Keynote 1 (Plenary) :
Uniting Game Theory, Math Stars, and Actors To Build Human Intelligence in the AI Age
Professor Po-Shen Loh
Math Professor
Carnegie Mellon University
United States
Biography.
Po-Shen Loh is a social entrepreneur and mathematician, with a track record of inventing incentive-aligned solutions to address timely population-scale real-world problems, from pandemic control to helping human society thrive in the AI era.
He is a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and served a decade-long term as the national coach of the USA International Mathematical Olympiad team from 2013–2023, during which time it ranked #1 in the world four times.
His latest innovation brings together math stars and professional actors, to mass-produce live-streamed creative problem-solving lessons that match the engagement level of online entertainment.
As an academic, Po-Shen has earned distinctions ranging from an International Mathematical Olympiad silver medal to the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
His pure scientific research considered a variety of questions that lie at the intersection of combinatorics, probability theory, and computer science.
He was the coach of Carnegie Mellon University’s math team when it achieved its first-ever #1 rank among all North American universities.
His outreach takes him to cities across the world, reaching over 10,000 people each year through public lectures and events, and he has featured in or co-created videos totaling over 24 million YouTube views.
Abstract.
One of the central challenges of beyond-standard-curriculum instruction is how to achieve equitably-distributed scale. Making matters worse, generative AI such as ChatGPT is increasingly adept at solving standard curricular tasks, so it is urgent to scalably deliver teaching that goes beyond current standards.
Fortunately, there is an area close to math which devises solutions in which problems solve themselves even through self-serving human behavior: Game Theory.
The speaker will describe his recent work, which uses Game Theory to create a novel alignment of incentives, which concurrently solves pain points in disparate sectors
At the heart of the innovation is a new, mutually-beneficial cooperation between high school math stars and professionally trained actors.
This creates a highly scalable community of extraordinary coaches with sufficient capacity to teach large numbers of middle schoolers seeking to learn critical thinking and creative analytical problem solving (https://www.cnn.com/world/professor-po-shen-loh-actors-classrooms-spc).
At the same time, it creates a new pathway for high school math stars to significantly strengthen their emotional intelligence.
The whole program is conducted virtually, so it reaches through geographical barriers.
The speaker will also share his experience extending this work to build talent development pipelines in underprivileged communities.
Keynote 2 (Upper Primary/ Lower Secondary):
Three Gifts That Technology Can Give To (Or Take Away From) Your Math Class
Dr. Dan Meyer
Vice President of Teacher Growth
Amplify
United States
Biography. Dan Meyer taught secondary maths to students who didn't like secondary maths. He has advocated for better maths instruction on CNN, Good Morning America, Everyday With Rachel Ray, and TED.com. He earned his doctorate from Stanford University in maths education and is the Vice President of Teacher Growth at Amplify where he explores the future of maths, technology, and learning. He has worked with teachers around the world and calls California home.
Abstract. If your goal is an engaging and effective math classroom, the majority of math education technology is actively working against you. We will name the three gifts technology has given us in our personal lives-connection, creativity, and feedback. We'll learn the ways technology often subtracts those gifts from our math classes, and how we can add them back.
Keynote 3 (Secondary / Junior College):
Building Trustworthy AI in Mathematics Education: Empowering Critical, Adaptive, and Inventive Thinking
Professor Cheong Kang Hao
Assistant Dean (Continuing Education and Training)
School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
Biography.
Dr Cheong is part of the Division of Mathematical Sciences at NTU's School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (SPMS), with a joint appointment in the College of Computing and Data Science (CCDS).
He recently assumed the role of Assistant Dean (Continuing Education and Training) at the College of Science.
Trained as a theoretical and computational scientist, his research primarily explores the interdisciplinary applications of mathematical sciences, particularly focusing on complex systems' dynamics.
His notable work on Parrondo's games exemplifies how disadvantageous strategies across various domains can lead to beneficial outcomes. He employs stochastic processes, statistical analysis, and computational simulations to investigate counterintuitive behaviors in diverse systems, including physical, social, biological, and computing system.
His research interests also extend to AI applications in the medical, healthcare, and education domains.
Dr Cheong received the BSC degree (Hons) in Applied Mathematics from the National University of Singapore (NUS), the postgraduate diploma in education from the National Institute of Education, and the PHD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from NUS.
He was designated as a University Scholar with NUS. Before entering academia, Kang Hao managed a US$250M per year Academic Research Fund at the Singapore Ministry of Education. He served as an Assistant Professor in the Engineering Cluster at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) from 2016 to 2018, where he received the Annual Teaching Excellence Award in 2018.
Subsequently, he was an Assistant Professor at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) from 2019 until October 2023, where he received the SUTD Annual Excellence in Teaching Award in 2022.
He is currently serving on the Editorial Board of Journal of Computational Science, Computers in Biology and Medicine, Scientific Reports, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Contemporary Mathematics and Games.
