The event, held June 23–27, 2025, in Nice, France, honored the 80th birthday of Anthony Iarrobino, a renowned mathematician at Northeastern University, whose work in commutative algebra and algebraic geometry has inspired decades of research.
“In math, if you’re famous, instead of a birthday party you get a birthday conference,” noted McDaniel. No stranger to conferences, McDaniel said he wanted to pay the experience forward by helping to organize the event.
“I have also worked with Anthony on several projects and benefited from his wisdom,” he added.
The conference convened about 55 mathematicians from across the globe to explore four major themes drawn from Iarrobino’s influential scholarship: the geometry of punctual Hilbert schemes, commuting nilpotent matrices, symmetric decompositions and Hilbert functions of Artinian Gorenstein algebras, and Jordan types of Artinian algebras.
The gathering blended senior specialists with emerging scholars, including graduate students and early-career mathematicians, fostering cross-generational dialogue and collaboration. The organizers are currently publishing a proceedings volume for the conference.