Saskia Solotko’s Algorithm for Success

BYLINE: Kalimah Redd Knight

Newswise — In high school, Saskia Solotko, A26, was a competitive rower, practicing for hours every day. Then in her senior year, she was seriously injured. Unable to row, and with time suddenly in her schedule, she dove deeper into one of her other interests: mathematics. “I read a couple textbooks and emailed people who were doing work on algebra and representation theory, which I was curious about,” she said.

That summer, she was accepted to a math Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. It was the first of several math research projects she would work on with mentors at Tufts and other colleges, making inroads into computational and combinatorial geometry that have resulted in four academic papers, one already published and two in pre-press. 

Her efforts led to a prestigious recognition in November, when Solotko became the first Tufts student to win the Alice T. Schafer Mathematics Prize, a national award for undergraduate research by a woman in mathematics. Then in January, she became the first Tufts student to receive a Churchill Scholarship. The scholarship, which recognizes her academic and research achievement in mathematics, is for one year of master’s study at Churchill College, Cambridge. 

Her sports experience will always be a part of her: She credits it with helping her get to the finish line on some of the tougher math challenges she’s faced. 

You’ve participated in REU programs for the past three summers, working with other undergraduates from different colleges. What was that like?

The 2023 group was especially collaborative. For eight weeks, we would wake up at noon, go to our research meeting at 12:30, and then sit together in a classroom working until 11, with breaks to eat. The sheer volume of stuff we did that summer was kind of crazy. Our work was a big step forward for the classification effort our research mentor was working on. I loved that summer, but I was kind of tired after. 

What’s it like when you get a breakthrough?

A lot of people think that in math research you have these big realizations or aha moments or this one spark of genius that gets you an entire paper. In my experience, it’s really a volume thing. You have to work on a problem for hours and hours and hours and eventually you get somewhere if you make consistent, small steps. 

One thing I might do is work out a bunch of examples by hand so I can look for patterns. So I’ll just be drawing and drawing these combinatorial algorithms, over and over. 

A lot of the work is organizing the information you get in a way that’s more digestible for you, making it easier for you to see things when they do show up.

What does it mean to win an award that is specifically for women in math?

I only worked with one other woman during the REU projects, which I think gives a little context. 

One of the things I really appreciate about Tufts is we have senior women in math and computer science. One of my advisors, Diane Souvaine, she’s incredibly influential; she was the head of the board that governs the National Science Foundation. And then, in the math department, we have Montserrat Teixidor I Bigas; she’s one of just a few senior women in algebraic geometry. 

At Tufts, there are a lot of women in math, and it’s never something I had to think about. 

Where do you get your talent for math?

I think a lot of the mental muscles that have allowed me to be successful came from other things. Like, doing sports has taught me to be super persistent, having the attitude of working consistently and being focused on the process of your work over the outcomes. 

Because with math, it’s always a little bit like gambling. I was doing these computations in October, putting a lot of work into writing this code and hoping that it would spit out the things I wanted. But what do you do when things don’t work out? You just have to say, ‘OK,’ and keep going.

How do you celebrate when things go well?

One of my really good friends from the REU program, we would do a hard day of work and then sit down and watch a show and eat chocolate and Nutella. I really enjoy the process of doing these hard things, but when it’s over, I mostly just want to get myself a milkshake.