Lily Serna
Mathematician and popular television presenter.
Profile
Math whiz Lily Serna is a mathematician with an unrivalled passion for education, particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) advocacy. Her passion for numbers has led her to not just a highly successful career in maths, but she’s also a sought-after presenter, media personality and author.
As an insightful and engaging presenter, Lily quite simply inspires and delights audiences with her unique perspective on numbers. inspires audiences.
Lily worked as a data analyst at the software company Atlassian, specialising in building mathematical and statistical models. But she is likely best known for her professional media host work on programs such as SBS’s television program ‘Letters and Numbers’ with David Astle and Richard Morecroft where she appeared as the show’s resident numbers expert.
TV: She has been twice featured on ABC’s popular show Catalyst for ‘The Secret to Making Better Decisions’ showing how the logic of mathematics can help you make better, smarter decisions and more recently Catalyst’s ‘How to Be Lucky: the Maths of Chance.’ and was co-host of SBS’s Destination Flavour.
Podcast: Lily has also hosted a 6-part international podcast created by GE Australia titled ‘Decoding Genius’ which investigated the lives of six young geniuses. She’s also likely the only professional mathematician to be featured in Australian Vogue.
Author: She was on the Board of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute for four years and was also appointed Numeracy Ambassador for National Literacy and Numeracy Week. She’s published a very successful maths puzzle book named Lily’s Numbers Puzzles and is currently in the throes of working on her next book.
Media
Feedback
Lily was an engaging, funny and relaxed speaker. She came early and was well prepared. The speech content was perfect for the event and audience. Lily ran the game 'numbers' brilliantly and it was a really great addition to our event allowing people to see her in action in our very own ABS numbers game. She was also very generous with her time staying behind to sign autographs and for people to get their photo taken with her.
Lily spoke very naturally about her experiences and connected well with her audience. The students remained thoroughly engaged throughout her presentation. Thank you Lily.
Lily was really engaging, but more importantly, was so willing to mingle and speak with individuals. With the relaxed nature of this event, it was so appreciated!
Lily was very engaging and the students immediately related to her. Her talk was interesting and relevant to our girls. When we played the Letters and Numbers game, she was encouraging when students were sharing their responses and helped us with her mental arithmetic techniques.
I just wanted to thank you again for your work at the Sunrise Alpha. I am so pleased with how it turned out, and have had excellent feedback from some of the students already. You did an awesome job MCing the semi chaos of our experiment into a smooth show!
With Google's help we're already dreaming of rolling this out nationally, so hopefully we can work together some more!
