The Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences Announces James Colliander as Director

The Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS) is pleased to announce the appointment of James Colliander as Director of PIMS for a five-year period, starting on July 1, 2016.
 
James Colliander is currently a faculty member of the Department of Mathematics at the University of British Columbia and has held the position of Deputy Director of PIMS since July 1, 2015. His field of research is at the interface of partial differential equations, harmonic analysis and dynamical systems. Professor Colliander obtained his PhD at the University of Illinois in 1997. After postdoctoral positions at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and the University of California, Berkeley he took a faculty position at the University of Toronto, where he held a full professorship from 2007-2015. Among his many awards he was a recipient of a Sloan Foundation Fellowship (2003), the McLean Award (2007) and the Outstanding Teaching Award in Arts and Science (2010) at the University of Toronto. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris and a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Professor Colliander is also the Founder and CEO of Crowdmark, an education technology company that was awarded the Connaught Seed Stage Startup Award at Toronto in 2013.

The Chair of PIMS Board of Directors, Brian Russell noted, “The appointment of James Colliander as Director is a significant step forward for PIMS.  Professor Colliander is a world class mathematician who brings strong leadership skills to PIMS as well as a personal vision of its future.  He is also a very collaborative individual who will work with both his team and the PIMS Board to arrive at a consensus of how our institute should evolve over the coming years.  I want to thank Martin Barlow, our current Interim Director, for his vision and leadership of PIMS during his term. He has been a key figure in the leadership transition at PIMS.”

"I am excited to lead PIMS into its third decade!" said Colliander. "PIMS has a spectacular track record for promoting collaboration and discovery among our member universities. My goal as director will be to meaningfully enhance the research, teaching and collaboration capacity of all the mathematical scientists that PIMS serves."

The Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences is a consortium of ten universities in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada. For 20 years PIMS has been promoting research in and applications of the mathematical sciences, facilitating the training of highly qualified personnel, enriching public awareness of and education in the mathematical sciences, and creating robust mathematical partnerships.