AnnualReport 2008 2009
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2 AnnualReport 2008 2009
3 Centre de recherches mathématiques Université de Montréal C.P. 6128, succ. Centre-ville Montréal, QC H3C 3J7 Canada [email protected]
Also available on the CRM’s website http://crm.math.ca/docs/docRap_an.shtml.
© Centre de recherches mathématiques Université de Montréal, 2010 ISBN 978-2-921120-46-3 C
Presenting the Annual Report 2008 – 2009 5
ematic Program 7 ematic Programs of the Year 2008 – 2009: Probabilistic Methods in Mathematical Physics and Chal- lenges and Perspectives in Probability ...... 8 Aisenstadt Chairholders in 2008 – 2009: Svante Janson, Wendelin Werner, Andreï Okounkov, and Craig Tracy ...... 9 Workshops of the ematic Year on Probabilistic Methods in Mathematical Physics ...... 11 Workshops of the CRM – PIMS Joint ematic Program on Challenges and Perspectives in Probability 18 Past ematic Programs ...... 19
General Program 21 CRM Activities ...... 22 Colloquium Series ...... 31
Multidisciplinary and Industrial Program 34 Activities of the Multidisciplinary and Industrial Program ...... 35
CRM Prizes 39 CRM – Fields – PIMS Prize 2009 Awarded to Martin Barlow ...... 40 André-Aisenstadt Prize 2009 Awarded to Valentin Blomer ...... 41 CAP – CRM Prize 2009 Awarded to Hong Guo ...... 42 CRM – SSC Prize 2009 Awarded to Hugh Chipman ...... 42
e CRM Outrea Program 44 e Chaotic Motion of the Solar System – Jacques Laskar (Observatoire de Paris) ...... 45 Disorder and Beauty – Yvan Saint-Aubin (Université de Montréal) ...... 46 Secret Codes roughout the Ages – Gilles Brassard (Université de Montréal) ...... 47
CRM Partnerships 50 CRM Partners ...... 51 Joint Initiatives ...... 54
Mathematical Education 59 Institut des sciences mathématiques ...... 60 Other Joint Initiatives ...... 62
Resear Laboratories 64 Applied Mathematics ...... 65 CICMA ...... 67 CIRGET ...... 69 GIREF ...... 71 INTRIQ ...... 73 LaCIM ...... 74 Mathematical Analysis ...... 76 Mathematical Physics ...... 78 PhysNum ...... 81 Statistics ...... 82
Publications 86 Recent Titles ...... 87 Previous Titles ...... 87 CRM Preprints ...... 91
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Scientific Personnel 92 CRM Members in 2008 – 2009 ...... 93 Postdoctoral Fellows ...... 94 Visitors ...... 95
List of Students Having Graduated in 2008 – 2009 97 Ph.D. Students ...... 98 M.Sc. Students ...... 99
Governance and Scientific Guidance 103 Board of Directors ...... 104 International Scientific Advisory Commiee ...... 104
CRM Administrative and Support Staff 107 e Director’s Office ...... 108 Administration ...... 108 Scientific Activities ...... 108 Computer Services ...... 108 Publications ...... 108 Communications ...... 108
Statement of Revenue and Expenditures for the Fiscal Year Ending on May 31, 2009 109
Mandate of the CRM 112
4 Presenting the Annual Report 2008 – 2009 C
is a pleasure to present a brief overview of the Within that program distinguished mathematicians I CRM annual report for 2008 – 2009. Most of the give lectures of the highest scientific level, but acces- activities described were planned under the director- sible to a general public. ey continued to be a very ship of François Lalonde and carried out while Anne successful means for the CRM to stay connected with Bourlioux and Christiane Rousseau were serving as the wider community. In 2008 – 2009 Jacques Laskar acting directors. I would like to take the opportu- (Observatoire de Paris) and Yvan Saint-Aubin and nity here to express the thanks of the CRM commu- Gilles Brassard (both from the Université de Mont- nity for their outstanding and inspiring leadership. réal) gave lectures aended and appreciated by hun- Christiane Rousseau led the CRM for almost a year dreds of mathematicians, teachers, students, and in- and oversaw the scientific planning of our thematic terested members of the public. programming into the year 2011. I would also like to e CRM provides support for educational activ- express my thanks to Odile Marcoe who ably edited ities at all levels in the mathematical sciences, with this report. emphasis on the training of researchers. Our main e thematic program, as always the core of partner in this area is the Institut des sciences mathé- the year’s scientific activities, consisted of a mam- matiques (ISM). In particular the CRM jointly with moth year in Probabilistic Methods in Mathematical the ISM, and with input from the CRM laboratories, Physics. It was one of the most ambitious CRM the- runs a prestigious postdoctoral program that draws a matic programs ever held, the first of altogether ten large number of applications from all over the world workshops being held in June 2008 and the last in each year. Another instance of the cooperation with June 2009. It was also carefully correlated with the the ISM is the series of weekly joint colloquium lec- CRM – PIMS Joint Program on Challenges and Per- tures, one in mathematics and one in statistics (the spectives in Probability, which took place in May – laer being jointly organized with GERAD). September 2009 (straddling two fiscal years, 2008 – e CRM awards four mathematical prizes each 2009 and 2009 – 2010). A highly detailed and in- year, one on its own and three in partnership with formative account of the year by John Harnad can other institutions. In 2008 – 2009 the CRM – Fields – be found in the Fall 2009 issue of Le Bulletin du PIMS Prize was awarded to Martin Barlow (Uni- CRM. In particular the four Aisenstadt Chair Lec- versity of British Columbia), the André-Aisenstadt ture Series (by Svante Janson, Wendelin Werner, An- Prize to Valentin Blomer (University of Toronto), the drei Okounkov, and Craig Tracy, respectively) were CAP – CRM Prize to Hong Guo (McGill University), of truly exceptional caliber; both Werner and Ok- and the CRM – SSC Prize to Hugh Chipman (Acadia ounkov were awarded the Fields Medal in 2006. University). e CRM’s general program of workshops and As part of its unique structure the CRM acts as an symposia dealt with vast and highly diverse areas of umbrella organization for a number of specialized re- mathematics, statistics, and physics. Included were search laboratories, ten in 2008 – 2009 (including the four large yearly international conferences, one of Groupe interdisciplinaire de recherche en éléments which was held in conjunction with the SMS Sum- finis, based at Université Laval in ébec City). ey mer School on Symmetries and Integrability of Dif- unite most researchers active in the mathematical ference Equations. I would like to mention specifi- sciences in ébec and are closely involved in all the cally the Celebration of Raoul Bo’s Legacy in Math- CRM’s programs. eir activities are described in a ematics, which honoured a giant of 20th century section of the present report. mathematics, and a strong friend of Canadian math- Finally, on behalf of the CRM community, I ematics. would like to thank the institutions that have spon- e multidisciplinary program is the CRM’s sored and continue to sponsor the activities of the main vehicle to organize activities with partners in CRM, and in particular the granting agencies NSERC the applied mathematical sciences and in industry and FQRNT, the MITACS network, the National Re- and government. Among the highlights this year search Foundation, and the Clay Mathematics Insti- were the Eighth Canadian Summer School on an- tute. tum Information, the SIAM Conference on the Life Sciences, and, continuing a tradition started a year earlier, the Second Montreal Industrial Problem Solv- Peter Russell ing Workshop. In its outreach program, the CRM series of “Grandes Conférences” continued to great acclaim.
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core of each year’s scientific program at the CRM is its thematic program. In 2008 – 2009 the CRM T organized a ematic Year on Probabilistic Methods in Mathematical Physics, one of the most ambitious CRM thematic programs ever held, the first workshop beginning on June 2, 2008, and the last one ending on June 13, 2009. Preparatory courses for this thematic year were already in progress as of January 2008. It was also carefully correlated with the CRM – PIMS Joint ematic Program on Challenges and Perspectives in Probability, which took place in the period May – September 2009. e CRM is very grateful to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for providing generous financial sup- port to the young American mathematicians who aended the activities of the thematic program in 2008 – 2009. e CRM is also grateful to the Clay Mathematics Institute, to NSERC, and to FQRNT for their support.
Thematic Programs of the Year 2008 – 2009 Probabilistic Methods in Mathematical Physics and Challenges and Perspectives in Probability
Randomness is present in nearly all physical mea- workshops, and the potential organizers; coordina- surements, and is an essential feature in the descrip- tion discussions with the organizers of the CRM – tion of any physical system in which there is un- PIMS Joint Program (Gordon Slade and David Bry- certainty in initial conditions or so many degrees of dges) also took place in the same period. freedom that a meaningful microscopic description is e Program Coordinators were assisted in the only possible in terms of averaged quantities. More- overall planning by the other members of the In- over, the probabilistic interpretation of measurement ternational Scientific Commiee. is consisted of lies at the very root of the quantum description of na- four Canadians (John Harnad, Pavel Winternitz and ture. A probabilistic characterization of states, both Yvan Saint-Aubin, both from CRM and the Univer- in classical and quantum statistical mechanics, in or sité de Montréal, and David Brydges, from PIMS and out of equilibrium, forms a central part of contempo- the University of British Columbia), four researchers rary theoretical physics, from microscopic to galac- from the United States (Craig Tracy, from the Univer- tic scales. It is especially important in the domain of sity of California, Davis, Pavel Bleher, Charles New- condensed maer theory. e phases of maer, crit- man, from the Courant Institute, NYU, and Steve ical phenomena, localization phenomena, magneti- Zelditch), and three researchers from Europe (Jean- zation, conductivity, heat capacity, disordered sys- Bernard Zuber, from the Université Pierre et Marie tems, radiation and absorption, and even the very Curie, Alice Guionnet, from the École normale supé- basis of quantum field theory all involve concepts de- rieure de Lyon, and Herbert Spohn, from the Tech- rived from probability theory. nische Universität München). Coordination with the e idea of a thematic program in Mathemat- CRM – PIMS Joint ematic Program on Challenges ical Physics was originally proposed in September and Perspectives in Probability was the responsibil- 2005 by John Harnad, as CRM Mathematical Physics ity of Yvan Saint-Aubin and David Brydges, who Laboratory Director. is evolved, aer careful out- were on the scientific commiees of both programs. side consultation by then CRM Director François e purpose of the Program on Probabilistic Lalonde, solicitation of proposals, input from a va- Methods in Mathematical Physics was to represent riety of sources, and joint discussions, into the e- the state of the art in several currently very active matic Program on Probabilistic Methods in Mathe- areas of research within this broad domain, empha- matical Physics. Actual planning of the program be- sizing the interactions between them. Besides pro- gan in early May 2006, with the selection of the Pro- viding a vehicle for communicating the most signif- gram Coordinators: Pavel Bleher (Indiana Univer- icant new research results in these areas, the prin- sity – Purdue University Indianapolis), John Harnad cipal objectives included: (1) giving an opportunity (CRM & Concordia University) and Steve Zelditch for cross-fertilization between the different special- (Johns Hopkins University). e full scientific com- ties represented; (2) stimulating new ideas through miee of eleven members was assembled by the end such cross-fertilization; and (3) providing an envi- of June 2006, at which time John Harnad assumed ronment in which young researchers might learn the role of Chairman of the Scientific Commiee. about and be encouraged to contribute to the excit- Discussions also began in June regarding the de- ing new developments in these domains. e pro- tailed content of the thematic year, the topics of gram consisted of: ten research workshops between
