Retired Astronaut and U.S. Army Colonel Jeffrey Williams delivers a talk during the 2024 Math3ma Symposium at TMU.
Watch Keynote Sessions from 2024 Symposium
More than one hundred STEM professionals and graduate students visited The Master’s University this month for the 2024 Math3ma Symposium.
Engineers, medical doctors, industry professionals, and university professors were among those in attendance at the second-annual event, which doubled in size from 2023 and this year included registrants from 16 states and Canada. The two-day gathering served as an opportunity for attendees to recharge through Christian fellowship and devotional keynote sessions.
Outside speakers included a neurologist who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of Parkinson’s, a distinguished professor of chemical engineering from UC Davis, and an astronaut.
TMU President Dr. Abner Chou was also a featured speaker.
Not designed primarily as a research conference, the Symposium’s goal is to encourage those in attendance, reminding them that although they may be just one of a few Christians in their field, they are not alone and emboldening them to faithfully represent Christ in their given context. Many of this year’s registrants work in secular organizations.
Christian fellowship is a central focus of the Math3ma Symposium. Here, Dr. Joey Kim, chair of the engineering and computer science department at TMU, talks to an attendee at the event.
“It can be difficult and isolating to be the only Christian in your building at times,” said Dr. Tai-Danae Bradley, the event’s organizer and the director of the Math3ma Institute at TMU. “The prayer for the Symposium is that attendees are not just fed through keynote sessions, but that they connect with each other during times of fellowship.”
On at least one occasion, Bradley had to break up the fellowship in order to keep the program, which took place May 31 and June 1, moving. “That’s a good problem to have,” she said.
Bradley said one highlight of the event was when Dr. Jennifer Sinclair Curtis spoke. Curtis, the UC Davis professor, has a long list of publications to her name — but the focus of her talk was on God’s faithfulness over the years, amid numerous personal trials.
The talk captured the heart of the Symposium.
“She is a distinguished professor with so many awards,” Bradley said. “Her CV is what academics aim for. She has success by the world’s standards. But none of that came out in her talk. The focus was entirely on what the Lord had done.
“Her priorities have always been as a wife and mother, and even as she was weighing job opportunities in academia, she made the decision to put her children and husband first and trust God to take care of the rest.”
Dr. Abner Chou, TMU’s president, was a featured speaker at the 2024 Math3ma Symposium at TMU.
Bradley said young STEM professionals can struggle in this area, focusing soley on money and securing top jobs. In contrast, Curtis’s allegiance has been to Christ.
Dr. Richard B. Dewey, Jr., a neurologist at the Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Center in Florida, and recently retired professor of neurology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, gave a talk entitled “The Neurologic Healings of Jesus.” Dewey highlighted, among other things, that in healing the man born blind, Christ created, from scratch, neural pathways between the brain and eyes.
“It further impresses on you the power of what Jesus did,” Bradley said.
Chou, TMU’s president, spoke from Psalm 104, reminding attendees that in pursuing science they are ultimately discovering what God has put in place and that the natural response to these findings should be worship.
Retired astronaut and U.S. Army Colonel Jeffrey Williams, who also spoke at last year’s event, said that people sometimes try to separate vocations into sacred and secular. That’s the wrong approach, Williams said. “Pastoral ministry is not better than being a scientist if that’s what God has called you to do,” Bradley said, summarizing a portion of Williams’s talk.
Dr. Michael Riccardi, an assistant professor of theology at The Master’s Seminary, served as the event’s final speaker, outlining a theology of suffering. Among other points, he exhorted those in attendance to stand confidently for Christ in their workplaces, and that even if they don’t have immediate access to Christian fellowship there, they are never truly alone. He said they always have fellowship with Christ, who is refining them and strengthening their relationship with Him.
“It was the perfect way to end the event,” said Bradley, who added that she expected to host a third iteration of the event next summer.
The Math3ma Symposium is organized by the Math3ma Institute, a hub for research and outreach in the sciences at The Master’s University. The institute’s vision is to employ research scientists who work to make discoveries and then share their work in a way that’s approachable to a general audience. The Symposium is one way the Institute serves and ministers to believers in that community. Another is through the Journal of the Math3ma Institute. The most recent edition, released in spring 2023, includes work from TMU Professor Dr. Matthew McLain and retired professor Dr. Joseph Francis. You can find a digital version here.
Video of the plenary sessions from the 2024 Math3ma Symposium will be available on TMU’s YouTube channel. To ensure you don’t miss them, subscribe here.
You can learn more about STEM programs at The Master’s University at masters.edu/STEM.
You can learn more about the Math3ma Institute at www.math3ma.institute.
