The IMA New Directions Program

With recent funding from the National Science Foundation, the IMA inaugurated its New Directions Program in the 2003. The exciting program is a new thrust aimed at partnering with strong mid-career mathematicians who are interested in expanding their horizons, making their research program more interdisciplinary and so increasing its impact.

IMA New Directions Visiting Professorships. Visiting Professors are invited to spend 9-12 months at the IMA immersed in the annual thematic program. They are expected to be in residence and to be active participants in the program but are not assigned formal duties. We believe that this freedom, combined with the exciting program and the excellent work atmosphere at the IMA will allow established mathematicians to learn a great deal about a new discipline in a relatively short period of time.

The first two New Directions Visiting Professors, joining the IMA in the Fall of 2003 for the "Complex Systems" Annual Program are Shmuel Friedman (University of Illinois, Chicago), and Yuhong Yang (Iowa State University).

Applications are taken for New Directions Visiting Professorships for the academic year 2004-05 until April 1, 2004. The annual program for that period will be Mathematics of Materials and Macromolecules: Multiple Scales, Disorder, and Singularities. For more information and to apply, please click here

IMA New Directions Short Courses. Each year, the IMA hosts a two-week intensive short course designed to efficiently provide mathematicians the basic knowledge prerequisite to undertaking interdisciplinary research in a given field. The first year's short course, to take place this June, is on mathematical biology at the cellular level. From all accounts, the course was a great success. Don French of the University of Cincinnati was a participant in the short course, and submitted a report on his experience in this issue.

For 2004, the short course will be held from July 6 to July 16. The course, entitled "Computational Topology" will be taught by Herbert Edelsbrunner and John Harer from Duke University. A primary goal in this course is to develop a broad picture in which algorithmic tools connect pure mathematics with scientific applications, particularly in structural molecular biology and geometric modeling.