35th Math.en.Jeans conference at Avignon University

On 11, 12 and 13 April, the Math.en.Jeans association and the Laboratoire de Mathématiques organised the 35th "Math.en.Jeans" conference.

Math.en.Jean is an association that promotes mathematical research among secondary school pupils, with the support of the CNRS and the Ministry of Education. In this way, Math.en.Jeans is helping to combat the lack of interest in the so-called "hard" sciences among the younger generation, particularly young girls. At a national level, this is an important battle with an economic and social impact: the world in which we live is becoming increasingly technological, and every country needs to develop its scientific skills and knowledge or risk losing its technological independence.

The principle behind Math.en.Jeans is simple: a researcher proposes a problem that a group of pupils can solve, but the solution is not to be found in any book or on any website, so they have to look for it, with the help of their teacher and the researcher. At the end of the school year, just like their fellow researchers, the students present their work in the form of oral presentations and stands at a conference which, for the PACA region, was organised at Avignon University in 2024.

In 2024, the University welcomed 78 secondary school students and their 13 teachers, 224 secondary school students and their 29 teachers, and 9 researchers, for a total of 353 participants from 8 secondary schools and 15 high schools. This year, the conference took on an international dimension with the participation of secondary schools in Cluj (Romania) and Stendhal in Milan (Italy). These budding researchers gave 55 oral presentations, took part in two forums and manned around sixty stands. The alternation between presentations, sometimes in English, and interactive forums where young people can exchange ideas on the stands, gives this type of mathematics conference an exceptional dimension. They filled the conference with enthusiasm in a friendly and lively atmosphere. The energy they put into developing their work and their presentations, and the pleasure they clearly derived from taking part in this event, were a reward and a source of great satisfaction for the twenty or so people involved in the organisation of this conference, which was nonetheless quite heavy.

As well as helping to combat disaffection with the sciences, Math.en.jeans is a formidable tool for establishing links between high schools and universities, and the organisation of this event, as well as the participation of LMA researchers in supervising groups of students, enables our university to strengthen its involvement in these links. It's also an opportunity for our school to be present and active in its local area and, who knows, to encourage people to go to university: the 302 pupils present are potential future students.