The aim of this lecture series was to bring in mathematicians who are nationally and internationally recognized mathematicians and who have a special penchant for teaching and explaining mathematics. Funds were made available for this lecture series, which began in 2008, by the Baylor administration; special thanks to the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for their generous support.

15th Baylor Undergraduate Lecture Series in Mathematics

Speaker: Holly Krieger 

Dr. Krieger was born and raised near Chicago, she completed the undergraduate mathematics honors program at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She went on to a master's degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, with initial research interests during graduate school primarily in arithmetic and Diophantine geometry. Under the guidance of Laura DeMarco and Ramin Takloo-Bighash, her thesis work focused on the emerging field of arithmetic dynamics, which studies the relationship between dynamics of one complex variable and the arithmetic geometry of abelian varieties.

She followed her PhD work with an NSF postdoctoral fellowship at MIT under the supervision of Bjorn Poonen, during which time she became particularly interested in problems of unlikely intersections in complex dynamics. In 2016 she was appointed to the Corfield Lectureship at the University of Cambridge as well as a Fellowship at Murray Edwards College, and in 2022 promoted to Professor of Mathematics (Grade 11). She was the 2019 Mahler Lecturer of the Australian Mathematical Society and the 2021-2022 Sally Starling Seaver Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and was awarded the London Mathematical Society Whitehead Prize and the American Institute of Mathematics Alexanderson Award.

For a poster advertising Dr. Krieger's lectures, click here.

Dr. Krieger's lectures and abstracts, dates and venues, are:

PUBLIC LECTURE:

Loops, Chaos, and the Limits of Certainty 

Wednesday, April 22, 2026, at 4:00 pm - Marrs McLean Science MMSCI - 101

Abstract: We use numbers every day to count and calculate, but when we apply a simple mathematical rule to a number repeatedly, we kick off a journey that can lead to infinite growth or trap the number in a permanent, repeating loop. These "loops" aren't just curiosities; they are the hidden gears behind the digital world, from the way your phone stays secure to how computers simulate the weather. In this talk, we’ll dive into a deep mystery at the cutting edge of modern mathematics: even with an infinite variety of numbers and rules, why is the number of these loops so strangely restricted? 

COLLOQUIUM LECTURE:

A Tour of the Mandelbrot Set

Thursday, April 23, 2026, at 3:30 pm - Sid Richardson Building SDRICH 344

Abstract: The Mandelbrot set has captivated mathematicians since the first primitive computer images emerged in the late 1970s. But beyond the psychedelic spirals and infinite intricacies lies one of the most significant objects in modern mathematics. In this talk, we will walk the boundary of the Mandelbrot set to discover its hidden order - including the surprising appearance of the Fibonacci sequence - and answer the question: is this just a beautiful curiosity, or is it a fundamental map of the mathematical universe?