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June 2008 and June 2009, each lasting one week, ematic Program. e first, entitled Introduction grouped so as to maximize constructive interactions to Tau Functions and their Applications, was given between them; three Aisenstadt Chair lecture series by John Harnad and lasted throughout the semester coordinated with the workshops; twenty-three visits (from January to May 2008), with two further lec- by long-term visitors staying at the CRM for dura- tures given by Marco Bertola (Concordia University). tions of between two and ten weeks; several prepara- e second, entitled Modèles statistiques en deux di- tory lecture courses for advanced graduate students mensions, théorie des amps conformes, et équation de and young researchers on topics related to the work- Sramm-Loewner, was given by Yvan Saint-Aubin shops; and five postdoctoral research fellowships for twice weekly from January to April 2008. e third young mathematicians based at the CRM, working course, entitled Random Matrices and Exactly Solv- within the Mathematical Physics group during the able Models of Statistical Meanics, was given by year (June 2008 – June 2009). Pavel Bleher, one of the Coordinators of the ematic ree Special Preparatory Courses were offered Year (August 12 – 14 and September 8 – 25, 2008). at the CRM in 2008 as part of the CRM 2008 – 2009
Aisenstadt Chairholders in 2008 – 2009: Svante Janson, Wendelin Werner, Andreï Okounkov, and Craig Tracy
e Aisenstadt Chairholder for the CRM – PIMS Joint gives a precise description of the nature of the phase ematic Program on Challenges and Perspectives transition in random graphs when the edge probabil- in Probability was Svante Janson (Uppsala Univer- ities are about 1/n. Janson is also known for his anal- sity). e Aisenstadt Chairholders for the ematic yses and ingenious proof methods of many newer Year on Probabilistic Methods in Mathematical Physics random graph models that are being created to ex- were Wendelin Werner (Université Paris-Sud 11), plain social, web, computer, and other networks. Andreï Okounkov (Princeton University), and Craig On October 17, 2008, at the CRM, Professor Jan- Tracy (University of California, Davis). son gave a lecture geared towards a general audience and entitled Random Graphs: New Models and the In- Svante Janson ternet. In that lecture, he explained that the classical Admied to Uppsala University at the age of thir- graph models are oen too homogeneous to be good teen, Svante Janson received his BA at the age of approximations, in particular of web graphs. is ob- fourteen and his doctoral degree in functional anal- servation has been a source of inspiration for random ysis on his 22nd birthday in 1977. is was followed graph theorists and led to the introduction of new by a second doctoral degree in probability theory in random graph models in order to mimic the Internet 1984, all at Uppsala University, where he was ap- or similar graphs. Professor Janson also gave three pointed professor in 1985. He had a bicephalous ca- technical lectures (on October 20, 21, and 23, respec- reer, making a mark in functional analysis starting tively), in which he discussed several different mod- with his influential 1981 paper Minimal and Maxi- els of random graphs. e emphasis of these lectures mal methods of Interpolation in the Journal of Func- was on the existence of a giant component, the ver- tional Analysis, and moving into probability theory tex degree distribution, and the susceptibility (mean and its applications in combinatorics, random struc- size of the component containing a random vertex). tures, and algorithms during the last three decades. We refer the reader to the Spring 2009 issue of Le Bul- He was awarded several prizes, including the presti- letin du CRM for a detailed description of Professor gious Göran Gustafsson Prize in 1992. Janson’s lectures. He has wrien over 200 papers and four books. Wendelin Werner Probability theorists know his books Poisson Approx- imation (with Andrew D. Barbour and Lars Holst, Wendelin Werner is an expert in probability theory. 1992), and Random Graphs (with Tomasz Luczak and He obtained his doctorate in 1993 under the supervi- Andrzej Rucinski, 2000) very well. In the field of sion of Jean-François Le Gall. He has been a profes- random graphs, which was created in 1959 by Erdős sor in the Laboratoire de mathématiques of the Uni- and Rényi, many consider Janson’s 126-page paper versité Paris-Sud 11, in Orsay, since 1997, and at the e Birth of the Giant Component (1993, with Knuth, École normale supérieure since 2005. With his col- Luczak, and Piel) one of the finest ever wrien. It laborators Greg Lawler and Oded Schramm, he has
9 C shown that the probability of two mutually avoiding etry and ideas of high energy physics, it can be ap- planar random walks decreases as n−5/8 (where n is plied to the most diverse areas of mathematics.” the walks’ length) and has determined the Hausdorff Professor Okounkov gave four Aisenstadt Chair 4 dimension (= 3 ) of the exterior boundary of planar lectures on the Algebra and Geometry of Random Sur- Brownian motion. Werner’s work on the Stochas- faces, on September 9, 11, 12, and 15, respectively. tic Loewner Equation and sets of conformal loops He also gave two lectures on the Noncommutative have already had a deep impact on the mathemati- Geometry of Planar Dimers within the framework of cal description of critical phenomena in two dimen- the Workshop on Random Tilings, Random Parti- sions. Werner was awarded the Prize of the Euro- tions and Stochastic Growth Processes (see below). pean Mathematical Society in 2000, the Fermat Prize We refer the reader to the Fall 2008 issue of Le Bul- in 2001, the Loève Prize in 2005, and the Pólya Prize letin du CRM for a detailed description of Professor in 2006. In 2006 he became the first probabilist to be Okounkov’s lectures. awarded the Fields medal. Craig Tracy On August 1st, 2008, Wendelin Werner gave a lecture geared towards a general audience and en- Craig Tracy was Professor at Dartmouth College titled Transitions de phase et invariance conforme en before joining the University of California, Davis mécanique statistique bidimensionnelle. He also gave in 1984. He is currently Distinguished Profes- two more technical lectures (on August 12 and Au- sor of Mathematics at the University of California, gust 13, respectively), on the (a)symmetry or random Davis. In his joint work with Wu, McCoy, and interfaces. In his three lectures Professor Werner ad- Barouch, he discovered an important connection be- dressed the following issues and problems (among tween exactly solvable statistical models, like the others): phase transitions, critical phenomena, the Ising model, and classical integrable systems, in par- universality hypothesis, the conformal invariance ticular the Painlevé transcendants. In more recent hypothesis, and the Stochastic Loewner Equation. years, in collaboration with Harold Widom, he ob- Professor Werner’s lectures were closely related to tained many crucial results on the theory of Fred- the topics of the Workshop on Stochastic Loewner holm and Toeplitz determinants, and random matrix Evolution and Scaling Limits (see p. 12). We refer the theory. ey introduced a new class of distributions, reader to the Fall 2008 issue of Le Bulletin du CRM for now called the Tracy – Widom distributions, govern- a detailed description of Professor Werner’s lectures. ing the eigenvalues at the edge of the spectrum in the large N limit. ese turned out to be ”univer- Andreï Okounkov sal” in the sense that they also underlie the statistics Andreï Okounkov was born in Moscow in 1969 and of the longest increasing subsequence problem, sev- is now a professor at Princeton University. He was eral tiling problems, and various growth models. In awarded the Prize of the European Mathematical So- 2002 he shared the George Pólya Prize with his long- ciety in 2004 and the Fields Medal in 2006. When Ok- time collaborator Harold Widom, and in 2007 he ounkov was awarded the laer at the 2006 Interna- shared the AMS – SIAM Norbert Wiener Prize with tional Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid, Gio- the same collaborator. He is a member of the Amer- vanni Felder said: “Andreï Okounkov’s initial area of ican Academy of Arts and Sciences. research was group representation theory, with par- e third Aisenstadt Chair lecture series relating ticular emphasis on combinatorial and asymptotic to the ematic Program on Probabilistic Methods in aspects. He used this subject as a starting point to Mathematical Physics was given in March 2009 by obtain spectacular results in many different areas of Professor Tracy. Professor Tracy was also present at mathematics and mathematical physics, from com- the Workshop on Random Matrices (see below), an plex and real algebraic geometry to statistical me- area in which he has been a pioneering contributor. chanics, dynamical systems, probability theory and His Aisenstadt Chair Lectures were on the general topological string theory. e research of Okounkov theme e Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process and has its roots in very basic notions such as partitions, Integrable Models in Statistical Physics. e titles and which form a recurrent theme in his work… at its dates of his three lectures are: e Asymmetric Sim- core (is) the idea that partitions and other notions of ple Exclusion Process: Integrable Structure and Limit representation theory should be considered as ran- eorems. I (March 3, 2009); e Asymmetric Simple dom objects with respect to natural probability mea- Exclusion Process: Integrable Structure and Limit e- sures. is idea was further developed by Okounkov, orems. II (March 5, 2009); Integrable Models in Statis- who showed that, together with insights from geom-
10 T P tical Physics and Associated Universality Conjectures mann, Marcos Moshinsky, Sybren de Groot, Donald (March 6, 2009). Knuth, Jacques-Louis Lions, R. Tyrrell Rockafellar, Yuval Ne′eman, Gian-Carlo Rota, Laurent Schwartz, Aisenstadt Chair Gérard Debreu, Philip Holmes, Ronald Graham, e Aisenstadt Chair was endowed by Montréal phi- Robert Langlands, Yuri Manin, Jerrold Marsden, lanthropist Dr. André Aisenstadt. Under its aus- Dan Voiculescu, James Arthur, Eugene B. Dynkin, pices, one or more distinguished mathematicians David P. Ruelle, Robert Bryant, Blaine Lawson, Yves are invited each year for a period of at least one Meyer, Ioannis Karatzas, László Babai, Efim I. Zel- week, ideally one or two months. During their manov, Peter Hall, Sir David Cox, Frans Oort, Joel S. stay the lecturers present a series of lectures on Feldman, Roman Jackiw, Duong H. Phong, Michael S. a specialized topic. ey are also invited to pre- Waterman, Arthur T. Winfree, Edward Frenkel, Lau- pare a monograph (see the section Publications for rent Lafforgue, George Lusztig, László Lovász, Endre a list of these monographs). At the request of Szemerédi, Peter Sarnak, Shing-Tung Yau, omas Dr. Aisenstadt, the first lecture given by an Aisen- Yizhao Hou, Andrew J. Majda, Manjul Bhargava, stadt Chairholder should be accessible to a wide au- K. Soundararajan, Terence Tao, Noga Alon, Paul Sey- dience. Previous holders of the Aisenstadt Chair mour, Richard Stanley, John J. Tyson, John Rinzel, are: Marc Kac, Eduardo Zarantonello, Robert Her- Gerhard Huisken, and Jean-Christophe Yoccoz.
