it was AMAZING! You really felt pretty close with everyone by the end of the Symposium. Also, my labmate Jeremy gave a Distinguished talk, which was awesome! We were both plotting about whether or not we would make it this year, and I was convinced!
• On the last day, I ended up carpooling back with a shuttle of Californians (naturally). We plotted to have the next USTARS in Oregon (nope; the next one is in Colgate U or Georgia).
• Anyways, so about Iowa City; the people are super friendly, the food I had was amazing, and I just had a great time. There is so much to do, too! After the first day of the Symposium, people went to a bar, some others went to a house party, and this was after a full day of talks and posters and a dinner afterwards, too! My friend and I (since she goes there) ended up hanging out at her apartment and watching the movie Elemental, which I hadn’t seen before. I just had a great time.
• There were so many people who were just amazing (including my roommate, who is a total bad@$$ and not only got the NSF award, is mentored by two amazing profs but also happens to have Caribbean parents!) and it was just the most wonderful, thoughtful space. I will upload all the photos I took for the organizers; I promise!
• Oh, we also took a group photo, as is customary!
• Interestingly, my friend at CMU had told me that they went to undergrad in Iowa, and it was a good time. So they had hoped I would like it, and I definitely did! I loved it! I kid you not; by the first afternoon I had found boba and fish balls and was having a pretty tough time deciding what to eat considering I really only had to eat one meal. And everyone was just super friendly and I made friends with a corgi! I even went to a prospective students Open House day that happened to be going on when I arrived, and I pretended to be everything from a Theatre Arts student, to a Physics student, until I hung out at the Maths table.
• The theme this year seemed to have some quantum-ness to it, so some talks on Hopf algebras, quantum algebras, Bosonization but also some talks on more classical Graph Theory topics involving colorings and that sort of thing. And of course, on the Algebra side, one of the Faculty distinguished talks was on the ABC Conjecture and my friend (yes, the one who I hung out with to watch Elemental) gave a talk on Holomorphic Differentials to a pretty full room!
• I was surprised that there was a lot of interest in my poster, which I was sort of arguing about with Jeremy a while ago, because I wasn’t sure that I was a fit for the Symposium. I have to take the L on that one; he was right that it would get a lot of interest. So that was really gratifying. In general, I think everything was super interesting, and every session was well-attended.

Some photos

• a mural.

• There were bunnies all over campus at night!

• Melody’s Quantum Subalgebras talk

• Alex’s ABC Conjecture talk. Yay. An elliptic curves talk!

• The Maths building is what used to be the Physics building. The outside says Henry, Ohm, Fresnel.

• So good! Potato and veggies and salad with strawberries and I don’t even know it all tasted delicious!

• some kind of s’more desert

• Jeremy’s talk on positroids

• Kevin’s talk on Hopf Algebras

• Some people made origami with their posters at the end of the Symposium!

• Or even paper planes!

Edit

• I mostly write about my experiences for fun, and for myself. Sometimes, posts will help others find resources that they didn’t know existed (like this conference I wrote about, for example), and I’m happy that some people find this kind of information helpful.
• I had a photo of myself and my poster but I decided to take it down for now, as I received recruitment that was a bit too stalkerish wrt my work just a couple hours after this post(!!), so I’m removing it until I feel better about it. Unfortunately, this has been an ongoing problem for me in grad school; persons seeking me out to extract / exploit the work that I am doing, (often for some kind of commercial interests) and yes, it is always upsetting.
• I’ve spent several years truly studying in my area of expertise, after being pushed out of another area by some really awful, toxic people (out of jealousy), losing access to another because of an advisor leaving (because of academic politics), and I am now very passionate about the work I am doing, and finally finding my footing in it. I don’t care about making your startup wealthy.
• Otoh, if you’d like to truly support my work, you should cite it as needed, and give me credit when it is due instead. I’m also always happy to chat with other researchers or persons in the space who are dedicated to their work, and to research in general, or are just nice people :)
• Additionally, I am only interested in being a researcher at this point, and in doing research.

Okay

• I think I’m definitely heading to sleep at this point!
• It’s going to be an interesting set of weeks as I’ll be travelling again, while working. I actually prefer that, as I find that I’m much more productive outside of campus. I’m particularly excited for summer, interning, going to Maths grad summer school (yay) and for the upcoming forum I’ll be attending in Fall, as well as my first visit to an institute I’ve been communicating with weekly in Spring! It’s been a wonderful year for me, and it’s all been super exciting, but I need to sleep I think!

And that’s it