Date and Venue: August 17 to August 21, 2026, Department of Mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh.
Registration Link: Please register here before the deadline of April 15, 2026.
Event Description: This program is a continuation of Girls' Summer Math Camp 2025 and the second installment of the pilot program Girls' Summer Math Camp 2024, aimed at female high school students (ages 15-17) attending schools in the greater Pittsburgh area. The objective is to expose the participants to different areas in mathematics and thereby spark the interest in mathematics among female pupils and contribute to the development of future female scientists.
Schedule:
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9am - noon |
noon - 1:15pm |
1:15pm - 4:00pm |
4:15pm - 5pm |
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Monday, August 17 |
Lectures: |
Lunch |
Group Projects |
Lecture / Lab Tour |
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Tuesday, August 18 |
Lectures: |
Lunch |
Group Projects |
Lecture / Lab Tour |
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Wednesday, August 19 |
Lectures: |
Lunch |
Group Projects |
Lecture / Lab Tour |
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Thursday, August 20 |
Lectures: |
Lunch |
Group Projects |
Lecture / Lab Tour |
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Friday, August 21 |
Group Projects |
Lunch |
Student Presentations |
Introduction to the Undergraduate Program at Pitt |
Each day, except for Friday, is structured in the same way. The morning consists of lectures concerning the specific area of Mathematics, prepared and executed by the expert permanent faculty from the University of Pittsburgh. This is followed by lunch (provided by the organizers) and further followed in the afternoon by group projects, where students can test their understanding of the material taught in the morning session. The group project sessions will be supervised by the graduate students who are members in the Pitt chapter AWM Department of Mathematics. The specific group project tasks will be developed by the faculty who taught the corresponding morning session. Each such topics day ends with a talk by a Pitt affiliated researcher or an external activity. We will also organize field trips to a physics or biology lab, and a final panel Q&A where students can ask questions about the Mathematics undergraduate program at Pitt. On Friday morning, students will continue working on their projects, that will be presented after lunch and completed with students obtaining the participation certificates.
Poster: (click on the image below to download the file)
Location and Address
Department of Mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh. The pick up and drop off location is at the Parking Lot of the University Club, right in front of the main entrance. More information will be available to the accepted participants one week before the event.
Speaker Information
Organizers: Marta Lewicka, Sabrina Streipert, AWM chapter University of Pittsburgh
Principal Supervising Faculty:
Professor Tom Everest: Linear Algebra
Many real-world problems involve several unknowns, and linear systems provide a powerful way to solve them. In this introductory class, students will learn what systems of linear equations are, how to solve them, and how to interpret solutions geometrically in two- and three-dimensional spaces. We will also explore exciting applications, including finite linear games, analyzing traffic flow, and explain how Google uses linear algebra to deliver relevant search results.
Professor Marta Lewicka: Game Theory and PDEs
This course will be an introduction to an amazing, recently discovered connection between the Tug-of-War games and the modern (and difficult) field of Partial Differential Equations, called the Nonlinear Potential Theory. Think of two players Mina and Max who continuously "tug" the token that has been placed on the 2-dimensional board game, in the direction of its boundary portions where they perceive their promised reward. The game is zero-sum, which means that Mina's gain equals Max's loss. Moreover, at each turn of the game, a "noise" is introduced, that is an evil spirit out of Mina's and Max's control, who alters the location of the token. The theory that we will study implies, in particular, that even in presence of that evil noise, it it is possible for Mina to determine her exact strategy to maximize her gain, and for Max to determine his own strategy to minimize his loss. How is this possible!?
Professor Roxana Popescu: Number Theory
This course will first focus on recalling the fundamental concepts in the field of Number Theory, such as: divisibility, prime numbers, congruences, the integer (floor) function, and more. Through various applications, we will see the power of proof by contradiction, prime factorization and prime divisors. We will then pass to the famous Fermat’s theorem and Euler’s theorem. We hope for the students to develop a solid grasp of these foundational concepts and to strengthen their logical reasoning and proof-writing skills.
Professor Sabrina Streipert: Network Science
In my lecture, I will introduce you to Network Science, a rapidly-growing new area at the interface of multiple fields. A wide range of complex systems and phenomena ranging from the spread of diseases and information to dynamics of friendships and metabolic reactions can be analyzed using methods of network science. You will be introduced to different networks such as small world, scale-free, and random networks and learn how to recognize them in real-life settings. In that process, you will learn foundational concepts to analyze networks, including graph properties such as connectedness and clustering.
Other Faculty Involved:
Professor Huiqiang Jiang (Department of Mathematics, Director of Undergraduate Studies)
Contact us at: girlsatPitt@gmail.com