Faculty of Science's first PhD math graduate talks need for gender diversity in the field
Erin Meger started a platform called Women in Combinatorics that allows any combinatorialist who identifies as a woman or non-binary person to connect with others. Ian Patterson
Erin Meger’s passion for math started when she was just five years old and learned about the four colour theorem.
“My dad first told me about the theorem and told me to try it out by proving it,” says Meger. “In this moment I realized that there was a methodology to explore the world around me in a rigorous way that was also beautiful.”
Fast forward to 2020 when Meger became Ryerson’s first ever PhD graduate in mathematical modelling and methods. Meger completed her PhD in three years — compared to the four to six years it normally takes — followed by 18 months as a postdoctoral research fellow at LACIM at the Université du Québec à Montréal. She is on her way to an assistant professorship at Concordia University in the fall where she will be doing a mix of teaching and research.
When she embarks on her new chapter in Montreal, Meger will continue to lead the Women in Combinatorics (external link) network, or WinCom for short. The platform is a database spreadsheet that is available for anyone to search for women collaborators, keynotes and mentors to encourage inclusion. Any combinatorialist who identifies as a woman or non-binary person can connect with other women for various professional reasons.
Meger’s research interests lie primarily in applications of graph structure including pursuit-evasion games, saturation and network modelling.
WinCom was initiated by Meger; Linda Lesniak, visiting research mathematician at Western Michigan University; and Kieka Mynhardt, professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of Victoria, after a discussion at the women's lunch at the Canadian Discrete and Algorithmic Mathematics Conference in 2019. They noticed that women were not invited to present at many conferences, so they created a database to change that. The list now includes over 250 people.
“We need to have more women’s voices in the mathematics field,” says Meger. “We are missing an entire group of people when the voices of women and people of colour are not heard. When we create a culture that values diversity rather than supporting the status quo, it allows for more nuanced perspectives.”
When the pandemic hit in March 2020, the WinCom team shifted gears and started a virtual colloquium. Each week they host a Zoom seminar for the combinatorics community that is run by members of the network with the goal of encouraging community and collaboration.
So far they have hosted webinars with over 50 participants internationally who speak about a broad range of topics from graph theory and finite geometries to Wilson loop diagrams and the product of Grassmann Necklace elements. Meger says that in the first six months they had around 60 people attend the webinars each week.
The WinCom team has recently started a scholarship program for women in Mexico and Africa. Through the Equity and Gender Commission of the Mexican Mathematical Society (CEG-SMM), WinCom will support scholarships to encourage Mexican mathematical women to continue their graduate studies. WinCom will also support funding of six awards at partnered institutions across Africa, including the African Institute for Mathematics, in order to encourage young women to pursue doctoral studies in combinatorics.
For more information about the scholarship opportunities, visit the Women in Combinatorics website (external link) .
To view the annual 2020 report, (PDF file) visit the Faculty of Science's website.
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