Biographical Sketch of Dr. Yvonne Lai
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Yvonne Lai is currently a post-doctoral faculty member of the University of Michigan department of
mathematics.
She received her S.B. from M.I.T., and her Ph.D. from U.C. Davis,
where she wrote a dissertation on geometric group theory and hyperbolic geometry.
Lai has worked with a number of programs for mathematics education,
including the California state COSMOS program for high school students and the Bay Area Teacher's Circle.
In 2006, she founded the Davis Math Circle and co-founded its parent program, Explore Math.
In 2007, she was a coordinator for the academic program at the Canada/USA Mathcamp, where she has been staff for 7 years.
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Musical Orbifolds (Talk Abstract)
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We can fashion a circle out of the real line by gluing numbers together whenever they differ by an integer.
In an analogous way, we can create a torus from the plane, and a three-dimensional torus from three-space.
These systematic constructions have a musical interpretation: for example,
the last one concerns three-note chords and the musical symmetry of octave shifts.
We will discuss how exactly the music and math correspond, and then,
using other intuitive notions of musical symmetry (such as key changes),
build more intricate spaces and introduce the notion of an orbifold.
This talk is based on work by D. Tymoczko.
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Highlights
Awards Ceremony
will be held at Oakland University on
September 11th
Yvonne Lai
University of Michigan
- Program
- Booklet
- Direction and Parking
Other Sponsors
Department of Mathematics,
University of Michigan
Department of Mathematics and Statistics,
Oakland University
American Mathematical Society
Wolfram Research
Art of Problem Solving
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