Duncan Chair and Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura, along with her collaborator, artist Jiabao Li, gave a talk at The Association for the Study of Play (TASP) 52nd annual conference, organized by Professor of Education Michael Kamen and held at Southwestern University. The talk, titled “Math/Art Collaboration Through Play: A Report From the Triangle Program,” focused on the role of play in our interdisciplinary collaboration, which ultimately culminated in the idea of the math playground.

Duncan Chair and Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura gave a talk at the Gathering 4 Gardner 16 in San Francisco, CA, a puzzle/magic/art/math conference to celebrate the popular recreational math writer Martin Gardner. During each day were dozens of six-minute lightning talks given by attendees on projects they are working on. Futamura discussed three projects, updates from the mathematical art manifesto group she has been organizing over the past six months, the math playground funded by the Simons Foundation Triangle Program, and a general audience book on what can be gleaned from understanding the geometry of space in art and other 2D media, to be published by Princeton University Press.

Duncan Chair and Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura, along with artist Jiabao Li and art director Ron Berry of Fusebox, have been awarded a $150,000 grant to build a math playground in Austin through the Simons Foundation Triangle Program. Math Playground is an outdoor installation and accompanying exhibition that turns abstract mathematical ideas into playful, embodied, large-scale sculptures. Visitors can climb, slide, swing, and spin on custom sculptures whose forms embody complex math concepts. A Klein bottle slide creates a continuous looping path. A shape called a Boy’s surface becomes a twisting climbing net that flips orientation. The Lissajous swing set draws patterns in the sand through harmonic motion. A merry-go-round zoetrope animates models through rotation and repetition. Math Playground makes math fun and intuitive, inviting people to experience symmetry physically, in their bodies, by moving through shapes usually understood only in theory. For preliminary renderings, visit here. For the announcement, visit here.

Duncan Chair and Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura was invited by the Mathematical Association of America SIGMAA – Undergraduate Research group to co-present a webinar with Dr. Elizabeth Reid at Marist University on designing manageable and meaningful undergraduate projects. She talked about her students’ innovative ideas for application projects in Linear Algebra and Geometry and how some of these have led to continued research beyond the semester, presentations at regional and national conferences, and in one case, an award-winning publication.

Duncan Chair and Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura was invited by the Simons Foundation to be a math consultant to botanical gardens for their Math in Bloom program, part of the Infinite Sums initiative that seeks to make the beauty of mathematics accessible to a wide audience through programming initiated by non-mathematicians. Horticulturalists and directors from five botanical gardens around the country gathered at the San Antonio Botanical Garden to brainstorm ideas for a pi day (3/14), infinity day (8/8), and Fibonacci day (11/23) that will take place in 2026. More information is available here.