2021 EDGE Summer Symposium

The 2021 EDGE (Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education) Summer Symposium is a three-day event that addresses mathematical research and professional development. The Symposium uses a vertical mentorship model to fill in a variety of gaps (academic and non-academic) that are not guaranteed to be filled by other means. The community built during EDGE programs is the primary mechanism that increases retention, access to professional opportunities, and likelihood that our participants don’t just succeed, they thrive and are propelled into careers in the mathematical sciences that influence the whole community.

The EDGE Summer Symposium combines research talks, panel discussions, and formal and informal networking events. The EDGE Symposium will bring together (virtually and in-person) 75 mathematicians, primarily an intersection of women and graduate students, and will be hosted by the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Participants of the Summer Symposium discuss cutting-edge research, motivating further discoveries and empowering less senior participants to strive for similar work.

These more junior participants also receive indispensable career advice, while more established mathematicians hone their mentoring skills, strengthen their own support network, and deepen their commitment to influencing the next generation of mathematicians. In increasing the number of women who succeed in graduate school and beyond, the Summer Symposium increases the visibility of a diverse collective of mathematicians, inspiring younger mathematicians to persevere and become leaders in the mathematical sciences. Further information about the EDGE program may be found at: https://www.edgeforwomen.org/

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.