Jokes, prayers, stories, art all express our deep need to communicate experience beyond our immediate interactions with the material world. Delight in shape and pattern is found in all folk art traditions back to the farthest reaches of antiquity. Focusing on episodes drawn from all over the world, we will discuss how mathematics plays a vital role in codifying our common experiences of awe and wonderment.
Featured speakers Soheila Esfahani and Matthew Scott.
Soheila Esfahan
Soheila Esfahani is an artist and educator based in Waterloo Region. Her research and art practice navigates the terrains of cultural translation in order to explore the processes involved in cultural transfer and transformation. She is a recipient of 2016 Waterloo Region Arts Awards (Visual Arts category) and was nominated for the Jameel Prize at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, UK in 2015. Currently, she is a lecturer at University of Waterloo and works from her studio at Kitchener’s artist–run centre, Globe Studios.
Matthew Scott
Matthew Scott is an Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics and co-director of the Mathematical Biology Laboratory at the University of Waterloo. His research is directed toward identifying fundamental principles underlying bacterial reproduction and reverse-engineering the last universal ancestor of life as we now see it.
St. Jerome's University
University of Waterloo, Faculty of Arts
University of Waterloo, Faculty of Mathematics
University of Waterloo, Faculty of Science
Fields Institute