Gloria’s Math Night (GMN) is a free math enrichment program offered by the Department of Mathematics. Participants are paired with a graduate student mentor to work on engaging projects outside of the usual high school math curriculum. Over the course of the program, participants explore topics to develop creative reasoning and problem-solving skills and engage in independent mathematical investigation and collaborative discussion. Each GMN program culminates in a presentation night hosted at the university.
Our program runs twice per year, during UW-Madison’s Fall and Spring Semesters. We are currently accepting participants for our Spring 2026 cohort! If you’re a high school student who would like to participate, please fill out our interest form below.
What are you curious about?
Project Topics:
- The RSA algorithm
- Insect outbreaks: bifurcations and catastrophes
- The mathematics of epidemics
- Of dominos, trominoes, tetrominoes, and other games
- Chaos and strange attractors
- Parking functions
- Fermat’s little theorem and necklaces
- Exploring quantum mechanics and philosophy through the work of Grete Hermann
- Abstract algebra and Emmy Noether
- Number theory in the times of Sophie Germain
Contact: Bella Finkel (blfinkel@wisc.edu)
Faculty Contact: Tullia Dymarz (dymarz@math.wisc.edu)
History: Now in its 18th year, this program was originally created with a grant from the National Science Foundation to integrate education, teaching, and research. The program is one of the yearly outreach programs of the UW-Madison mathematics department.