Workshops of the Thematic Year on Probabilistic Methods in Mathemat- ical Physics
Mathematical Aspects of antum Chaos of view; some were more mathematical and others June 2 – 6, 2008, CRM more physical. ese differing points of view of- ten gave rise to animated discussions at the end of Organizers: the sessions. New questions were formulated by Nalini Anantharaman (École Polytechnique), Sté- the “physicists” to be considered by the “mathemati- phane Nonnenmacher (CEA/Saclay), Zeev Rudnick cians,” and vice versa. e participants made good (Tel Aviv), Steve Zelditch (Johns Hopkins) use of the pauses between the sessions to engage in Speakers: discussions. e numerous young participants espe- Arnd Bäcker (TU Dresden), Alex Barne (Dart- cially benefited from these discussions and debates. mouth), Gregory Berkolaiko (Texas A&M), Eugène ere were also six poster presentations in the cof- Bogomolny (Paris-Sud 11), Jens Bolte (Royal Hol- fee room during the course of the workshop. e loway), Peter A. Braun (Duisburg-Essen), Shimon interested reader can find a more detailed account of Brooks (Princeton), Hans Christianson (MIT), Mirko this workshop in the Fall 2008 issue of Le Bulletin du Degli Esposti (Bologna), Frédéric Faure (Joseph Fou- CRM. rier), Boris Gutkin (Duisburg-Essen), Hamid Hezari (Johns Hopkins), Dmitry Jakobson (McGill), Jona- Integrable antum Systems and Solvable than Keating (Bristol), Dubi Kelmer (Chicago), Pär Statistical Mechanical Models Kurlberg (KTH), Dan Mangoubi (Montréal), Sebas- June 30 – July 5, 2008, CRM tian Müller (Bristol), Iosif Polterovich (Montréal), Organizers: Roman Schubert (Bristol), Lior Silberman (UBC), Alexander Its (IUPUI), Michio Jimbo (Tokyo), Jean- Alexander Strohmaier (Loughborough), Gregor Tan- Michel Maillet (ÉNS Lyon), Bruno Nachtergaele (UC ner (Noingham), John A. Toth (McGill), Igor Wig- Davis) man (KTH), Maciej Zworski (UC Berkeley) Speakers: Number of participants: 48 Ian K. Affleck (UBC), Boyka Aneva (INRNE), The twenty-six speakers represented the broad Vladimir Bazhanov (ANU), Pavel M. Bleher (IUPUI), orientations that are current in the domain of an- Jean-Sébastien Caux (Amsterdam), Alexandre Farib- tum Chaos: the problem of unique quantum ergod- ault (Amsterdam), Frank Göhmann (Wuppertal), icity; quantum graphs; spectral statistics and con- John Harnad (Concordia), Mahew B. Hastings (Los nections with random matrices; resonances and dif- Alamos), Michio Jimbo, Nikolai Kitanine (Cergy- fusion; zeros of eigenfunctions; weakly chaotic sys- Pontoise), Vladimir E. Korepin (Stony Brook), Chris- tems; arithmetic aspects; and numerical aspects. e tian Korff (Glasgow), Karol Kozlowski (ÉNS Lyon), speakers approached the subject from various points
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Jean-Michel Maillet, Pierre Mathieu (Laval), Barry Organizers: McCoy (Stony Brook), Francesco Mezzadri (Bristol), John Cardy (Oxford), Charles Newman (Courant Bruno Nachtergaele, William Orrick (Indiana), Yvan Inst.), Wendelin Werner (Paris-Sud 11) Saint-Aubin (Montréal), Lea F. dos Santos (Yeshiva), Speakers: Jun’ichi Shiraishi (Tokyo), Robert Sims (Arizona), Fe- omas Alberts (Toronto), Robert Bauer (UIUC), dor Smirnov (UPMC), Shannon Lee Starr (Rochester), Vincent Beffara (ÉNS Lyon), Denis Bernard (ÉNS), Véronique Terras (ÉNS Lyon; CNRS), Jörg Teschner Ilia Binder (Toronto), Federico Camia (VU Am- (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchroton), Pavel Winter- sterdam), John Cardy, Benjamin Doyon (Durham), nitz (Montréal), Paul Zinn-Justin (Paris-Sud 11) Julien Dubedat (Chicago), Bertrand Duplantier Number of participants: 68 (CEA/Saclay), Clément Hongler (Genève), Nam- During the last few years, various new develop- Gyu Kang (Caltech), Tom Kennedy (Arizona), Kalle ments have taken place in the field of quantum inte- Kytölä (Paris-Sud 11), Gregory Lawler (Chicago), grable systems. One of the major issues that stands Yves Le Jan (UPMC), Nikolai Makarov (Caltech), out is the exact description of correlation functions. Pierre Mathieu (Laval), Alexi Morin-Duchesne Important progress has been made in the long dis- (Montréal), Pierre Nolin (ÉNS), Yvan Saint-Aubin tance asymptotics for correlation functions in inte- (Montréal), Oded Schramm (Microso Research), grable spin chains. Understanding the short distance Sco Sheffield (Courant Inst.), Jacob Simmons (Ox- structure has advanced, and exact formulas have ford), Stanislav Smirnov (Genève), David B. Wilson been derived for dynamical and finite temperature (Microso Research), Dapeng Zhan (Yale) cases. Progress on correlation functions and form Number of participants: 57 factors has resulted in direct applications to con- In recent years, the most interesting develop- densed maer systems. In integrable quantum field ments in the theory of two-dimensional critical phe- theory, important work has been carried out for the nomena have emerged from a new field that might be vacuum expectation values of local fields and in the called Conformal Probability eory, which comple- theory of Q-operators and its relation to ODEs and ments the extensive work on Conformal Field e- classical integrable systems. Aside from these “tra- ory that started in the physics community in the ditional” topics, the emerging role of integrable sys- 1970s. Substantial progress has been made in un- tems in various other fields has been revealed, oen derstanding the random fractal geometry of such in a quite unexpected manner. e relevant topics two-dimensional systems as critical percolation and range over such diverse areas as quantum entangle- critical Ising models, and their relation with such ment, combinatorics, integrable stochastic processes classic probabilistic objects as the frontier of two- and growth models. dimensional Brownian motion. Among the topics Altogether, twenty-three one-hour invited lec- covered in this workshop were: SLE and its Ex- tures were given. ere were also four contributed tensions, Critical and Near-Critical Scaling Limits, talks (each lasting 30 minutes) and a poster session. Gaussian Free Field, Coulomb Gas Methods, Relation e topics of the lectures ranged over various as- to Conformal Field eory and antum Gravity. pects of integrable spin chains and field theory mod- Everyone present felt that this was one of the els, such as correlation functions, time dynamics, en- best workshops ever to have taken place on the excit- tanglement entropy, ordering of energy levels, loop ing topic of SLE and scaling limits, with an excellent models and combinatorics, quantum geometry and mixture of mathematicians, mathematical physicists sinh-Gordon field theory. e highlight of the work- and theoretical physicists. One of the most valu- shop was a report on the long-awaited derivation of able participants in the meeting, Oded Schramm (the the long distance asymptotics of the spin-spin cor- inventor of the Schramm Loewner Evolution), gave relation functions of the XXZ model. is is a ma- two excellent talks and was very pleased with the jor breakthrough in this field of mathematics and at- workshop. Tragically, he died in an accident about tracted a great deal of aention from the audience. three weeks later, while hiking on a mountain ridge, e atmosphere of the workshop was very friendly not far from his home in Washington State. is was and interactive and the high-quality talks stimulated a great loss for mathematics and it is with great re- lively discussions among the participants. gret that we note that our SLE workshop may have been the last international meeting he aended. Stochastic Loewner Evolution and Scaling Laplacian Growth and Related Topics Limits August 18 – 23, 2008, CRM August 4 – 9, 2008, CRM
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Organizers: orous connections with the problems of Laplacian Nikolai Makarov (Caltech), Paul Wiegmann growth, and immediately aer the talk, Gustafsson (Chicago) and other experts in Laplacian growth recognized Speakers: familiar structures and suggested important com- Artem Abanov (Texas A&M), Oded Agam (HUJI), plementary results. Ameur and Hedenmalm, and Yacin Ameur (KTH), Ferenc Balogh (Concordia), Balogh and Harnad, have made substantial progress Dmitry Belyaev (Princeton), Marco Bertola (Con- in the study of eigenvalues of random normal ma- cordia), Darren Crowdy (Imperial College Lon- trices. ey provided mathematical proofs for sev- don), Ilya Gruzberg (Chicago), Bjorn Gustafs- eral fundamental facts first discovered at the physical son (KTH), John Harnad (Concordia), Haakan level by Wiegmann and Zabrodin. Belyaev, Rohde Hedenmalm (KTH), Dmitry Khavinson (South and Zinsmeister talked about various growth models Florida), Dmitry Korotkin (Concordia), Gregory such as random snowflakes and a version of the Hast- Lawler (Chicago), Seung-Yeop Lee (Montréal), Li- ings – Levitov model. ey collectively presented onel Levine (MIT), Igor Loutsenko (SISSA), Irina new mathematical techniques that might turn out to Markina (Bergen), Kenneth McLaughlin (Arizona), be effective in the analysis of DLA-type growth. Mark Mineev-Weinstein (Los Alamos), Alexan- New aspects and several unexpected applications der Orlov (Shirshov Inst.), Yuval Peres (UC Berke- of Laplacian growth were discussed in the talks of ley), Aleix Prats-Ferrer (Montréal), Mihai Putinar Khavinson, Lawler, Putinar and Sodin. Zabrodin, (UCSB), Steffen Rohde (Washington), Edward B. Saff Takebe and Tasaki presented their new results re- (Vanderbilt), Yvan Saint-Aubin (Montréal), Mikhail lated to the connection between Laplacian growth Sodin (Tel Aviv), Kanhehisa Takasaki (Kyoto), and integrable dispersionless hierarchies. Teodor- Takashi Takebe (Ochanomizu), Răzvan Teodorescu escu, Agam, and Mineev discussed new applications (Los Alamos), Alexander Vasiliev (Bergen), Anton of Laplacian growth in hydrodynamics. Especially Zabrodin (ITEP), Michel Zinsmeister (Orléans) noticeable are weak solutions and shocks in vis- Number of participants: 53 cous Hele – Shaw flow and Rayleigh – Taylor insta- The workshop was devoted to mathematical as- bilities on the boundary of evaporating thin films pects of Laplacian growth. A broad class of non- on a wet surface. Several important open ques- equilibrium growth processes have a common law: tions and specific conjectures were formulated dur- the normal velocity of the growing boundary of a re- ing the workshop, in particular, concerning general gion is proportional to the gradient of a harmonic one-component plasma ensembles and zeros of or- field on the exterior. is type of growth (called thogonal polynomials. is workshop was one of the Laplacian growth) is unstable for nearly all initial most representative and interesting events in Lapla- configurations. Instabilities develop into fractal sin- cian growth in recent years. ere are already sev- gular paerns. Similar instabilities occur in the hy- eral plans to organize follow-up meetings. drodynamics of immiscible fluids. e workshop at- Random Matrices, Related Topics and tracted specialists from many areas of theoretical and Applications applied mathematics and physics: complex analysis August 25 – 30, 2008, CRM and approximation theory, random matrices, proba- bility theory and SLEs, conformal field theory, inte- Organizers: grable systems, fluid dynamics and condensed mat- Estelle Basor (AIM), Marco Bertola (Concordia), ter. e lectures covered a spectacular variety of top- Bertrand Eynard (CEA/Saclay), Alexander Its ics, techniques, and approaches. ere were many (IUPUI), Ken McLaughlin (Arizona) discussions and interdisciplinary interactions dur- Speakers: ing the conference. ere was also a strong degree Mark Adler (Brandeis), Gernot Akemann (Brunel), of overlap, both in terms of interests and partici- Alexei Borodin (Caltech), Robert Buckingham pants, between this workshop and subsequent work- (Michigan), Leonid Chekhov (Steklov Inst.), Yang shops (on Random Matrices and Random Growth Chen (Imperial College London), Tom Claeys (KU Processes, respectively). Leuven), Percy Dei (Courant Inst.), Jeffery DiFranco e scientific level of the talks was uniformly (Seale), Maurice Duits (KU Leuven), Ioana Du- outstanding. Here are some major developments. mitriu (Washington), Torsten Ehrhardt (UC Santa Perez and Levine reported on their work concern- Cruz), Nicholas M. Ercolani (Arizona), Alice Guion- ing internal DLA and some other related probabilis- net (ÉNS Lyon), Mourad Ismail (Central Florida), tic and dynamical models. ey established rig- Kurt Johansson (KTH), Igor V. Krasovsky (Brunel),
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Arno Kuijlaars (KU Leuven), Seung-Yeop Lee (Mont- To contribute to the cross-fertilization of ideas réal), Peter Miller (Michigan), Man Yue Mo (Bris- and foster exchanges among participants, the work- tol), Alexander Orlov (Shirshov Inst.), Aleix Prats- shop was preceded by the Workshop on Laplacian Ferrer (Montréal), Brian Rider (CU-Boulder), Nina Growth and Related Topics and followed by the Snaith (Bristol), Kim Spliorff (Copenhagen), Răz- Workshop on Random Tilings, Random Partitions van Teodorescu (Los Alamos), Pierre van Moerbeke and Stochastic Growth Processes, as well as the se- (UC Louvain), Harold Widom (UC Santa Cruz), Rod- ries of lectures by Fields medallist A. Okounkov. Sev- erick S.C. Wong (CityU Hong Kong), Jean-Bernard eral participants chose to extend their stay to include Zuber (UPMC) all three of these events, or at least two. Number of participants: 88 Random Tilings, Random Partitions and This workshop focused on recent advances in the Stochastic Growth Processes asymptotic spectral theory of random matrices, con- September 1 – 5, 2008, CRM nections with (multi-)orthogonal polynomials, Rie- mann – Hilbert and d-bar methods, relations to ran- Organizers: dom surface growth, beta ensembles, coupled chains Jinho Baik (Michigan), Alexei Borodin (Caltech), of random matrices, computational methods, combi- Bernard Nienhuis (Amsterdam), Nicolai Reshetikhin natorics and moduli space theory of Riemann sur- (UC Berkeley), Herbert Spohn (TU München). faces, algebraic geometry, theory of isomonodromic Speakers: deformations, number theory, Brownian motion, Gérard Ben Arous (Courant Inst.), Cédric Boutil- Airy and Pearcey processes, critical behaviour in lier (UPMC), Mihai Ciucu (Georgia Tech), Filippo non-intersecting path ensembles, gap probabilities, Colomo (INFN), Nicolas Destainville (Paul Sabatier), linear statistics, higher-order analogs of Tracy – Patrick Ferrari (Weierstraß-Institut), Jason Fulman Widom distributions, simple exclusion processes, (Southern California), Vadim Gorin (MGU), Kurt Jo- outpost colonization, entanglement, graphical enu- hansson (KTH), Christian Kraenthaler (Wien), Jef- meration, Fisher – Hartwig asymptotics, fermionic frey Kuan (Caltech), Sevak Mkrtchyan (UC Berke- representation of partition functions and correlators, ley), Taro Nagao (Nagoya), Eric Nordenstam (KTH), and applications to diverse fields (zeros and moments Andreï Okounkov (Princeton), Grigori Olshanski of L-functions, growth processes, black holes, and (IITP), Aleksandr Orlov (Shirshov Inst.), Eric M. QCD). Rains (Caltech), Nicolai Reshetikhin, Tomohiro e topics covered included: asymptotic spec- Sasamoto (Chiba), Senya Shlosman (CPT), Evgeny tral theory of random matrices (Akemann, Ehrhardt, Strahov (HUJI), Mirjana Vuletic (Caltech) Teodorescu, Lee, Duits); non invariant matrix mod- Number of participants: 50 els (Johannson, Bender); (multi)critical univer- Tiling problems have a long tradition in combina- sality classes (Claeys, Lee); random matrix the- torics and in statistical mechanics. One of the central ory and high-energy physics (Akemann, Splior); problems is to understand the statistical structure of asymptotics of determinants (Dei, Krasovsky); the paerns obtained when tiling a large domain ran- total integrals and statistical laice applications domly. As noticed by N. Elkies and J. Propp a decade (DiFranco, Buckingham, Mo); connection with ago, random tilings of a large planar domain may (multi-)orthogonal polynomials (Wong, Duits, exhibit phase segregation; the density of tiles has Chen); combinatorics (Ercolani); number theory a smooth (non-constant) variation in some regions (Snaith); numerical analysis (Dumitriu); Dyson pro- of the domain while in a so-called frozen region the cesses (Adler, van Moerbeke, Kuijlaars); random density of tiles is constant. In the corresponding sur- surfaces (Borodin); discrete and continuous ran- face picture, the frozen region corresponds to a facet dom processes (Widom, Adler, van Moerbeke, Kui- of constant slope, while its complement corresponds jlaars); topological expansions (Chekhov, Prats- to a rounded surface. Ferrer). irty-seven talks were scheduled; accom- In a very influential paper of 1986, M. Kar- modating all the speakers while maintaining a rea- dar, G. Parisi and Y. C. Zhang introduced growth sonable schedule was quite a challenge, leaving one processes of random deposition type without sur- aernoon only for spontaneous interaction. Reac- face diffusion. A particular and much studied one- tions of the participants, speakers and non-speakers, dimensional model is the corner growth model with were extremely positive; several participants re- discrete time updating, which is isomorphic to the in- marked on the uniformly high level of the lectures. terface in the dimer tiling of the Aztec diamond. e stochastic growth of the line separating the frozen
