Our Survey of Early Career Mathematicians

[This is a guest post by Anna Brandenberger, Hanna Mularczyk, and Dora Woodruff (MIT). This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.]

In late September and early October, we distributed a survey of early career mathematicians. Our goals were to take a “temperature check” of the community, and to give early career mathematicians a centralized, targeted platform to share their views on AI (the survey was not a rigorous data analysis effort). The personal stakes are highest for grad students and postdocs, who face job insecurity and funding instability, so it’s important that our voices are taken into account. We worry that our concerns will be deprioritized, or even misrepresented, without collective resources like this survey.

On October 29th, we posted the results of this survey to the arXiv (history and overview). In the end, over 260 mathematicians filled out the survey, representing around 60 institutions and at least 5 countries. Many of them left free responses in addition to answering the multiple choice questions.

This blog post is an invitation to take a look at the survey results. Some of the results surprised and/or dismayed us: in particular, Question 3.2, Question 3.3, Question 5.2, and Question 6.1, which concern career outlook and research motivation. It’s also important to point out that nearly all of the responses were collected before October 6th, capturing a sample of thoughts from a specific context: we nervously wonder how different this data would look today. As journals, hiring committees, and faculty members make decisions about the future, we urge them to take these survey results into account — and to continue fostering discussions between senior and junior mathematicians.

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