Gender gap, dissemination and interdisciplinarity: the challenges in current mathematical science

Ad portas to finalize the applications for the Master in Mathematics, the general coordinator of the program pointed out the current work of the board to advance in the pending challenges of the hand of the students and the academic faculty.

Millaray Mariqueo, Science in Chile.- Juan Carlos Pozo, current coordinator of the Master in Mathematical Sciences from the University of Chile, He studied a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate in the same area, then did a post-doctorate at the University of Santiago de Chile, to work as an academic at the Universidad de la Frontera and the Universidad Austral. However, in 2020, he returned to work at the institution that trained him, the University of Chile.

Here, he has been the general coordinator of the program since April of this year, where he has identified several challenges for current and new generations. Among them, Pozo highlights the huge gender gap in the number of applications and discharges.

“There is a shortcoming that we have tried to improve and it is the small number of women in the program, that in general is a transversal condition in mathematics, but we are particularly interested in changing this.”

During the last two years, there have been 10 active students in the program and of them, only one is a woman, “If one looks back, there are very few women in the last 10 years who have finished and graduated from the program, that is a great general challenge in the area of ​​mathematics, since there the female presence is notoriously lower compared to the male ”.

For this, the academic mentions that he is trying to hire more female professors in the faculty who can guide theses, which has gradually increased the female presence in the group of professors of the program.

On the other hand, one of the present challenges is in the outreach area both inside and outside the scientific community. Regarding this, the coordinator pointed out that a large part of the people who enter belong to the Mathematics Degree of the same Department, therefore, the work that is carried out often remains in the same inner circle.

“We try to make what we do more visible to the community outside the University of Chile and outside the scientific community itself, to people who do not belong to the academic field, in such a way that our results are visible to someone who is not from the area of ​​science. science”.

Even the teacher mentions that within the same community, interaction and interdisciplinarity should also be promoted, complementing mathematics with other disciplines of basic sciences, such as biology, chemistry, physics, etc. “Conversations between the different branches of science are sometimes complicated, because the same language is not used, the results are too technical, etc.”

Finally, Pozo mentions that they are also working to facilitate financing through the creation of internal policies for the faculty to generate scholarships that are competitive in relation to other universities.

“The program has academic excellence, for someone who studies in the program, eventually their research is published in specialized journals of high impact and quality, this must be promoted by facilitating the entry of more students with favorable conditions,” he concluded.

It should be noted that applications for the program close on October 31 of this year.