During the Sixth MatRIC Annual Conference held in Bergen in November 2019, PLATINUM team members enjoyed the keynote address given by Professor Michael Dorff and had a number of interesting discussions afterwords.
Michael Dorff is President of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and a professor of mathematics at Brigham Young University. He earned his Ph.D. in complex analysis from the University of Kentucky, researches in mathematics, and has given about 500 talks on mathematics. He is interested in promoting mathematics to the general public, in non-academic careers in mathematics, and in undergraduate research. Professor Dorff co-directs the MAA PIC Math program (Preparation for Industrial Careers in the Mathematical Sciences). He is the founder and director of the $2.6 million NSF-funded Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics (CURM). He started and runs the BYU “Careers in Math” Speaker series and the BYU summer 8-week mathematics REU both funded by NSF grants.
Professor Dorff is a popular mathematics expository speaker giving about 25 invited presentations a year at conferences and other universities. He has received several university and national teaching awards including a Mathematical Association of America’s Haimo Teaching Award, the top U.S. award for teaching undergraduate mathematics, and BYU’s top teaching award, the Maeser Excellence in Teaching Award, both in 2010. In 2012, he was honored with BYU’s Egbert Teaching and Learning Fellowship and
was named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
In any free time he has, he enjoys reading, running, and traveling (he has traveled to 49 U.S. states and 45 countries).
