The 2024 Norman W. Johnson Lecture will be delivered by award-winning science writer and mathematician Susan D’Agostino. This talk will range from the delightful fact that penguins use mathematics to huddle in Antarctica’s subzero temperatures to the dangers of unbridled technology optimism.

D’Agostino is a Spencer Education Journalism Fellow at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she is working on a book about AI in higher education. She the author of How To Free Your Inner Mathematician (Oxford University Press, 2020), which received the Mathematical Association of America’s Euler Book Prize for an exceptionally well written book with a positive impact on the public’s view of math. She is the technology correspondent at Inside Higher Ed. Her work has been published in The Atlantic, Washington Post, Scientific American, Wired, Quanta, BBC, Nature, National Public Radio, Financial Times, and other outlets.

Her writing has been recognized with fellowships from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, National Association of Science Writers, Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation, and Mila–Quebec AI Institute. She earned a Ph.D. in math from Dartmouth College, an MA in science writing from Johns Hopkins University, and a BA in anthropology from Bard College.