14 T P from the non-frozen region is induced by the random Speakers: shuffling algorithm, which from a tiling of a domain Stefan Adams (Warwick), Yaniv Almog (Louisiana of linear size N generates a corresponding tiling of a State), Jean-Bernard Bru (Wien), Yvan Castin (ÉNS), domain of linear size N + 1 with the correct statisti- Michele Correggi (SNS), Teunis C. Dorlas (IAS), cal weight. László Erdős (München), Soeren Fournais (Aarhus), During the last decade there has been enor- Christian Hainzl (Alabama at Birmingham), Dieter mous progress in elucidating the picture and this Jaksch (Oxford), Robert L. Jerrard (Toronto), Eduard- workshop gave an opportunity to present both an Wilhelm Kirr (UIUC), Ellio H. Lieb (Princeton), overview and a detailed account of many of these Vieri Mastropietro (Tor Vergata), Bruno Nachter- developments. One of these developments is the fact gaele (UC Davis), Manfred Salmhofer (Leipzig), Ben- that for the random tiling of a domain in the trian- jamin Schlein (Cambridge), Robert Seiringer (Prince- gular laice by rhombi (dimer models on the hexag- ton), Jan Philip Solovej (Copenhagen), András Sütő onal laice), the limit shapes are algebraic curves (RISSP), Hiroshi Tamura (Kanazawa), Daniel Ueltschi (R. Kenyon, A. Okounkov). In the non-frozen re- (Warwick), Jun Yin (Harvard) gion the fluctuations in such models have the statis- Number of participants: 55 tics of a massless Gaussian free field (R. Kenyon). The physics of ultracold quantum gases and With the exception of singular points the borderline Bose – Einstein condensation is currently a very ac- separating the frozen and non-frozen regions is gov- tive field of both experimental and theoretical re- erned by the Airy process (M. Prähofer, H. Spohn, search worldwide. Unveiling the fascinating proper- A. Okounkov, N. Reshetikhin). At singular points ties of such quantum many-body systems by rigor- the fluctuations are described by the Pearcy process ous mathematical analysis is an important and dif- and similar determinantal processes (A. Okounkov, ficult challenge for mathematical physics. Consid- N. Reshetikhin). erable progress has been made in recent years, in- As noted by K. Johansson these stochastic pro- volving a variety of mathematical techniques such cesses are closely related to the asymptotics of dis- as spectral theory of partial differential operators crete orthogonal polynomials. ere has been an in- with a large number of variables, nonlinear partial creased understanding of the deep connection (noted differential equations, random walks on laices and first by Johansson) between tilings of particular do- functional integration. Several of the most basic mains and one-dimensional KPZ growth. is dis- questions are still unanswered, however, and there covery triggered an explosion of related results, in is much to be learned. e workshop brought to- particular the central role of extended determinan- gether experts with different backgrounds to review tal processes, of Dyson’s Brownian motion and of the current status of mathematical results in the field low-rank perturbations of random matrices. New re- and to discuss new developments (where a mathe- sults confirmed the expectation that the structure of matical approach is fruitful). fluctuations holds for a much wider class of models. e topics covered included ultracold atoms and Tiling problems are also closely related to the theory Bose gases in low dimensions, variational meth- of random partitions and representation theory. is ods, determinants bounds, applications to fermionic is particularly evident for tilings of domains on a tri- many-body systems, laice models, spin chains, so angular laice by rhombi, developed and presented maer at high densities, probabilistic approaches to in the contributions of A. Borodin, A. Okounkov and many-body systems, relations to random point fields, G. Olshanski. e contents of this workshop were relations to random permutations, vortices in Bose – closely related to those of the two preceding ones Einstein condensates, the derivation of the Gross – and to the fascinating series of lectures by Aisenstadt Pitaevskii equation, correlations in Bose – Einstein Chair Andreï Okounkov (September 1 – 16, 2008). condensates and applications to superconductors. antum Many-Body Systems; Random Functions, Random Surfaces and Bose – Einstein Condensation Interfaces September 29 – October 4, 2008, CRM January 4 – 9, 2009, Hôtel Saint-Gabriel (Sainte- Adèle, ébec) Organizers: I. Michael Sigal (Toronto), Jan Philip Solovej (Copen- Organizers: hagen), Jakob Yngvason (Wien), Valentin Zagrebnov Dick Bond (Toronto), Michael R. Douglas (Stony (CPT) Brook), Sco Sheffield (Courant Inst.), Senya Shlos- man (CPT), Steve Zelditch (Johns Hopkins)
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Speakers: R. van de Weygaert and S. F. Shandarin presented Robert Adler (Technion), Ben Baugher (Johns theoretical results, numerical simulations, and data Hopkins), Pavel M. Bleher (IUPUI), Dick Bond, on the distribution of maer. Pogosyan presented Jean-Dominique Deuschel (TU Berlin), Michael a mathematically convincing picture whereby the R. Douglas (Stony Brook), Bertrand Duplantier ridges or filaments were concentrated along the di- (CEA/Saclay), Tadahisa Funaki (Tokyo), Yan V. rections where the gradient of the random field is Fyodorov (Noingham), Richard Kenyon (Brown), an eigenvector of its Hessian. M. R. Douglas gave Konstantin Khanin (Toronto), Semyon Klevtsov a survey of questions and results pertaining to the (ULB), Lev Kofman (Toronto), Manjunath Krish- landscape problem in string theory and in chaotic napur (Toronto), Jason Miller (Stanford), Sergei inflation, which raises a number of problems he has Nechaev (Paris-Sud 11), Dmitri Pogosyan (Alberta), studied with his collaborators S. Ashok, F. Denef, B. Sergei F. Shandarin (Kansas), Sco Sheffield, Senya Shiffman, and S. Zelditch. Shlosman, Mikhail Sodin (Tel Aviv), Rien van de e talks by Richard Kenyon, Pavel Bleher, and Weygaert (Groningen), Igor Wigman (KTH), Steve Senya Shlosman dealt with random surfaces aris- Zelditch ing in certain exactly solvable models. K. Khanin Number of participants: 28 discussed problems related to directed polymers in The workshop was interdisciplinary, with par- quasi-stationary random potentials. Such potentials ticipants ranging from researchers in astrophysics correspond to disordered systems interacting with a to string theory to statistical mechanics to probabil- chaotic external field. Sergei Nechaev computed the ity and geometry. It was mainly devoted to random asymptotic distribution of scaled height in various fields such as Gaussian random fields. Motivated by (1 + 1)-dimensional anisotropic ballistic deposition such physical models as (i) the large scale maer dis- models. Finally there were several talks on the more tribution in the universe or (ii) landscape statistics in “geometric” aspects of smooth random surfaces, such string theory or (iii) the random wave model in quan- as those defined by random holomorphic polynomi- tum chaos or (iv) limit shapes of phase interfaces in als or power series in several variables or by real statistical mechanics, the workshop largely focused Gaussian random fields on Riemannian manifolds. on the zeros or critical points of random fields. e interested reader can find a detailed account of Examples of random functions or random sur- this workshop in the Spring 2009 issue of Le Bulletin faces arising in nature include: the surface of the du CRM. sea in heavy weather, the cosmic microwave radia- Interacting Stochastic Particle Systems tion background, the electric field intensity of a laser May 18 – 23, 2009, CRM speckle paern, and random noise in signals. e initial maer distribution of the universe was mod- Organizers: elled as a Gaussian random function by Ya. B. Zel- Kostya Khanin (Toronto), Joel Lebowitz (Rutgers), dovich in the 1970s. Random surfaces also play a Jeremy astel (Toronto), Timo Seppäläinen (Wis- central role in string theory and M-theory. ey consin – Madison) are also used to model the early universe in current Speakers: string theory and quantum gravity. In another di- Kenneth Alexander (Southern California), Gideon rection they arise as interfaces in statistical mechan- Amir (Toronto), Amine Asselah (UPEC), Már- ics. For mathematicians, a focal point was the recent ton Balázs (BUTE), Cédric Bernardin (ÉNS Lyon), work of Duplantier-Sheffield giving a rigorous defi- Lorenzo Bertini (La Sapienza), Eric Cator (TU Del), nition of Polyakov’s Liouville field theory and a proof Ivan Corwin (Courant Inst.), Antonius Dieker (Geor- of the so-called KPZ formula. (Liouville theory is a gia Tech), János Engländer (UCSB), Davide Gabrielli theory of random metrics on a Riemann surface.) (Aquila), Alessandro Giuliani (Roma Tre), Ilie Grig- e astrophysicists spoke largely about the dis- orescu (Miami), Stefan Grosskinsky (Warwick), Mo- tribution of “maer” in the universe. e evolution har Guha (Michigan), Dmitry Ioffe (Technion), Min in time of the maer distribution is oen modelled as Kang (NC State), Kay Kirkpatrick (MIT), Tobias Kuna the evolution of Gaussian random initial data under (Reading), Claudio Landim (IMPA), Stefano Olla the Euler-Poisson equation. e distribution seems (Paris-Dauphine), Aleksandr Orlov (Shirshov Inst.), to remain roughly Gaussian for a few hundred thou- Jonathon Peterson (Wisconsin – Madison), Alejan- sand years, but eventually gravitational araction dro F. Ramírez (PUC), Leonardo Rolla (ÉNS), Sun- causes maer to clump in non-Gaussian filamentary der Sethuraman (Iowa State), Bálint Tóth (BUTE), structures. Astrophysicists D. Bond, D. Pogosyan,
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Benedek Valkó (Wisconsin – Madison), Vladislav Arous, Éric Brunet (ÉNS), Jiří Černý (ETH Zü- Vysotsky (Delaware) rich), Pierluigi Contucci (Bologna), Amir Dembo Number of participants: 46 (Stanford), Silvio Franz (Paris-Sud 11), Yan V. Fyo- Statistical mechanics provides the formalism of dorov (Noingham), Véronique Gayrard (Provence; Gibbsian ensembles for computing properties of CNRS), Cristian Giardina (TU Eindhoven), Francesco equilibrium systems from a knowledge of the mi- Guerra (La Sapienza), Alexander Hartmann (Olden- croscopic interactions between the constituent par- burg), Kay Kirkpatrick (MIT), Nicola Kistler (Bonn), ticles. Our understanding of nonequilibrium sit- Jonathan Machta (UMass Amherst), Vincenzo Mari- uations is less satisfactory. In the field of inter- nari (La Sapienza), Andrea Montanari (Stanford), acting stochastic particle systems nonequilibrium Michael A. Moore (Manchester), Dmitry Panchenko questions are studied in simplified models that are (Texas A&M), Jeremy astel (Toronto), Mariya amenable to mathematically rigorous analysis. is V. Shcherbyna (ILTPE), Fabio Lucio Toninelli (ÉNS workshop brought together researchers from the Lyon), Peter A. Young (UC Santa Cruz) field of interacting stochastic particle systems and re- Number of participants: 42 lated areas to survey recent successes and to map out The workshop brought together a few dozens promising directions. of the leading international researchers in the the- Among these are the universality classes of fluc- ory of spin glasses and related systems. It was un- tuations in one-dimensional driven interacting par- usual in that it included scientists approaching the ticle systems. In addition to exact limit distributions problem from three different perspectives: theoret- found in special models, the correct order of fluctua- ical physics (in particular, the use of field theoreti- tions has been identified for a general class of asym- cal techniques), numerical simulation and analysis, metric exclusion processes. Another area of recent and rigorous mathematics. At their best the three progress is the large deviation behavior of nonequi- approaches complement and reinforce one another, librium stationary states in systems in contact with and each can provide insights for new directions in a reservoir. Interesting new constructions have been the other ones. is feedback was very much a part presented, such as multilayer systems that repre- of the workshop, and a significant component of its sent the stationary distributions of systems with sev- success. eral species of particles; direct connections between Each day included talks on a variety of subjects, queueing models, random walks, and combinatorial not only on spin glasses themselves but also topics methods have been developed. related to spin glasses: structural glasses, jamming, e talks presented at the workshop covered random matrices, graph theory, branching random many of the most active and important current re- walks, and other topics. ere were also long breaks search directions, such as: polymer models; fluctua- between the talks, however, to allow for discussion tions, second-class particles, and large deviations for and interaction. During these periods in particular exclusion processes, and related last-passage mod- some new collaborations began and new directions els; condensation in zero range processes; queu- were discussed. A gratifying and positive feature of ing networks; nonequilibrium thermodynamics; and the workshop was that it served not only to bring connections with integrable systems. e balance information on the latest results to a large and rep- between scheduled talks and time for free discus- resentative sample of the spin glass/disordered sys- sions allowed for a good deal of interaction between tems community, but it also led to animated dis- the participants, many of whom made new acquain- cussions and interactions among people whose ap- tances and had fruitful exchanges that are likely to proaches are fundamentally different. Such discus- lead to future collaborations. sions and collaborations could provide new seeds for substantial progress in the field over the next Disordered Systems: Spin Glasses few years. In particular, although the mathematical June 8 – 13, 2009, CRM proof of the ultrametricity of Gibbs measures of some Organizers: disordered systems is still missing, the workshop has Gérard Ben Arous (Courant Inst.), Erwin Bolthausen shown that the framework for understanding the (Zürich), Marc Mézard (Paris-Sud 11), Daniel Stein mathematical structure of Parisi’s replica symmetry (Courant Inst.) breaking might no longer be out of reach, and that Speakers: substantial progress might be achieved in the not too Louis-Pierre Arguin (Courant Inst.), Gérard Ben distant future.
