President Harris speaking at the 2023 Engineering and Liberal Education (ELE) Symposium
Events
Union's entry in the SAE Baja Competition
May 15, 2025: "Designing Democracy" by Professor Moon Duchin
Professor Moon Duchin from Cornell University Department of Mathematics will be presenting their lecture "Designing Democracy" on Thursday May 15, 2025 from 5:30 -6:30pm in O'Brien Center Room 117. This lecture is part of a Distinguished Lecture Series in Interdisciplinary Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering, supported by an NSF grant. It is co-sponsored by Union’s Department of Mathematics and the Templeton Institute.
How can mathematics help us to achieve a fairer electoral system, more representative leadership, and better protection for voting rights? Dr. Moon Duchin, Professor of Mathematics at Cornell University and leader of Cornell’s MGGG Redistricting Lab/Data and Democracy Lab in Cornell’s Brooks School of Public Policy, will address this question by exploring current research in data science and its applications to public policy.
Abstract:
Systems of election are powerful tools for gauging preferences and fusing them into an outcome, including how to hire, whether to take collective action, how to spend a budget, or how to get political representation. The choice of election system faces tradeoffs when it comes to different desirable properties. In the context of rapid transformation in global democracy, this lecture will discuss "math for democracy," the design and tuning of our systems of election for fairness and healthy representative democracy.
There will be a reception at Hale House at 4:45pm, preceeding the lecture.