Do The Maths

(formerly Girls Do the Maths)

The School of Mathematics and Statistics at UNSW runs an annual series of free, one-day workshops for young women in their final years of high school studies (years 10 - 12). The aim of the workshop series is to encourage young women to consider mathematics as a career. 

We understand that the world faces many challenges - climate change, population growth and poverty, national and global security, and finding sustainable food and energy supplies to name a few. The study and application of maths plays an important role in all of these areas.  

Do The Maths has been created to encourage girls to see how they can make a difference to the betterment of the world and people's lives by studying and working in many different fields using maths and stats.  

We welcome you to consider attending our workshops, and hope you might consider a future with us as a university student.  

During the workshop, invited speakers talk about their careers, and we host sessions on the practicalities of university life, including information about our courses and degrees, applying for scholarships, and programs for talented students. These are complemented by a tour of the UNSW Kensington campus, including a visit to an undergraduate mathematics lecture, hands-on maths activities, and a Q&A forum featuring current maths students. Lunch and refreshments are provided.

For more info, please contact: dothemaths@unsw.edu.au

2024 events

Information about this year's events will appear on this page as arrangements are confirmed. 

Dates

Our on-campus event will be held on Wednesday 5 June at the UNSW Roundhouse. 

The online event is scheduled for Friday 7 June. 

Applications

An expression of interest form has been emailed out to high schools (February 2024). If you haven't received a form and would like to apply, please email us at: dothemaths@unsw.edu.au

2024 UNSW Women in Mathematics and Statistics Ambassador

Karen Willcox, Director, Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences; Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics; University of Texas at Austin

Karen will deliver a presention at our 2024 workshops, "Adventures at the Interfaces of Mathematics, Computing and Aerospace". She will also give a public lecture at UNSW on Thursday 6 June. 

Karen Willcox is Director of the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, Associate Vice President for Research, and Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. She is also External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Before joining the Oden Institute in 2018, she spent 17 years as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she served as the founding Co-Director of the MIT Center for Computational Engineering and the Associate Head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Prior to joining the MIT faculty, she worked at Boeing Phantom Works with the Blended-Wing-Body aircraft design group. She is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Karen's work has produced scalable computational methods for design, optimization and control of next-generation engineered systems. Areas of particular focus include scientific machine learning, digital twins, model reduction as a way to learn principled approximations from data, multifidelity formulations to leverage multiple sources of uncertain information, and uncertainty quantification. She has applied these approaches to a wide range of problems, including aircraft design optimization, aircraft environmental impact, unmanned aerial vehicles, additive manufacturing, and rocket propulsion. Her model reduction and multifidelity methods are widely applied across the scientific and engineering community, and have been incorporated into industry/government codes for aircraft system design and environmental policy decision-making.

Karen is also active in education innovation. She served as co-Chair of the MIT Online Education Policy Initiative, co-Chair of President Rafael Reif's 2013-2014 Institute wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education, and Chair of the MIT OpenCourseWare Faculty Advisory Board. She is a recognised innovator in the U.S. education landscape, where she was a 2015 recipient of a First in the World Department of Education grant that developed and deployed educational technologies in community colleges. She continues to direct the Mapping Lab, which develops technologies for the future of digital education. 

Karen Willcox

2023 events

Our 2023 Do The Maths - Women, Empowerment, Opportunity Workshops were held from 7-9 June. 

On-campus event

The on-campus event was held on Wednesday 7 June at UNSW Roundhouse.
The program included maths talks, a hands-on activity, carnival booths, a campus tour, degree and scholarship information, and a Q&A.

Online events

The online events were held on Friday 9 June.
Students connected via Zoom for the program. We held an online event in the morning for Australian high school students, and one in the afternoon for South East Asian high school groups.

The program included maths talks, a DESMOS activity, degree and scholarship information, and a Q&A.

See the news item linked below for a wrap up of the 2023 DTM events!

2023 UNSW Women in Mathematics and Statistics Ambassador

Inge Koch - Associate Dean, Mathematical Sciences, RMIT

Professor Inge Koch delivered presentations at the Do The Maths events, and a public lecture on the evening of 8 June, "Mathematics and Gender: Nature versus Nurture".

Inge Koch is a Statistician with research interests in the analysis of high-dimensional and functional data, ranging from new methodology to cross-disciplinary collaborations including biologists and medical experts. She has a strong background in pure and applied mathematics and experience in industry and the CSIRO. Since the completion of her PhD in statistics at the Australian National University, she taught statistics at the University of Newcastle, and UNSW Sydney. In 2009, she became Associate Professor in Statistics at the University of Adelaide, and, in 2019, she moved to UWA as Professor of Statistics and Data Science. Inge joined RMIT as Associate Dean, Mathematical Sciences in February 2023.

Throughout her career, Inge has been a champion for mathematics and gender diversity in mathematics, passionate about encouraging young women to study mathematics at all levels and to follow careers that use maths skills. She is a co-founder of the Girls Do The Maths initiative at UNSW, a program that began in 2004 and still flourishes today. She brought the same commitment to diversity to the University of Adelaide through her involvement with the Women in Mathematics Workshops. In 2015, she became Executive Director of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) and its ChooseMaths Program, aiming to change public perception of mathematics in order to improve participation, particularly of girls and women, in mathematics across Australia. At UWA she combined this interest with developing statistical data science at all levels ranging from a first year new data science course to research forums involving staff from all faculties. She has been part of the National Review panel for Data Science, jointly organised by AMSI and the SSA, and is a member of the AMSI board.