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Workshops of the CRM – PIMS Joint Thematic Program on Challenges and Perspectives in Probability
e reader will find here reports on the workshops that took place at the CRM. We refer the reader to the site http://www.pims.math.ca/scientific/thematic-programs/challenges-and-perspectives-probability for more information on the Joint ematic Program.
Combinatorics, Randomization, a crystal-clear view of resilience parameters of ran- Algorithms, and Probability dom graphs, which are related to the number of May 4 – 8, 2009, CRM edges to be added or removed from a random graph in order to obtain or destroy a certain property. An- Organizers: other fruitful new avenue of research is the research Luigi Addario-Berry (Montréal), Luc Devroye on so-called Achlioptas processes, in which, contrary (McGill), Bruce Reed (McGill) to standard random graphs, edges are added one by Speakers: one, and at each step an edge must be selected from Dimitris Achlioptas (UC Santa Cruz), Nathanaël k randomly selected edges. e purpose is either to Berestycki (Cambridge), Nicolas Broutin (INRIA delay a certain graph property as long as possible, or Rocquencourt), Omar Fawzi (McGill), Pablo Au- to achieve it as soon as possible. Po-Shen Loh pre- gusto Ferrari (Buenos Aires), Kevin Ford (UIUC), sented a worked-out example. Other aspects of ran- Nikolaos Fountoulakis (MPI Informatik), Alan Frieze dom graphs were covered by Gábor Lugosi (longest (Carnegie Mellon), Christina Goldschmidt (Oxford), minimum-weight path), Alan Frieze, Tibor Szabó and Simon Griffiths (Montréal), Ravindran Kannan (Mi- Nikolaos Fountoulakis. N. Fountoulakis spoke about croso Research India), Peter Keevash (een the broadcasting process, in which an individual tells Mary), Jean-François Le Gall (Paris-Sud 11), Imre a rumour to two random neighhbours, who tell it to Leader (Cambridge), Po-Shen Loh (Princeton), Gábor two random neighbours, and so forth, until everyone Lugosi (ICREA & Pompeu Fabra), Jean-François Mar- has heard it. ckert (Bordeaux 1), Michael Molloy (Toronto), An- e organizers had scheduled one morning dedi- drea Montanari (Stanford), Ralph Neininger (Frank- cated to the important and useful topic of concentra- furt am Main), Lea Popovic (Concordia), Tibor Szabó tion inequalities and related techniques. Ravi Kan- (McGill), Van H. Vu (Rutgers), Johan Wästlund nan presented some new inequalities. Devda Dub- (Chalmers), Peter Winkler (Dartmouth) hashi (from the University of Gothenburg) could not Number of participants: 50 aend because the Canadian Embassy in Sweden Nearly every speaker gave the audience more failed to grant him a visa on time. Computer sci- open problems than solved ones, which is an indi- entists are stumped by the computational difficulty cation that the field of probabilistic combinatorics of k-SAT for k at least equal to 3. It is a prototype is healthy and developing! While no Fields medal- of the “hard” problems. Others include the so-called lists aended the workshop, they were there in spirit. constraint satisfaction problems. us it is important Jean-François Le Gall, ex-supervisor of Wendelin to understand why these problems are hard. Dim- Werner, introduced the constructions necessary to itris Achlioptas explained that in a strong sense, ran- define the continuous limit of random planar maps. domly generated instances of these problems have is is a far-reaching extension of the continuous lots of isolated solutions (or near-solutions); i.e., the limits for random trees found over a decade ago by solution set is not a blob, but resembles a set of stars Aldous and others, and this extension was also dealt in the sky. with in presentations by Christina Goldschmidt and Jean-François Marckert. e second virtual Fields New Directions in Random Spatial medal presentation was by Van H. Vu, who surveyed Processes the major recent results on random matrix theory, May 11 – 15, 2009, CRM most of which were obtained by himself and Terence Organizers: Tao (Fields medallist and professor at the University Omer Angel (UBC), Alexander Holroyd (UBC), Antal of California, Los Angeles). Járai (Bath) By far the most frequently mentioned object Speakers: was G(n, p), or Erdős – Rényi graph. Benny Su- Maria Deijfen (Stockholm), Pablo Augusto Ferrari dakov (University of California, Los Angeles) gave (Buenos Aires), Nina Gantert (Münster), Christina
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Goldschmidt (Oxford), Janko Gravner (UC Davis), • O. Angel, A. E. Holroyd, J. B. Martin, J. Propp: Dis- Geoffrey Grimme (Cambridge), Lionel Levine crete low-discrepancy sequences (arXiv:0910.1077); (MIT), James Martin (Oxford), Franz Merkl (Mün- • O. Angel, A. E. Holroyd: Rotor walks on general chen), Charles M. Newman (Courant Inst.), Robin trees; Pemantle (Pennsylvania), James Propp (UMass Low- • A. E. Holroyd, J. B. Martin, J. Wästlund: Percolation ell), Frank Redig (Leiden), Leonardo Rolla (ÉNS), games; Dan Romik (HUJI), Adam Timar (Bonn), Cristina • A. E. Holroyd, G. Grimme: Surfaces and embed- Toninelli (UPMC; CNRS), Bálint Tóth (BUTE), Bálint ding; Virág (Toronto), Johan Wästlund (Chalmers), David • O. Angel, J. B. Martin: eues and PASEP. B. Wilson (Microso Research), Peter Winkler (Dart- We now describe some of the most notable talks. mouth) Robin Pemantle spoke on an important new develop- Number of participants: 41 ing area at the intersection of probability and num- The goal of the workshop was to bring together ber theory, focusing particularly on probabilistic researchers from all over the world, in order to foster analysis of factorization algorithms. Lionel Levine collaboration in spatial stochastic models and expose spoke on surprising new results involving explosion graduate students and postdocs to emerging topics. versus stabilization in the celebrated Abelian sand- e workshop was generally agreed to be very suc- pile, one of the most mysterious cellular automaton cessful in all of these objectives. Twenty-two lec- models. Dan Romik’s talk contained beautiful new tures were held on a wide range of exciting and eclec- (and old) results concerning enumeration and shapes tic topics, with the speakers giving special emphasis of alternating sign matrices. Peter Winkler described to surprising new developments and accessible direc- a stunning recent piece of work on branched poly- tions for further research. Most talks had an audi- mers, revealing truly remarkable structure and regu- ence of between 40 and 50 people, with up to 60 at- larities in this model. Cristina Toninelli gave an ex- tendees for some lectures. A portion of the funding ample of a bootstrap-percolation model with a dis- was used to support young researchers who partic- continuous phase transition (a wonderful and com- ipated in the meeting. Ten postdocs and graduate pletely unexpected phenomenon!). students came specifically for this meeting, and oth- Johan Wästlund presented a remarkable new ap- ers were present for a longer period of time, since proach for the analysis of combinatorial optimization the meeting was part of a series of three workshops problems (such as minimal weight matchings and in probability and related fields. spanning trees) involving two-player games. is Many collaborations were either started or con- very appealing method already solves several prob- tinued during the meeting. Here are some of the lems for which no previous answer was known; it projects that have already led to preprints or are at also simplifies greatly the analysis in other prob- an advanced stage: lems. Geoffrey Grimme spoke on many fascinating • M. R. Hilario, O. Louidor, C. M. Newman, L. T. open problems, and some recent progress, concern- Rolla, S. Sheffield, V. Sidoravicius: Fixation for Dis- ing clairvoyant demons, dependent percolation, and tributed Clustering Processes (arXiv:0906.3154); random embedding. Bálint Virág presented a new • A. A. Járai, F. Redig, E. Saada: Zero dissipation limit approach for questions in group theory, via random in the Abelian sandpile model (arXiv:0906.3128); walks, which has enabled one to sele several open • L. Addario-Berry, N. Broutin, C. Goldschmidt: questions in group theory by probabilistic methods. Critical random graphs: limiting constructions and In summary, the workshop was successful in achiev- distributional properties (arXiv:0908.3629); ing the goals of showcasing important emerging top- • L. Addario-Berry, S. Griffiths, R. Kang: Inva- ics in spatial models, and facilitating collaborations. sion percolation on the Poisson-weighted infinite tree (arXiv:0912.0335);
Past Thematic Programs
e Centre de recherches mathématiques has orga- periods, and thematic activities. Here is a list of the nized thematic activities every year since 1993. From main activities organized by the CRM since 1987. 1987 to 1992, the CRM organized various types of January – June 2008 Dynamical Systems and Evo- activities, including special semesters, concentration lution Equations
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June – December 2007 Applied Dynamical Systems 1996 – 1997 Combinatorics and Group eory January – June 2007 Recent Advances in Combina- 1995 – 1996 Applied and Numerical Analysis torics 1994 – 1995 Geometry and Topology June – December 2006 Combinatorial Optimization 1993 – 1994 Dynamical Systems and Applications 2005 – 2006 Analysis in Number eory 1992 Probability and Stochastic Control (Special 2004 – 2005 e Mathematics of Stochastic and Mul- Semester) tiscale Modelling 1991 – 1992 Automorphic Forms in Number eory 2003 – 2004 Geometric and Spectral Analysis 1991 Operator Algebras (Special Semester) 2002 – 2003 Mathematics in Computer Science 1990 Nonlinear PDEs and Applications (Concentra- 2001 – 2002 Groups and Geometry tion Period) 2000 – 2001 Mathematical Methods in Biology and 1988 Shimura Varieties (Special Semester) Medicine 1987 antum Field eory (Special Semester) 1999 – 2000 Mathematical Physics 1987 – 1988 Fractals: eory and Application 1998 – 1999 Number eory and Arithmetic Geom- 1987 Structural Rigidity (Special Semester) etry 1997 – 1998 Statistics
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CRM’s general program funds a wide variety of scientific events, both on the premises of the CRM T and elsewhere in Canada. Whether it be for specialized workshops aended by a small number of re- searchers or large meetings aended by hundreds of participants, the general program promotes research in the mathematical sciences at all levels. e program is quite flexible, allowing projects to be considered as they arise. e reports are presented in the language in whi they were submied.
