A letter from the Director

Dear friends and colleagues,

I am happy to report that ICERM has had a very successful and exciting 2014/2015 year, with about 1000 visitors to programs and events, our largest to date. The Fall 2014 program, High Dimensional Approximation, brought theorists and experimentalists together from several areas: approximation, optimization, compressed sensing, and discrepancy. The interplay between synergistic groups was dynamic and successful. The Spring 2015 program investigated phase transitions and emergent phenomena. Despite the challenge of launching this program and its first workshops during a series of extraordinary blizzards in the northeast, the organizers crafted an innovative and fruitful semester. In this newsletter you'll find a nugget from researchers in the program: R. Kenyon, D. Kral, C. Radin, and P. Winkler.

Our summer schedule has been packed with a variety of workshops and programs, including the Summer@ICERM undergraduate research program, the Research Experiences for Undergraduate Faculty (REUF) collaboration with AIM, and the GirlsGetMath@ICERM week-long summer day camp. A three-day introduction to Data Sciences for early-career mathematicians in late July is virtually "sold out". IdeaLab 2015 focused on inverse problems and uncertainty quantification, using some newly developed interactive software created by the organizers: Omar Ghatttas, Youssef Marzouk and Noemi Petra. It was a special pleasure to host and co-sponsor the twenty-first annual CAARMS conference, founded and organized by William Massey of Princeton University, and this year co-organized by Ulrica Wilson, ICERM Associate Director and Professor at Morehouse College.

ICERM is currently accepting applications from students, faculty, and research scientists to participate in upcoming semester programs: in particular, we provide support for travel and local accommodations for graduate students who can spend most or all of the semester in residence, and we provide postdoctoral fellowships for periods ranging from one semester to a year. If your university is an academic sponsor, there are funds available now to support faculty and student visitors from your institution. To encourage more sponsorships from smaller schools, we have created a "small graduate program" level of support. More information can be found on our website.

Let me take this opportunity to point out that all of ICERM's scientific activities are generated by proposals. Indeed, the strength and impact of this institute depends upon the engagement of you, members of the broad mathematical community. Please consider submitting a proposal for an undergraduate research program, a small-group research program, a workshop, or a semester-long themed program. I encourage you to contact one of the directors for additional guidance in creating a strong proposal for review by ICERM's Science Board.

Some of ICERM's constituents may already know that our renewal proposal was submitted to the NSF in March, 2014, and was followed by a site visit in September. Many former organizers, visitors, postdocs and students participated in our site visit or in our surveys, and provided first-hand reports on their scientific experience at ICERM. These individual reports were critically important to our renewal and I am grateful to all who shared this information and to those who volunteered to be interviewed by the NSF team. We were gratified to learn in December that the resulting written review by the site visit panelists was extremely positive. We now eagerly anticipate the official announcement of a continuing award, which has been recommended for funding by the Director of DMS. As we prepare for the next five-year grant cycle for ICERM, some important near-term changes are in the works. In this newsletter, we announce a new Deputy Director and Associate Director, new Board chairs, some new staff, a new program for small-group research projects, and a newly appointed incoming Director, Brendan Hassett, Brown University, who will take over in July 2016. ICERM even has some new signage in the lobby of 121 S. Main St., the beautiful downtown building we share with Brown's School of Public Health.

In addition to receiving this newsletter and other updates from our mailing list, you are invited to get updates via Facebook or Twitter. Please feel free to pass on this newsletter to any colleagues and students who might like to be kept informed about activities and opportunities at ICERM.

Finally, a big thanks once again to ICERM staff for their dedication and efforts in the past year. A good research environment depends on many factors, not least of which is help from knowledgable and welcoming staff.

Best wishes for a productive and delightful summer,

Jill

New Board Chairs Appointed

ICERM is extremely pleased to announce two new board chairs:

Dr. Anna Gilbert (University of Michigan) accepted the Board of Trustees' invitation to assume the position of Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) chair starting March 2015. She replaces Dr. Andrea Bertozzi. Dr. Gilbert has served as an active and engaged member of the SAB, and as chair plays a central role in guiding the scientific direction of the institute. Dr. Gilbert's research interests include analysis, probability, networking, and algorithms. She is the recipient of several awards, most recently the EURASIP Signal Processing Best Paper award (2010), and the SIAM Ralph E. Kleinman Prize (2013).

Dr. Sergei Tabachnikov (Penn State/ICERM) accepted Jill Pipher's invitation to assume the position of Chair of the Education Advisory Board (EAB) beginning May 2015. He replaces Dr. Thomas Banchoff. Dr. Tabachnikov has served as an ex officio member on all three of ICERM's boards during his tenure as Deputy Director of ICERM (2013-2015) and was instrumental in the development of the Summer@ICERM undergraduate research program. He was the faculty co-leader on the first two Summer@ICERM programs, both of which produced a high number of research outcomes and publishable papers. As chair of the EAB, he will play a central role in guiding the future directions of this committee. Dr. Tabachnikov works in geometry, topology, and dynamics. He combines theoretical research with computer experiments. Among other things, Dr. Tabachnikov is the Director of the NSF-funded semester-long MASS (Mathematics Advanced Study Semesters) Program at Penn State.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the outgoing chairs for their many years of service.