UNB Math Researcher Sanjeev Seahra: Adding up to a Stronger Industry
FREDERICTON–Sanjeev Seahra is doing research into something many of us think is set in stone, that subject we all studied in grade school and learned to love or loathe: mathematics.
The UNB researcher is asking questions about the tiniest building blocks of our universe and how they’ve formed into the world we live in. Seahra is particularly interested in quantum gravity, the attempt to link up Einstein’s theory of gravity with quantum mechanics, which is the theory of the subatomic world.
“It’s well known that those two things don’t work very well together,” he says. “They have different assumptions, they have different postulates that don’t quite mesh with one another.”
“A big open question in theoretical physics is how to come up with a quantum theory of gravity and one that’s theoretically consistent and also one that could possibly be proved by looking at observations of things like the early universe and cosmology.”
As he considers the big questions, Seahra has also recently taken on the role of director of the Atlantic Association for Research in the Mathematical Sciences (AARMS). The purpose of AARMS is to encourage and advance research in mathematics, statistics, computer science and mathematical sciences. They sponsor meetings, workshops, collaborative research groups, postdoctoral fellowships and mathematical outreach.
Seahra says the best way to think about the fact that research still needs to be done in mathematics is to think about what’s happened in the past and what has been discovered to date in mathematics.
“There’s this assumption that math is well established,” he says. “We’ve known about it forever and it’s the stuff we learn in school, elementary, all the way up to high school and there’s nothing more out there but when you think about it, there’s the past of human history where people didn’t realize the number zero existed.”
“They had an entire system of arithmetic and mathematics that had no concept of what the number zero was. The reason that was was because number zero hadn’t been discovered yet … There’s something fundamental and something true there that is important but people weren’t aware of it and then they went out and discovered it.”
Seahra says that math research is very much like astronomy or biology or any other kind of discipline that sets out to learn about nature by going out and discovering things.
“This kind of discovering mathematical truths is really an ongoing thing,” he says. “It’s getting more and more abstract and more and more complicated, just because humanity is getting better and better at doing these things. But it doesn’t stop and we don’t even know what we don’t know.”
Seahra will continue his research as he leads AARMS to the next level. He hopes to help develop a more national presence for the association and allow for the fostering of relationships between the mathematical sciences and the wider community in Atlantic Canada. This will include expansion of outreach programs and improvement of partnerships between researchers and people doing business in Atlantic Canada.
“We’re trying to foster and nurture more connections between the very talented people in business and the very talented people at universities and get them talking to each other more and seeing what comes of it,” Seahra says.
Seahra wants AARMS researchers to work even more closely with industry and for more partnerships to develop. He will also emphasize the importance of a summer school run by AARMS that brings graduate students from around the world to Atlantic Canada to take courses and work to solve real life problems. Seahra says the next summer school will focus on financial mathematics and involve contact with local financial industries to give the program a real world spin.
“Ultimately it really is communication,” Seahra says. “We just really need to get talking amongst ourselves and then we can start working on the problems that we mutually find interesting.”