CRM Activities
Theory CANADA 4 Conference matic sessions: quantum information, relativity and June 4 – 7, 2008, CRM gravitation, mathematical physics, cosmology, and sponsored by CRM, INTRIQ, the Winnipeg Institute strings and quantum gravity. Each session consisted for eoretical Physics, the Canadian Association of of two thirty-minute talks and five twenty-minute Physicists, the eoretical Physics Institute (Univer- talks. About 25 non-speaking participants also at- sity of Alberta), the Perimeter Institute for eoreti- tended the conference, giving a total of about 60 par- cal Physics, and the Institute of Particle Physics ticipants, the overwhelming majority of whom are Organizers: currently working at Canadian institutions. Rainer Dick (Saskatchewan), Richard MacKenzie e conference began with a reception for reg- (Montréal), Manu Paranjape (Montréal) istration and informal discussion among the partici- Sessions organizers: pants. Ample time was provided during the sessions Arundhati Dasgupta (New Brunswick), Joseph Emer- for discussion among the participants. Highlights son (Waterloo), Richard MacKenzie of the conference included presentations by top re- Speakers: searchers such as Patrick Hayden (quantum informa- Neil Barnaby (Toronto), Stephen Bartle (Syd- tion), Frans Pretorius (relativity and gravitation), and ney), Marco Bertola (Concordia), Gaetano Bertoldi Pierre Mathieu (mathematical physics). Although (Toronto), Robin Blume-Kohout (Perimeter), Latham many positive comments were made on both the sci- Boyle (Toronto), Johan Brannlund (Dalhousie), entific content and the smooth running of the con- Saurya Das (Lethbridge), Keshav Dasgupta (McGill), ference, its success will ultimately be judged by the Claudia de Rham (Perimeter), Andrew DeBenedictis enthusiasm with which the next eory CANADA (Simon Fraser), Olivier Doré (Toronto), Ariel Edery conference will be greeted; preliminary evidence is (Bishop’s), Jay Gambea (Waterloo), Patrick Hay- extremely encouraging. eory CANADA 4 will be den (McGill), Niky Kamran (McGill), Joanna Kar- documented in proceedings to be published as a spe- czmarek (UBC), Justin Khoury (Perimeter), Robert cial issue of the Canadian Journal of Physics. Mann (Waterloo), Fotini Markopoulou (Perimeter), A Celebration of Raoul Bo’s Legacy in Pierre Mathieu (Laval), Robert McNees (Perimeter), Mathematics André Allan Méthot (Waterloo), Catherine Meus- June 9 – 13, 2008, CRM burger (Perimeter), Ue-Lin Pen (Toronto), Frans sponsored by CRM, the Clay Mathematics Institute, Pretorius (Princeton), Moshe Rozali (UBC), Barry and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Sanders (Calgary), Omid Saremi (McGill), Sanjeev Organizer: Seahra (New Brunswick), Marcus Silva (Waterloo), P. Robert Kotiuga (Boston) Rafael D. Sorkin (Syracuse), Vardarajan Suneeta Scientific Advisory Commiee: (Alberta), Mark Van Raamsdonk (UBC), Masahide Sir Michael Atiyah (Edinburgh), Octavian Cornea Yamaguchi (Stanford & Aoyama Gakuin) (Montréal), David Ellwood (Clay Inst.), Jacques Hur- Number of participants: 60 tubise (McGill), François Lalonde (Montréal), David Every year since 2005 the eory CANADA Con- Mumford (Brown), Graeme Segal (Oxford), Stephen ference has been held in conjunction with the Cana- Smale (TTI Chicago), James Stasheff (Pennsylvania), dian Association of Physicists (CAP) Congress. is Edward Wien (IAS) year the CAP Congress took place at Université Speakers: Laval on June 8 – 11. By design the scope of e- Sir Michael Atiyah, Paul Baum (Penn State), James ory CANADA is broad, so as to promote interaction Bernhard (Puget Sound), Ralph Cohen (Stanford), between theoretical physicists in different research Octavian Cornea, Marco Gualtieri (Toronto), James fields. is year the conference consisted of five the- Heitsch (UIC & Northwestern), Nancy Hingston
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(New Jersey), Morris W. Hirsch (UC Berkeley), conferences in his area of expertise, because speakers John Hubbard (Cornell), Lisa Jeffrey (Toronto), at this conference seemed to make an extraordinary Nitya Kitchloo (UCSD), Joseph Kohn (Princeton), effort to communicate their ideas in the simplest and P. Robert Kotiuga, Peter D. Lax (NYU), John Mor- most visual terms possible. What was more remark- gan (Columbia), Stephen Smale, András Szenes (Ge- able was that the “instant consensus” in the room nève), Constantin Teleman (Edinburgh), Susan Tol- was that this was a manifestation of all the speak- man (UIUC), Loring Tu (Tus), Cumrun Vafa (Har- ers being influenced by Bo’s lecturing style and his vard), Jonathan Weitsman (UC Santa Cruz), Edward insistence on understanding deep mathematical con- Wien cepts in the simplest terms possible. Panelists: Another unique aspect of the conference was the Sir Michael Atiyah, Paul Baum, Nancy Hingston, visual memory of Bo: from the “picture gallery” Jacques Hurtubise, Nitya Kitchloo, James Stasheff, on the website, to pictures of him from six distinct Susan Tolman, Loring Tu decades on the conference poster, to the screening Banquet speakers: of Vanessa Sco’s film: A Peek Into the Book. e Sir Michael Atiyah, Candace Bo (Clay Inst.), unique combination of forward-looking mathemat- Stephen Smale ics and intimate connection to the Bo family would Number of participants: 53 not have been possible without the efforts of Bo’s This conference was a forward-looking mathe- daughter, Candace Bo, who spoke at the banquet, matical conference that was not organized around a introduced her niece’s film, and was indispensable in mathematical topic, but a mathematical personality. helping with all the visual aspects of the conference. Most of the speakers were either students or coau- e interested reader may find more information on thors of Raoul Bo, or mathematicians who feel that the background for the conference and its rationale, their work clearly reflects the influence that Bo had as well as abstracts and titles of talks, on the confer- on them. Minimal effort was expended on a sys- ence website (http://crm.math.ca/Bott08/). Cur- tematic covering of the topics included in Bo’s col- rently extended conference proceedings are in the lected works, published over a decade ago. Rather, planning stage. Bo’s colleagues from six consecutive decades were Colloquium on noncommutative algebra given a free hand to rework and understand past June 9 – 14, 2008, Sherbrooke work in terms of current developments. e ab- sponsored by Bishop’s University, the Université de stracts posted on the website summarize the math- Sherbrooke, CRM, and FQRNT ematical aspects of the conference and document its spirit. e only talk not concerned exclusively with Organizers: mathematics was given by Jim Lambek, who remi- Ibrahim Assem (Sherbrooke), omas Brüstle (Sher- nisced about the days Raoul Bo spent as an engi- brooke & Bishop’s), Claude Cibils (Montpellier 2), neering student at McGill University in the 1940s. Maria Julia Redondo (UN del Sur), Andrea Solotar Numerous other anecdotes about Bo were given in (Buenos Aires) the first panel session entitled Raoul Bo as teaer, Tutorial speakers: mentor, and colleague, and in the banquet speeches. Dieter Happel (TU Chemnitz), Max Karoubi (Paris In addition to being a profound and influen- Diderot), Christian Kassel (CNRS & Louis Pasteur), tial researcher, it is well known that Bo was a Andrzej Skowroński (Nicolaus Copernicus) wonderful lecturer. Although this has been docu- Other speakers: mented in many places, the conference has produced Alejandro Ádem (UBC), Roland Berger (Saint- some posthumous testimony of this! At the end of Étienne), Diane Castonguay (UFG), Claudia the second panel session, entitled Examining Raoul Chaio (UN Mar del Plata), Flávio Ulhoa Coelho Bo’s Legacy in Mathematics, the conference orga- (São Paulo), José Antonio de la Peña (UNAM), nizer emphasized that the conference was not or- Oo Kerner (Düsseldorf), Mark Kleiner (Syra- ganized around a mathematical topic but a mathe- cuse), Justyna Kosakowska (Nicolaus Coperni- matician, and asked the younger aendees what they cus), Daniel Labardini-Fragoso (Northeastern), thought of the concept. A student who identified Marcelo Lanziloa Mernies (de la República), himself as a graduate student working in an unre- Patrick Le Meur (ÉNS Cachan), Shiping Liu (Sher- lated field made what was considered a remarkable brooke), Piotr Malicki (Nicolaus Copernicus), Alex comment: he said that he learned more at the con- Martsinkovsky (Northeastern), Octavio Mendoza ference on Bo’s legacy than he did at mathematics Hernandez (UNAM), Selene Sanchez-Flores (Mont-
23 C pellier 2), Manuel Saorín (Murcia), Ralf Schiffler son minicours, a été l’objet des exposés de Chaio, (UMass Amherst), David Smith (Bishop’s), Mariano Coelho, Liu et Trepode. L’étude des algèbres de Kos- Suárez-Alvarez (Buenos Aires), Hugh omas (New zul et de Calabi-Yau était le sujet des conférences Brunswick), Gordana Todorov (Northeastern), Sonia de Berger et de Martsinkovsky. Des progrès intéres- Elisabet Trepode (UN Mar del Plata), Andrei Zelevin- sants sur la fameuse conjecture de la dimension fini- sky (Northeastern) tiste de Bass ont été présentés par Mendoza et Lanzi- Number of participants: 65 loa. La structure multiplicative des anneaux de co- Ce colloque s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une longue homologie de Hochschild a été abordée par Suárez- série de colloques d’algèbre non commutative Alvarez (qui a annoncé la preuve d’une conjecture rassemblant des mathématiciens français, sud- de Bustamante) et par Sanchez-Flores, qui s’est plu- américains et québécois. Ils ont lieu d’habitude en tôt intéressée à la structure d’algèbre de Lie de ces France ou en Amérique du Sud, mais en 2008, le anneaux. Des algèbres de Lie apparaissant en théorie colloque se tint pour la première fois en Amérique de représentations des algèbres ont aussi fait l’objet du Nord. L’Université de Sherbrooke et l’Université de l’exposé de Kosakowska. Si on ajoute l’étude des t- Bishop’s en furent les hôtes. Le colloque aira 65 structures dans des catégories dérivées (Saorín), celle participants (dont 24 étudiants ou stagiaires post- des groupes de Coxeter au moyen de modules post- doctoraux), c’est-à-dire plus de participants que la projectifs (Kleiner), celle des groupes d’Artin de type moyenne pour les colloques de la série. S’il est mal- fini au moyen de suites exceptionnelles (omas) et heureusement vrai que les prix des billets d’avion celle des dégénérescences dans les catégories de mo- ont dissuadé plusieurs chercheurs français ou sud- dules (Malicki), on aura un panorama complet de la américains d’y assister, leur absence a été compen- rencontre. sée par un nombre supérieur de chercheurs nord- L’ambiance de travail fut détendue et amicale américains. tout au long de la rencontre. Le niveau des échanges L’objectif de ces rencontres est de réunir un fut particulièrement élevé, avec de nombreuses ques- groupe varié d’experts ayant divers points de vue tions fécondes permeant de préciser des points sur l’étude de problèmes d’algèbre non commuta- et parfois ouvrant de nouvelles pistes de réflexion. tive ; ces points de vue utilisent tous l’algèbre ho- La plupart des participants se connaissaient de- mologique comme outil essentiel. Les organisateurs puis longtemps et avaient l’habitude de travailler ont adopté la même formule que pour les précé- ensemble. Parmi les retombées, la plus immédiate dentes rencontres de la série. Elle a comporté 4 mi- concerne les étudiants (québécois, américains, fran- nicours, dans des domaines variés de l’algèbre non çais et argentins). Tous en effet nous ont