Inge has great expectations for her new position at RMIT; combining her background in gender diversity in mathematics, her involvement in data science with mathematics education at all levels, research and collaborations across the STEM college and beyond.

UNSW

2022 events

The 2022 campus event was held on Thursday 23 June at the UNSW Roundhouse, and the online event the following day, Friday 24 June.

We hosted 300 students from 20 schools across Sydney at the campus event. They participated in maths activities, heard presentations, viewed the Australian Women in Maths exhibit, went on campus tours, and partipated in a Q&A with current UNSW students as panellists. 

The online event, attended by 100 high school students, was MCed by our Visiting Teaching Fellow Karen Man over Zoom. She led a schedule which included presentations, maths activities and a panel discussion. 

For more about the 2022 events, see the info and schedule below, and read the news item. 

2022 UNSW Women in Mathematics and Statistics Ambassador

Hamideh Anjomshoa – Applied Maths + Data Analytics 

"Hello, I’m Hamideh. I’m an applied research scientist and I specialise in designing large-scale optimisation and data science solutions across different industries like mining and healthcare. I’m very interested in systems that make modern life possible. I use mathematical modelling, mixed integer programming, business analytics and optimisation, data analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and health analytics to better understand how we create and use information in our jobs and lives." 

Hamideh presented at both our on-campus and online events in 2022.

Hamideh Anjomshoa
2021 event

 

UNSW is #1 for Maths in Australia 
(2021 ARWU Ranking; QS World University Ranking; US News Ranking)

 

2021 events

The 2021 on-campus workshop took place on Thursday 10 June at UNSW, and a specially curated online version of the event was held on Thursday 17 June. We hosted a record number of participants this year. Watch this highlights video from the Girls Do the Maths workshop at the UNSW Roundhouse on 10 June 2021.

See our Girls Do the Maths 2021 YouTube playlist to view several sessions and presentations from the 2021 event. These include an overview of our programs and courses by Dr John Steele, and careers talks by our academic staff.

You can read the news item about the 2021 event below. 

Event highlights
Virginia Wheway

2021 UNSW Women in Mathematics and Statistics Ambassador

The on-campus and online events featured a presentation by our 2021 UNSW Women in Mathematics and Statistics Ambassador, Virginia Wheway.

Virginia's talk was titled "What is all this Data Science hype about?".

Virginia Wheway is Vice President, Data and Analytics at Koala. She is an accomplished and influential data-focused executive with diverse skills and experience across numerous industries; including aviation, mining, manufacturing, government, medical research and finance. We were thrilled for her to join us at the 2021 Girls Do the Maths events. 

Watch Virginia Wheway's talk

Australian Women of Mathematics Exhibition

We were excited to showcase the Australian Women of Mathematics exhibition at the events.

The Australian Women of Mathematics project started as an extension of a touring exhibit entitled 'Women of Mathematics throughout Europe. A gallery of portraits' which showcases the work of women mathematicians around the world.

The Australian exhibit features 16 women mathematicians from Australia.

  • The first Girls Do The Maths workshop was held in 2005. Over the years we have had some great talks from our invited speakers, including:

    • Professor Inge Koch, Associate Dean, Mathematical Sciences, RMIT (2023 UNSW Women in Maths + Stats Ambassador) 
    • A/Prof Hamideh Anjomshoa, Applied research scientist (2022 UNSW Women in Maths + Stats Ambassador) 
    • Dr Virginia Wheway, Vice President, Data and Analytics, Koala (2021 UNSW Women in Maths + Stats Ambassador) 
    • Professor Kate Smith-Miles, University of Melbourne (2019 UNSW Women in Maths + Stats Ambassador) 
    • Professor Cheryl Praeger, University of Western Australia (2018 UNSW Women in Maths + Stats Ambassador) 
    • A/Prof Regina Burachik, University of South Australia (2017 UNSW Women in Maths + Stats Ambassador)
    • Prof Lynne Billard, University of Georgia (2016 UNSW Women in Maths + Stats Ambassador)
    • Dr Michelle Dunbar, Radiation Physics Laboratory, Sydney Medical School
    • Dr Julia Collins, AMSI
    • Gina Papapetrou, Senior Data Strategist, Mercerbell
    • Emma Doolan from UNSW and the Kids Cancer Centre
    • Dr Patricia Menendez from BOSCAR
    • Jessica Egan from Taylor Fry Consulting
    • Sharon Wang from MLC - National Australia Bank
    • Lisa Alexander from UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC)
    • Deborah Cromer from UNSW's Centre for Vascular Research
    • Katarina Mele from CSIRO
    • Leanne Bischof from CSIRO
    • Dr Moninya Roughan, an oceanographer from UNSW
    • Christine O'Keefe, of CSIRO
    • Ann Eyland, of the Law Foundation of NSW
    • Clio Cresswell, then a lecturer at UNSW and author of the book "Mathematics and Sex"
    • Merryn Horrocks, an electrical engineer who has worked with control systems in areas as disparate as manufacturing and medicine.

Contact us

For more information please email dothemaths@unsw.edu.au.