5/1/2023 Katelin Chong
Written by Katelin Chong
Recently, AE Professor Melkior Ornik participated in the International Mathematics Master program. He spent two weeks in Lahore, Pakistan teaching a group of students alongside several other lecturers. The program’s goal is to promote mathematical excellence in developing countries.
Ornik believes this trip was one of his biggest adventures. “I love traveling,” he said. “I never pass up on an opportunity to travel, and I've never been to South Asia before, so it was exciting to go to a new place.”
Ornik taught 12 mathematics students during his stay in Lahore. Of the dozen students, 10 were from Pakistan, while the other two were international students from Nigeria. They were excited to have meet people and were eager to show him around.
“We went to an amusement park, which I haven't been to in probably three years,” Ornik said. “It was quite an experience. I did not imagine that I would be hanging upside down from 60 feet in Lahore at 10:00 at night.”
Ornik was the first lecturer to teach the students for a course called “Dynamical Systems.” His goal was to make his lessons more engaging by relating them back to the real world instead of focusing purely on the technical elements.
“Why do we care about these properties that we are proving?” he said. “I can prove a bunch of theorems, but why am I proving them? Who is interested in them and why do I care?”
Ornik says his students were very engaged and motivated with their learning, even outside of the classroom.
“I received, not one, but multiple messages from students who said, ‘Oh, you know, last night we were going through some proof. Can you help us answer that?’” he said. “It's not like they had homework; it's not like I told them to go search in a book. They actually said, ‘Give us a textbook. We want to learn more.’”
As he worked with the International Mathematics Master program, Ornik’s motivation was to broaden his view of students’ intellectual strength.
“There is an incredible pool of mathematical talent — of intellectual strength — throughout the world,” he said. “We only get to see the tip of the iceberg.”
Through these kinds of programs, Ornik hopes to increase engagement with students from developing countries to provide them unique opportunities at places like the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Ornik is a professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at UIUC, but his educational foundation is in mathematics. He has a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Zagreb and an M.S. in mathematics and statistics from Queen’s University. His Ph.D. is in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Toronto.
“There is this vast potential in developing countries of students who are brilliant, who are amazing, who are incredibly motivated — who we, as a society, and as a nation, could very much benefit from,” Ornik said.