dit à quel commutative, à savoir la K-théorie (Karoubi), la théo- point les minicours et les exposés avaient été for- rie d’Auslander-Reiten dans une catégorie dérivée mateurs pour eux. Ils ont aussi relevé le fait que (Happel), les identités polynomiales en géométrie ce colloque leur a permis de faire la connaissance non commutative (Kassel) et enfin la classification de chercheurs étrangers dont ils étudient les tra- des algèbres auto-injectives (Skowroński). vaux et qu’ils n’avaient pas eu l’occasion de ren- Parmi les exposés (de 45 ou de 30 minutes), deux contrer auparavant ; ils ont pu avoir avec ces cher- lignes de force se sont imposées : l’étude des relations cheurs des échanges exceptionnellement cordiaux et entre algèbre non commutative et topologie, d’une fructueux. oique rien n’ait été décidé à ce sujet, part, et celle des algèbres amassées, d’autre part. La nous espérons que cee rencontre aboutira à des première, qui est à la base de la K-théorie, a été illus- échanges d’étudiants et de stagiaires postdoctoraux. trée de diverses façons dans les exposés d’Ádem, Cas- Sur le plan scientifique, le colloque a permis aux tonguay, Le Meur et de la Peña. ant aux algèbres participants de se tenir au courant des résultats ob- amassées (« cluster algebras »), qui ont acquis une im- tenus par leurs collègues et de raffermir les liens portance exceptionnelle en un court laps de temps, entre chercheurs européens, sud-américains et nord- les participants ont eu la chance d’entendre sur ce américains. Plusieurs participants ont profité de cee sujet le très bel exposé d’Andrei Zelevinski, un des rencontre pour faire avancer leurs propres travaux fondateurs de la théorie (avec S. Fomin), et plusieurs de recherche (dans certains cas de façon substan- autres exposés (donnés par Kerner, Labardini, Schif- tielle). fler et Smith). SMS 2008 Summer School Les autres exposés ont montré la variété des su- Symmetries and Integrability of jets d’intérêt actuel en algèbre non commutative. La théorie d’Auslander-Reiten, abordée par Happel dans Difference Equations
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June 9 – 20, 2008, Université de Montréal they were able to learn about the most recent devel- (Department of Mathematics and Statistics) opments in the field. sponsored by CRM, ISM, Université de Montréal, and SIDE8 International Conference the NSF Symmetries and Integrability of Scientific Directors: Difference Equations Pavel Winternitz (Montréal), Vladimir Dorodnitsyn June 22 – 28, 2008, Hôtel Mont-Gabriel, Sainte-Adèle (Keldysh Inst.) (ébec) Organizing Commiee: sponsored by CRM, the NSF, and the Mathematical Vladimir Dorodnitsyn, Véronique Hussin (Mont- Physics Laboratory réal), François Lalonde (Montréal), Decio Levi (Roma Organizers: Tre), Peter J. Olver (Minnesota), Pavel Winternitz Pavel Winternitz (Montréal, Chair), John Harnad Speakers: (Concordia), Véronique Hussin (Montréal), Decio Alexei Borodin (Caltech), Vladimir Dorodnitsyn, Levi (Roma Tre), Peter J. Olver (Minnesota), Luc Basile Grammaticos (UPMC & Paris-Sud 11), Jarmo Vinet (Montréal) Hietarinta (Turku), Mourad Ismail (Central Florida), Speakers: Alexander R. Its (IUPUI), Decio Levi, Sergey P. Primitivo Belen Acosta-Humanez (UPC), Boyka Novikov (MGU & Maryland), Peter J. Olver, Jiří Pa- Aneva (INRNE), Dmytro Arinkin (UNC-Chapel tera (Montréal), Yuri B. Suris (TU München), Pavel Hill), Natig Atakishiyev (UNAM), Mariusz Bi- Winternitz ałecki (IGFPAS), Andrei Bogatyrev (IMN), Oleg Number of participants: 48 Bogoyavlenskij (een’s), Alexei Borodin (Cal- tech), Vladimir Dorodnitsyn (Keldysh Inst.), An- The field of symmetries and integrability of dif- ton Dzhamay (Northern Colorado), Michael Gekht- ference equations is very dynamic and great progress man (Notre Dame), Valentina Golubeva (VINITI), has been made in it over the last 15 years. e F. Alberto Grünbaum (UC Berkeley), Rodney Hal- key methods that have been developed in this area burd (UC London), John Harnad, Michael Hay (Syd- are based either on the inverse spectral approach ney), Willy Hereman (Colorado School of Mines), or on the application of geometric and group the- Rafael Hernández Heredero (UPM), Jarmo Hietarinta oretical techniques. e topics covered were the (Turku), Peter E. Hydon (Surrey), Nalini Joshi (Syd- following: isomonodromy transformations of lin- ney), Kenji Kajiwara (Kyushu), Boris Konopelchenko ear difference equations and the Painlevé hierarchy (Salento), Christian Korff (Glasgow), Stéphane Lafor- (Alexei Borodin); symmetry preserving discretiza- tune (Charleston), Jorge Enrique Lopez-Sendino tion of ordinary and partial differential equations (Valladolid), Alexander Mikhailov (Leeds), Oleksii (Vladimir Dorodnitsyn); discrete Painlevé equations Mokhonko (Taras Shevchenko), Atsushi Nagai (Ni- (Basile Grammaticos); definitions and predictions of hon), Maciej Nieszporski (Warsaw), Frank W. Nijhoff integrability for difference equations (Jarmo Hietar- (Leeds), Masatoshi Noumi (Kobe), Vladimir Novikov inta); orthogonal polynomials and integrable sys- (Loughborough), Yasuhiro Ohta (Kobe), Vassilios Pa- tems (Mourad Ismail); discrete Painlevé equations pageorgiou (Patras), James Peigrew (New South and random matrices (Alexander Its); generalized Wales), Barbara Prinari (Salento), Mizan Rahman Lie symmetries of difference equations (Decio Levi); (Carleton), Eric M. Rains (Caltech), Alfred Ramani complete integrability of discrete nonlinear systems (École Polytechnique), Raphaël Rebelo (Montréal), (Sergey P. Novikov); moving frames in applications Omar Rojas (La Trobe), Wolfgang Karl Schief (TU (Peter Olver); Lie group transforms in the interpola- Berlin), Christian Scimiterna (Roma Tre), Yang Shi tion of digital data (Jiří Patera); discrete differential (Sydney), Paul Spicer (Sydney), Yuri B. Suris (TU geometry (Yuri Suris); and Lie point symmetries of München), Anastasios Tongas (Crete), Sébastien difference equations (Pavel Winternitz). Tremblay (UQTR), Walter Van Assche (KU Leuven), is summer school was correlated with the Alexander P. Veselov (Loughborough), Claude Vial- CRM ematic Year on Probabilistic Methods in let (CNRS & UPMC), omas Wolf (Brock), Yunbo Mathematical Physics (see the section ematic Pro- Zeng (Tsinghua), Alexei Zhedanov (Donetsk IPE) gram) and the international conference SIDE8 (on Number of participants: 72 the same topic as the summer school). Many of the SIDE8 was the eighth in a series of biennial con- participants and some of the lecturers participated ferences devoted to symmetries and integrability of in both events. e SMS lectures thus served as a difference equations and related topics: ordinary good preparation for the students aending SIDE8; and partial difference equations, analytic difference
25 C equations, orthogonal polynomials and special func- tional University of Singapore), Gilles Pagès (UPMC), tions, symmetries and reductions, difference geome- Art B. Owen (Stanford), Klaus Rier (TU Darmstadt), try, integrable discrete systems on graphs, integrable Karl Sabelfeld (Weierstraß-Institut), Wolfgang Ch. dynamical mappings, discrete Painlevé equations, Schmid (Salzburg), Ian H. Sloan (New South Wales), singularity confinement, algebraic entropy, com- Jerome Spanier (Claremont), Bruno Tuffin (INRIA plexity and growth of multivalued mappings, rep- Rennes), Henryk Woźniakowski (Columbia) resentations of affine Weyl groups, quantum map- Invited Plenary Speakers: pings and quantum field theory on the space-time Josef Dick (New South Wales), Arnaud Doucet laice. e organizers of SIDE 8 are listed above (UBC), Daan Frenkel (Cambridge), Paul Glasserman and the SIDE Steering Commiee included Frank Ni- (Columbia), Christiane Lemieux (Waterloo), Jun S. jhoff (Chairman), Alexander Bobenko, Basile Gram- Liu, Klaus Rier, Jeffrey S. Rosenthal (Toronto), maticos, Jarmo Hietarinta, Nalini Joshi, Decio Levi, Wolfgang Ch. Schmid, Andrew Stuart (Warwick) Vassilis Papageorgiou, Junkichi Satsuma, Yuri Suris, Tutorial Speakers: Claude Viallet, and Pavel Winternitz. Alexander Keller, Art B. Owen, Jeremy Staum e 56 talks of SIDE8 were divided into 8 ses- (Northwestern) sions, corresponding to the following topics (with Number of participants: 188 session organizers indicated within parentheses): The MCQMC Conference is a biennial meeting geometry of discrete and continuous Painlevé equa- devoted to the study of Monte Carlo (MC) and quasi- tions (Masatoshi Noumi, Yasuhiro Ohta); discrete Monte Carlo (QMC) methods, the relationships be- integrable systems and isomonodromy transforma- tween the two classes of methods, and their effec- tions (Alexei Borodin); Yang – Baxter map (Alexan- tive application in different areas. e conference der P. Veselov); algebraic aspects of discrete equa- aracts between 150 and 200 participants and is the tions (Alexander Mikhailov, Frank Nijho); singu- world’s primary event on the two classes of methods. larity confinement, algebraic entropy, and Nevan- Its aim is to provide a forum where both the leading linna theory (Basile Grammaticos, Alfred Ramani); researchers and the users can exchange on the latest discrete differential geometry (Alexander Bobenko, theoretical developments and important applications Yuri Suris); special functions as solutions of dif- of these methods. In a nutshell, MC methods study ference and Q-difference equations (Mourad Ismail, complex systems by simulations fed by computer- Walter Van Assche); continuous symmetries of dis- generated random numbers. QMC methods replace crete equations, theory and computational applica- these random numbers by more evenly distributed tion (Decio Levi, Pavel Winternitz). e original re- (and carefully selected) numbers to improve their ef- sults presented at SIDE8 gave rise to a special issue fectiveness. A large variety of special techniques are of the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and eo- developed and used to make these methods more ef- retical (J. Phys. A: Math. eor. 42 (2009)). fective in terms of speed and accuracy. e confer- ence focuses primarily on the mathematical study of Eighth International Conference on these techniques, their implementation and adapta- Monte Carlo and asi-Monte Carlo tion for concrete applications, and their empirical as- Methods in Scientific Computing sessment. July 6 – 11, 2008, HEC Montréal e MCQMC Conference series was initiated sponsored by CRM, GERAD, MITACS, and the NSF by Harald Niederreiter, who deserves our warmest Organizer: thanks for his far-reaching vision and dedication; Pierre L’Écuyer (Montréal) Professor Niederreiter cochaired all of the past edi- Program Commiee: tions, which took place in Las Vegas (1994), Salzburg Pierre L’Écuyer (président), Ronald Cools (KU Leu- (1996), Claremont (1998), Hong Kong (2000), Singa- ven), Henri Faure (CNRS & Paul Cézanne), Luc De- pore (2002), Juan-Les-Pins (2004), and Ulm (2006). vroye (McGill), Paul Glasserman (Columbia), Peter e Steering Commiee of the MCQMC Conference W. Glynn (Stanford), Stefan Heinrich (TU Kaisers- series includes the following members: Stefan Hein- lautern), Fred J. Hickernell (IIT), Aneta Karaivanova rich, Fred J. Hickernell, Alexander Keller, Frances Y. (IPP), Alexander Keller (mental images GmbH), Kuo, Pierre L’Écuyer, Wolfgang Ch. Schmid, and Art Adam Kolkiewicz (Waterloo), Frances Y. Kuo (New B. Owen. In 2008 the conference took place in Mon- South Wales), Christian Lécot (Savoie), Jun S. tréal and its themes included the following: MC and Liu (Harvard), Peter Mathé (Weierstraß-Institut), QMC algorithms; Randomized QMC generation of Makoto Matsumoto (Hiroshima), omas Müller- pseudo-random numbers; Random variates and ran- Gronbach (Magdeburg), Harald Niederreiter (Na-
