Monday
Katherine Perry – Soka University of America
The Mathematics of Hiding in Plain Sight
Katherine Perry is a mathematician specializing in graph theory, design theory, and combinatorics. She is especially interested in breaking apart graphs into smaller subgraphs with special properties. She has a BA in mathematics from Scripps College and received both her master’s and PhD in mathematics from Auburn University. Prior to joining Soka University of America, she was a postdoc at the University of Denver.
In her classrooms, she aims to create an atmosphere of discovery through a variety of techniques designed to activate students’ abilities to think critically. Rather than simply explaining the material, she challenges students to see a problem and organically develop a process to solve it themselves, with confidence at efficiency. She teaches a variety of math courses, but some of her favorites are discrete mathematics, graph theory, mathematics for liberal arts, and linear algebra.
Tuesday
Niels Mede – University of Zurich
Is There a Crisis of Trust in Science?
Niels G. Mede is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and fellow of the Digital Democracy Centre in Odense, Denmark. He studies science communication, focusing on digital media, public perceptions of science, and harassment of scholars. He currently co-leads the TISP project, a global survey study on public attitudes to science.
Wednesday
Patrick Barry – University of Michigan Law
Art and Advocacy
Patrick Barry is a clinical assistant professor and the director of digital academic initiatives at the University of Michigan Law School, as well as a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and the UCLA School of Law. An All-American soccer player in college, Patrick is the author of twelve books, and he has also created four online series for the educational platform Coursera, including
“Good with Words: Writing and Editing” and “AI for Lawyers and Other Advocates.” Among his teaching awards are the Wayne Booth Prize for Excellence in Teaching, the Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Prize, and the Outstanding Research Mentor Award. His research focuses on persuasion, creativity, team, dynamics, and artificial intelligence, and he frequently collaborates with law firms, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations.
Thursday
Jonathan Morduch – New York University
Designing Guaranteed Income Programs
Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. Morduch’s research focuses on finance, poverty, and inequality. He is a founder and Executive Director of the NYU Financial Access Initiative.
Morduch is the author with Rachel Schneider of The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty (Princeton 2017; project site) and co-author of Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day (Princeton 2009) and The Economics of Microfinance (MIT Press 2010). He is co-editor of Banking the World: Empirical Foundations of Financial Inclusion (MIT Press). Together with Dean Karlan, Morduch is the author of Economics (McGraw-Hill 2024), an empirically-oriented principles of economics text now in its 4th edition.
Morduch has taught on the Economics faculty at Harvard, and has held visiting positions at Stanford, Princeton, Hitotsubashi University and the University of Tokyo. He received a BA from Brown, Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard, and an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Brussels for his work on microfinance.
Friday
Leo Porter – University of California San Diego
Computer Programming in the Generative AI Era
Leo Porter is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego interested in computer science education research and computer architecture. Leo co-founded the Computing Education Research Laboratory, which is dedicated to better understanding how students learn computing and creating instructional environments where a diverse group of students can succeed.
