Three workshops, a summer school and a high school camp are planned for this summer.

Summer 2025 signifies the completion of three years since the establishment of the Brin Mathematics Research Center. In this relatively brief timeframe, the Brin MRC has rapidly evolved into one of the foremost mathematics institutes in the country. Given the uncertainties surrounding NSF funding, it is anticipated that the Brin MRC's influence in the global mathematics community will continue to grow significantly.

Spring 2025 proved to be an exceptionally busy semester for the Brin Mathematics Research Center, featuring seven workshops, three distinguished lectures, and an array of other special activities. Despite the challenging winter conditions in late January, the center successfully hosted a workshop on Moduli in Algebraic Geometry, with Dori Bejleri as one of the organizers. This was succeeded by workshops on Hamiltonian Dynamics, organized by Bassam Fayad, Dima Dolgopyat, Vadim Kaloshin, and Jaime Paradela. Additionally, a workshop led by Thom Haines and Peter Dillery concentrated on geometric approaches to the Local Langlands Program. The semester was further enriched by three remarkable Brin MRC Distinguished Lectures delivered by Albert Cohen from Sorbonne, Chris Cosner from the University of Miami, and Harrison Zhou from Yale.

The Brin Mathematics Research Center hosted the annual Mid-Atlantic Seminar on Numbers (MASON-7), organized by Larry Washington, as well as a Junior Investigators Workshop on Dynamics. April began with a conference on Lorentzian, Affine, and Hyperbolic Differential Geometry, held in memory of Todd Drumm and organized by Bill Goldman and our former colleague Karin Melnick. Following this memorial conference, the center hosted workshops on G-Torsors on Curves, organized by Richard Wentworth, Weyl Laws Across Mathematics led by Dan Cristofaro-Gardiner, and Bifurcation and Chaos Theory, organized by Abba Gumel, Sana Jahedi, Alex Safsten, Roberto De Leo, and Jim Yorke.

For the second consecutive year, the Brin Mathematics Research Center had the honor of hosting the chairs of the Math Departments from the Big 10 Universities. This year, we were delighted to welcome two of our new Big 10 members: USC and the University of Oregon.

The summer promises to be bustling with workshops focusing on Geometry and Higher Structures, Stochastic Partial Differential Equations, and Random Dynamical Systems. Additionally, we will host the Brin Maryland Mathematics Camp for high school students and a summer school on the highly topical subject of Scientific Machine Learning.

This marks the conclusion of an exceptionally productive and exhilarating year. We are eagerly anticipating the next year, which will feature 15 workshops and 2 summer schools. Stay tuned for more exciting developments! The details of all the center’s activities can be found at brinmrc.umd.edu.

Arthur Benjamin from Harvey Mudd College presents the Kirwan Undergraduate Lecture.

Arthur Benjamin, the Smallwood Family Professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd College, gave the 2025 William E. Kirwan Distinguished Undergraduate Lecture on April 8. His lecture, “Solving the Race in Backgammon,” highlighted his research on perhaps the oldest game that is still played today.

Backgammon is a game that combines luck with skill, where two players take turns rolling dice and decide how to move their checkers in the best possible way. It is the ultimate math game, where players who possess a little bit of mathematical knowledge can have a big advantage over their opponents. Players also have the opportunity to double the stakes of a game using something called the doubling cube, which, when used optimally, leads to players winning more in the long run. Optimal use of the doubling cube relies on a player's ability to estimate their winning chances at any stage of the game.

When played to completion, every game of backgammon eventually becomes a race, where each player attempts to remove all of their checkers before their opponent does. The goal of Benjamin’s research is to be able to determine the optimal doubling cube action for any racing position and approximate the game-winning chances for both sides. By calculating the effective pip count for both players and identifying the positions' variance types, Benjamin arrives at a reasonably simple method for achieving this, which is demonstrably superior to other popular methods.

Outside of the classroom, Benjamin is a professional magician and one of the world’s fastest mental calculators. In 2020, he applied his talents to the game of backgammon and won the American Backgammon Tour and was elected to the American Backgammon Hall of Fame. He is one of 15 backgammon grandmasters in the United States.

Benjamin has been honored by the Mathematical Association of America for his teaching and writing, and is a recent winner of the Communications Award from the Joint Policy Board of Mathematics. He has given 3 TED talks that have been viewed over 50 million times and written several books and created numerous video courses that share the beauty and magic of mathematics.

Professor Emeritus Denny Gulick recited 100 digits of Pi and faculty, staff and students enjoyed dessert pies.

The University of Maryland’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences hosted its annual Pi Day celebration in the James A. Yorke Rotunda of William E. Kirwan Hall.

Mathematics Professor Emeritus Denny Gulick recited the first 100 digits of Pi and then shared a limerick he wrote about the number [watch the video].

The college gave out 440 slices of dessert pie in just 12 minutes! 

Plus, in honor of Michael and Eugenia Brin’s generous $25 million gift to the Brin Mathematics Research Center, Dining Services had a special pizza station in the dining halls.