September Professional Activities Wrap-up

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As a reminder, the local U.S. Embassy asks all Fulbrighters to send monthly updates of what we've done in country, I guess so they can document some of the good things the Fulbright program does.  Over the course of my career, I've pulled together lots of annual reports -- and unlike many of my colleagues, I actually look forward to doing these.  

Since there's so much going on here, it makes a lot of sense to do these updates more frequently than I've done them in the past, and I figured I might as well include a version of these updates into the blog.  

General professional work

For my research project, I have continued work on Double Take, the book on Optical Illusions that I proposed to write here.  I've finished drafts of the introduction and Chapter 1 ("Perspective"), and I have made a bunch of progress on Chapter 2 ("Putting viewers in their places").  I'm up to page 28, in a book that I'm proposing will be about 200 pages long.

I'm getting a better sense of how to incorporate figures; in English we say "a picture is worth a thousand words", and I've discovered that pulling together some of my pictures takes longer than writing 1000 words!

One of the set of images I've added to this book 
(I used GeoGebra exported to PGFTikz, if you care about those details).

Specific Events

September 11:  I represented FUNDAPROMAT at the Cuidad del Saber Conecto event and breakfast.

September 13: I attended the Kirigami presentation by FUNDAPROMAT's invited speaker, Miriam Báez at the Marriott Panama.


September 15: I attended FUNDAPROMAT's  meet-and-greet with the speaker. 

September 16: With Jeanette Shakalli, Executive Director of FUNDAPROMAT, I met with Rector Eduardo Flores of the University of Panama, to explore possible collaborations.  

September 17:  I was on a panel at the University of Panama, called a panel of "exbecarios" (former grantees), which is a bit of a misnomer, because I'm a current grantee!

2nd. Exchange Alumni Week Panama 2024/ 
2ndo. Encuentro de Intercambio de exbecarios Panamá 2024 
El aprendizaje Activo: experiencias innovadoras en la enseñanza de las Ciencias Naturales y Humanísticas.

September 21:  I gave a workshop for FUNDAPROMAT volunteers and several members of the public ("Dibujando Arte en 3D").

September 24: I attended a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Fulbright program at the home of the U.S. Ambassador to Panama.   

September 29: At the invitation of a FUNDAPROMAT volunteer, I joined Team Quijano for the Relevo por la Vida walk/run to fight childhood cancer.


Press 

September 5, we appeared in a local newspaper called "La Estrella de Panamá".  "El uso de las matemáticas para fomentar el pensamiento lógico".




And that's all for September!

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