Guest Speaker: Po Shen Loh

Building Long-Term Success, Starting From Math

Life is long. The ~15 year period of contests, academics, and exams make up a small fraction of that lifespan, but the decisions made during those years can significantly improve what the rest of life looks like. The speaker has closely observed the life journeys of 2 decades of math contest stars, starting from his cohort when he was on the International Math Olympiad team, to the present day. He has observed practical ways for many people to develop extraordinary math skills, which generalize into even more extraordinary technical abilities. However, he has also observed that those technical skills alone are not enough for the more complex game of life. In this talk, he will share some of these observations and advice.

The speaker is Po-Shen Loh (https://poshenloh.com), a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and the national coach of the USA International Math Olympiad team. He uses math to devise new solutions to real-world problems, and has appeared in national and international newspapers for several discoveries. These days, he runs a program which guides high school math stars to develop extraordinary communication and performance skills (https://live.poshenloh.com/stars), while teaching middle and elementary schoolers how to invent their own ways to think about math (https://live.poshenloh.com).

Prof. Loh is particularly happy to speak at Caltech, because he, his wife, his brother, and his sister are all Caltech alumni.

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