Directors Message on NSERC Renewal

Greeting from PIMS! It is with great pleasure that I write to our community about recent developments. I am delighted to report that PIMS has successfully renewed its funding from NSERC for the period 2014-19. Our proposal and reverse site visit in Ottawa went very well and the review committee showered PIMS with praise. This recognizes all the wonderful work done by the PIMS team as well as the high quality and impact of our scientific, industrial and educational activities.

A few weeks later we learned that our funding from the Alberta Government was also renewed. These funds will flow directly to Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge, and provide a continuing boost to PIMS activities in Alberta.

I can also report that the NSERC Research Partnerships Program approved three years of funding for the establishment of the Institutes Innovation Platform. This joint project with our colleagues at CRM and Fields seeks to promote linkages between mathematical scientists and industry at every level. This will build on our existing programs, including the Industrial Problem Solving Workshops and the Mathematical Modeling in Industry Workshops (joint with IMA) both of which were introduced to Canada by PIMS.

In addition, our colleagues at UWashington have been awarded $550,000 (USD) to fund postdoctoral activities in probability, an area where PIMS has launched a new program, the PIMS Postdoctoral Training Centre in Stochastics, building on the world class expertise at our member universities and our extensive connections to Microsoft. I am grateful to Martin Barlow for leading this effort and to Christopher Hoffman for preparing the request to the National Science Foundation.

This adds to a total of over $8 million in funding for the next five years, an amount that will be significantly leveraged by contributions from our member universities and other funding organizations.
Last month we also hosted a visit by a scientific committee of the CNRS in France, as part of the renewal of our status as an Unité Mixte Internationale. Their visit was a great opportunity for CNRS to hear first hand how positive the impact of our partnership has been, both for French visitors and their hosts. Mechanisms for strengthening our ties to France were also discussed during their visit.

I will let you browse the newsletter to catch up with other news. We continue to receive a large number of excellent proposals for CRGs and other scientific events. Indeed, our pipeline is as healthy as it has ever been. The quality and diversity of the proposed activities are quite remarkable and this will be in evidence as we roll out new programs over the next few years.

Last but not least, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the fantastic contributions by the PIMS staff both here at UBC and at our other sites; they are essentially important members of our team and we greatly appreciate what they do for the organization.

With best wishes,

Alejandro Adem
Director, PIMS