Institut Polytechnique de Paris (IP Paris) organized on Thursday, October 15, 2026, a day titled "Mathematics in Action" at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées. The event brought together about forty high school girls from Gaston Bachelard (Chelles) and Eugène Delacroix (Drancy) high schools, who came to discover applied mathematics and challenge gender stereotypes in scientific fields.
Welcomed by Anthony Briant, the school's director, the participants first attended a presentation by CNRS researcher Laura Grazioli. She illustrated the links between chemistry and mathematics, explaining how modeling can be used to analyze the composition of stars from their light spectrum.
Divided into small groups, the students then participated in practical workshops and immersive visits to CERMICS, the institution's applied mathematics laboratory. Topics covered included managing air traffic delays through operational research (with Héloïse Gachet, CERMICS doctoral student), logical analysis and puzzle-solving (with David Gontier, CERMICS researcher), and algorithms and coding initiation using the Towers of Hanoi problem (with Urbain Vaes, Inria researcher).
In parallel, the high school girls explored the campus's infrastructure alongside three students from the School – Ibrahim Afilal, Salomé Landau, and Matthieu Zarka – and visited the CERMICS laboratory with its director, Gabriel Stoltz, to understand the daily life of a cutting-edge research center.
The day concluded with a participatory conference led by Élise Bonnet-Weill, a secondary school teacher pursuing a doctoral path. Titled "Being a Mathematician," the discussion addressed the underrepresentation of women in science and the barriers to higher education orientation.
This event, financially supported by IP Paris's mathematics department and chaired by Philippe Moireau, reflects the commitment of the IP Paris Equal Opportunities Center to strengthening social, geographical, and gender diversity within its programs.
