SESSION TYPE: Featured Speaker SESSION TITLE: Math for America STRAND: STEM DAY: Saturday TIME: 2:30 - 3:30pm LOCATION: Mercury Ballroom, 3rd floor

Founded in 2004, Math for America (MfA) is a private nonprofit organization with a mission to improve math education in US public secondary schools by recruiting, training and retaining outstanding mathematics teachers. With sites in Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, San Diego and Washington, DC, MfA offers two programs, the MfA Fellowship, to increase the number of mathematically talented individuals entering the teaching profession, and MfA Master Teacher Fellowship, to support outstanding mathematics teachers already in the classroom. This session features Jim Simons, the founder of MfA, in discussion with the award-winning PBS and NPR journalist/host David Brancaccio, as they talk about the most pressing issues and opportunities around improving math instruction.

BIOGRAPHY

Jim Simons is the founder and Chairman of Math for America (MƒA), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve math education in public schools, and The Simons Foundation, a charitable organization devoted to advance research in the sciences and mathematics. Formerly professor and chairman of the Mathematics Department at the Stony Brook University, and a cryptanalyst at the Institute of Defense Analyses in Princeton, Dr. Simons recently retired as President of Renaissance Technologies, a private investment firm that uses mathematical methods to make investment decisions.

David Brancaccio is host and senior editor of NOW on PBS, public television’s award-winning newsmagazine of investigative reporting and in-depth interviews. Among his beats: politics, human rights, national security, the environment, health care, and science policy.

A broadcaster for 33 years, Brancaccio also served as the long-time host of public radio’s business program, “Marketplace,” which won two of the top honors in broadcast journalism, the George Foster Peabody Award and the DuPont-Columbia Award. He and his team at NOW on PBS recently won an Emmy for a story on an innovative way to deliver health care in Africa and also took home the 2009 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Coverage.

David is author of the book “Squandering Aimlessly” about money and values in America and his print work has appeared in newspapers including the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Sun, and Britain’s The Guardian. He has appeared on CNBC, with Anderson Cooper on CNN, and with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. David has a BA in History and African studies from Wesleyan and an MA in Journalism from Stanford.