He is recognized on the list of Top 2% in the Stanford University-Elsevier study, 2021, 2022, 2023.
As an Advisor to the publisher World Scientific, Dr Cheong provides strategic guidance to enhance their publishing operations and adapt to the evolving academic landscape.
Abstract.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming mathematics education—not just by enhancing instructional tools, but by reshaping how we think, learn, and teach. While these technologies offer unprecedented opportunities, they also raise new concerns about fairness, transparency, explainability, and data security. Ensuring that AI systems in education are trustworthy is essential to fostering the critical, adaptive, and inventive thinking that mathematics education aims to develop.
This talk explores how to design and implement responsible AI systems that support—not replace—human educators and learners. We will introduce recent advances in large language models (LLMs), multi-agent collaboration, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and demonstrate their application in automated grading, personalized learning recommendation, and virtual teacher training. Our examples highlight how trustworthy AI can be used to promote fairness, support individual learning paths, and enable reflective teaching practices.
By integrating technical insights with pedagogical perspectives, we aim to show how trustworthy AI can serve as a catalyst for deeper engagement of the “head” (critical reasoning), “hands” (practical application), and “heart” (human values) in mathematics education. Drawing on global AI ethics principles (e.g., OECD, UNESCO) and real-world controversies, this talk will offer actionable frameworks for educators and researchers seeking to harness AI’s potential responsibly.
Keynote 4 (Primary):
Critical and Adaptive Thinking in Primary Mathematics: What’s there to learn?
Dr. Joseph Yeo Kai Kow
Mathematics and Mathematics Education AG
National Institute of Education
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
Biography. Dr Joseph YEO Kai Kow is a Senior Lecturer in the Mathematics and Mathematics Education Department at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He holds a PhD in mathematics education from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. As a teacher educator, he is involved in training pre-service and in-service mathematics teachers at primary and secondary levels and has also conducted numerous professional development courses for teachers in Singapore and overseas. He was the recipient of the NIE Excellence in Teaching Commendation Award in 2008, 2018 and 2021. Before joining the National Institute of Education in 2000, he held the post of Vice Principal and Head of Mathematics Department in secondary schools. His research interests include mathematical problem solving in the primary and secondary levels, mathematics pedagogical content knowledge of teachers, mathematics teaching in primary schools and mathematics anxiety. He has published many journal papers, book chapters and conference papers.
Abstract. To explicitly equip primary school students with 21st century competencies, it is important to foster critical and adaptive thinking in students. This keynote address will discuss how critical and adaptive thinking are made explicit during mathematics lessons and are applied to mathematics content. The keynote will also draw on specific examples and demonstrate how to support primary school students on their path to critical and adaptive thinking about mathematics with flexibility. Overall, this keynote presentation will provide primary school teachers with an appreciation of the value of critical and adaptive thinking in mathematics education.
Keynote 5 (Secondary / Junior College): Slides Download Here
Learning to Teach Mathematics Through Problem Posing: A Networked Teacher−Researcher Partnership
Professor Cai, Jinfa
Kathleen and David Hollowell Professor
University of Delaware
United States
Biography.
Jinfa Cai is the Kathleen and David Hollowell Chair Professor at the University of Delaware.
He is an elected member of National Academy of Education and a Fellow of American Educational Research Association (AERA).
He serves as Vice-president of International Commission on Mathematics Instruction (ICMI).
He is interested in how students learn mathematics and pose and solve problems as well as how teachers can create learning environments for students to make sense of mathematics.
Currently, he is working on a 4-year longitudinal project on problem posing.
He served as the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education.
Jinfa has also served/is serving on editorial boards for several research journals, such as AERJ and ESM.
Jinfa has served as Program Director at National Science Foundation.
He is a consultant for various institutions, such as Educational Testing Services (ETS) and National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB).
He has also severed on various capacities in K-12 education, such as the Board Member of the Charter School of Wilmington. He received the Webber Award in honoring his significant contribution to the State of Delaware’s math education.
In the past 30+ years, he has conducted over 500 professional development workshops/presentations to over 120,000 teachers/researchers
Abstract. Even though there has been a great emphasis on problem posing in curriculum standards in different countries, the textbooks only include limited number of problem-posing tasks. To realize the promise of problem posing for students’ learning there is a need to support teachers to teach mathematics through problem posing. This presentation is based on my current NSF-funded Problem-Posing Based Learning (P-PBL) project to illustrate how a networked teacher-researcher partnership supports teachers’ learning and teaching. Through ongoing partnership and collaboration, a networked improvement community (NIC) of teachers and researchers has been integrating problem posing into daily mathematics instruction and continuously improve the quality of P-PBL through iterative task and lesson design. I will first introduce briefly about problem posing and discuss how the project has been designed. Then I will explore the utility of the 3H (head, heart, and hands) model as a powerful way to think about holistic, transformative teacher learning in networked teacher-researcher partnership. I will end the presentation by sharing the effects of teachers’ changes and students’ growth in the P-PBL Project.