26 G P dom processes; Low-discrepancy point sets and se- formes avec un accent sur la géométrie arithmé- quences; Digital nets; Laice rules; Variance reduc- tique et les équations diophantiennes. Le congrès de tion methods; Rare-event simulation; Optimization 2008 était dédié aux 80 ans du professeur Paulo Ri- via MC/QMC; Tractability/complexity analysis of benboim. Andrew Granville rappela, diapositives à multivariate integration problems; MC/QMC meth- l’appui, les grandes étapes de la vie de ce mathéma- ods for stochastic differential equations, partial dif- ticien toujours actif. ferential equations; Markov chain Monte Carlo; Par- Scientic Meeting of the CRM Statistics ticle methods; MC/QMC methods in physics, chem- Laboratory istry, biology, economy, finance, statistics, manage- ment, medical science, computer graphics, etc. MCMC: Theory and Applications e MCQMC 2008 Conference featured 10 ple- October 17, 2008, Université de Sherbrooke nary invited lectures, 3 tutorials (each lasting three Organizers: hours), and 147 accepted contributed talks (of which David A. Stephens (McGill), Éric Marchand (Sher- about ten were cancelled for various reasons). e brooke), Louis-Paul Rivest (Laval) conference was outstanding both from the scien- Speakers: tific and organizational points of view, and all the Mylène Bédard (Montréal), Arnaud Doucet (UBC), comments made by the participants were positive. Alan Gelfand (Duke), Raphael Goardo (IRCM), e proceedings of MCQMC 2008 will be published Éric Jacquier (HEC Montréal), Geneviève Lefebvre by Springer, in a book entitled Monte Carlo and (UQÀM) asi-Monte Carlo Methods 2008 and edited by Pierre Number of participants: 58 L’Écuyer and Art B. Owen. e organizers wish to Le 17 octobre 2008 eut lieu une rencontre scien- extend their warmest thanks to the staff of CRM and tifique du Laboratoire de statistique consacrée aux GERAD, especially Francine Benoît, Carole Dufour, méthodes de Monte-Carlo par chaînes de Markov Marilyne Lavoie, Louis Pelletier, and Suzee Paradis. (MCMC). Arnaud Doucet donna une conférence sur les progrès récents dans ce domaine et Mylène Bé- ébec – Maine Conference on Number dard aborda les aspects théoriques des méthodes Theory MCMC. Geneviève Lefebvre fit un exposé sur une October 4 – 5, 2008, Université Laval identité d’échantillonnage de chemins permeant de sponsored by CICMA calculer la divergence de Kullback-Leibler et la J- Organizers: divergence. Éric Jacquier aborda les applications au Claude Levesque (Laval), Hugo Chapdelaine (Laval), domaine financier des méthodes MCMC. Raphael Jean-Marie De Koninck (Laval) Goardo fit un exposé sur des applications de la mo- Speakers: délisation bayésienne et des méthodes MCMC à la Jennifer Beineke (WNEC), David Bradley (Maine), génomique. Pour conclure la journée, Alan Gelfand Abraham Broer (Montréal), Hugo Chapdelaine, John donna une conférence sur des méthodes de réduc- Cullinan (Bard), Henri Darmon (McGill), Chan- tion de la dimension pour analyser des ensembles de tal David (Concordia), Nicolas Doyon (Laval), Karl données spatiales de grande taille. Dilcher (Dalhousie), Andrew Granville (Montréal), Adrian Iovita (Concordia), Ernst Kani (een’s), Workshop on Arithmetic and Hyperbolic Omar Kihel (Brock), Hershy Kisilevsky (Concor- Geometry dia), Mitsuo Kobayashi (Dartmouth), John Labute November 8 – 9, 2008, Université du ébec à Mont- (McGill), Youness Lamzouri (Montréal), Florian Luca réal (UNAM Morelia), Trueman MacHenry (York), Bao sponsored by CIRGET and the Fields Institute Châu Ngô (IAS), Carl Pomerance (Dartmouth), Organizers: Damien Roy (Oawa), Romyar Sharifi (McMas- John Bland (Toronto), Andrew Granville (Montréal), ter), Mark Sheingorn (CUNY), Lloyd Simons (St. Steven Shin-Yi Lu (UQÀM), Peter Russell (McGill), Michael’s College), Cam Stewart (Waterloo), Alain Noriko Yui (een’s) Togbé (Purdue North Central), Enrique Trevino Speakers: (Dartmouth), John Voight (Vermont), Gary Walsh John Bland, Andrew Granville, Steven Shin-Yi Lu, (Oawa) Peter Russell, Noriko Yui Number of participants: 45 Number of participants: 50 Ce congrès ébec-Maine, qui alterne entre le Maine et le ébec, en était à sa dixième édition. Il portait sur la théorie des nombres sous toutes ses
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This weekend workshop in Montreal was linked Jordi Marzo (NTNU), Joules Nahas (UCSB), Joaquim to the Fall 2008 thematic program at the Fields Insti- Ortega-Cerdà (Barcelona), Vladimir Peller (Michi- tute on arithmetic geometry, hyperbolic geometry, gan State), Mihai Putinar (UCSB), omas J. Rans- and related topics. Its aim was to explore the possi- ford, Richard Rochberg (WUSTL), William T. Ross ble connections of various recent advances in these (Richmond), Stephan Ruscheweyh (Würzburg), Mar- fields. It was very well aended with over 50 par- ius Serban (Montréal), Mahmood Shabankhah (La- ticipants, of whom about 20 came from the thematic val), Hasi Wulan (Shantou), Nicolas Young (Leeds), program. Here are the titles of the lectures given dur- Hong Yue (Concordia) ing the workshop: Number of participants: 62 • Construction of rational curves in Fano manifolds Hilbert spaces of analytic functions are currently without using positive aracteristic (Yum-Tong Siu); a very active field of complex analysis. e Hardy • Chow weights, Hilbert weights and their application space is the most senior member of this family. Its in Nevanlinna theory (Min Ru); relatives, such as the Bergman space, the Dirichlet • Horizontal sections of connections and transcen- space, the de Branges – Rovnyak spaces, and various dence (Carlo Gasbarri); spaces of entire functions, have been studied in de- • Unicity, Kobayashi hyperbolicity, rational points tail by prominent mathematicians since the begin- and examples (Junjiro Noguchi); ning of the last century. ere are, however, many • Heights of conics and the spectrum of the Laplacian open problems, old and new, that aract a wide spec- (Henri Gillet); trum of mathematicians. In this meeting we gathered • Upper bound for gcd(an −1, bn −1); Arithmetic and together a blend of researchers with a common in- geometric applications (Pietro Corvaja); terest in spaces of analytic functions, but seen from • A Diophantine “tautological conjecture” (Paul Vo- many different angles. About fieen students and jta); postdocs also aended the conference; about half of • Self rational maps of K3 surfaces (Xi Chen); them gave talks. • Degeneracy of holomorphic maps via orbifolds (Er- e following is a representative sample of the wan Rousseau); topics discussed at the workshop: completeness of • Symmetric differentials on algebraic surfaces (Bruno translates in weighted spaces; analytic continua- de Oliveira). tion in backward-shi-invariant subspaces; multi- variable extensions of de Branges – Rovnyak spaces; Conference on Hilbert Spaces of Analytic Bernstein-type inequalities in de Branges – Rovnyak Functions spaces; interpolation and sampling in Fock spaces; December 8 – 12, 2008, CRM pointwise estimates for the Bergman kernel of the sponsored by the Mathematical Analysis Laboratory weighted Fock space; multiplication operators on Organizers: the Bergman space; compactness criteria for com- Javad Mashreghi (Laval), Kristian Seip (NTNU), position operators on BMOA; approximation of and omas J. Ransford (Laval) by the Riemann zeta function; curvature and maxi- Speakers: mal Blaschke products; trigonometric and Hausdorff Evgueni Abakoumov (Marne-la-Vallée), Jim Agler moments; Poincaré variational problem in poten- (UCSD), Joseph A. Ball (Virginia Tech), Ferenc tial theory; singularities of solutions to the Dirich- Balogh (Concordia), Laurent Baratchart (INRIA let problem and complex lightning bolts; Hankel Sophia Antipolis & Méditerranée), André Boivin forms on the Dirichlet space; cyclicity in the Dirich- (Western Ontario), Alexander Borichev (Provence), let space; the positivstellensatz in Weyl’s algebra; Abdellatif Bourhim (Laval), Nicolas Chevrot (La- operator Hölder functions; power-boundedness on val), Joseph A. Cima (UNC-Chapel Hill), Constantin function spaces; function theory on the tetrablock; Costara (Ovidius), Galia Dafni (Concordia), Fatma and uniqueness sets for Nevanlinna – Pick interpola- Zohra Demmad-Abdessameud (Blida), Ronald G. tion in two variables. Douglas (Texas A&M), Omar El-Fallah (Moham- med V-Agdal), Tatyana Foth (Western Ontario), Scientific Meeting of the CRM Statistics Richard Fournier (Montréal & Dawson), Emmanuel Laboratory Fricain (Lyon 1), Paul M. Gauthier (Montréal), Ko- New Investigators Meeting hur Gowrisankaran (McGill), Andreas Hartmann April 4, 2009, CRM (Bordeaux 1), Dmitry Khavinson (South Florida), Organizer: Daniela Kraus (Würzburg), Yurii Lyubarskii (NTNU), Geneviève Lefebvre (UQÀM)
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Speakers: background similar to that of advanced graduate stu- Juli Atherton (McGill), Lilia Leticia Ramirez dents. Here are the titles of the lectures by Jan Ramirez (Waterloo), Lajmi Lakhal Chaieb (Laval), Bruinier: Orthogonal groups and modular forms, Taoufik Bouezmarni (Montréal), Azadeh Moghtaderi eta liings of holomorphic and weakly holomor- (een’s) phic modular forms, Borcherds products and au- Number of participants: 24 tomorphic Green functions, CM values and Falt- Cee rencontre pour jeunes chercheurs com- ings heights, Harmonic weak Maass forms and the porta cinq exposés, qui eurent lieu le matin. L’après- Gross – Zagier formula. Steve Kudla spoke on the midi, une table ronde présidée par Yulia Gel (Uni- Weil representation and the Siegel – Weil formula, versity of Waterloo) fut suivie d’une discussion Ehud DeShalit on the half-integral weight modular de groupe présidée par Juli Atherton (Université forms and the Shimura li, Gerard Freixas i Montplet McGill) et d’une discussion finale présidée par Ja- on local and global heights on curves, Henri Darmon son Nielsen (Carleton University). Le thème de la on modular curves and Heegner points, and Shouwu table ronde était l’identification des enjeux impor- Zhang on the Gross – Zagier formula and some ap- tants pour les nouveaux chercheurs. Voici les titres plications. des exposés qui eurent lieu le matin : The 6th Montreal Scientific Computing • Utilisation des données SELEX pour modéliser l’af- Days finité de séquences d’ADN au facteur de transcription May 4 – 6, 2009, CRM Bicoid (Juli Atherton) ; organized by the Applied Mathematics Laboratory • Dynamique des maladies infectieuses dans les ré- seaux (Lilia Leticia Ramirez Ramirez) ; Organizers: • Estimation non paramétrique du tau de Kendall pour Michel Delfour (Montréal), André Fortin (Laval) durées de vie successives (Lajmi Lakhal Chaieb) ; omas Wihler (Bern) • Estimation non paramétrique par noyau Beta pour Tutorial Speakers: les séries ronologiques à longue mémoire (Taoufik Robert Michael Kirby (Utah), Yvon Maday (UPMC), Bouezmarni) ; Spencer J. Sherwin (Imperial College London) • Un nouvel estimateur du spectre évolutionnaire Other Speakers: Wold-Cramer (Azadeh Moghtaderi). Mohammad Khalil (Carleton), Hatef Monajemi (Car- leton), Waad Subber (Carleton), Jérôme Morin- The Bellairs Workshop in Number Theory Drouin (Montréal), Abderrahman El Maliki (Laval), Borcherds products and their applications Alexandre Iolov (Oawa), Myriam Rioux (Oawa), to arithmetic geometry Olivier Rousseau (Oawa) May 3 – 10, 2009, Bellairs Research Institute Number of participants: 67 sponsored by CICMA The objectives of the Montreal Scientific Com- Organizer: puting Days are: to foster scientific exchanges Eyal Z. Goren (McGill) within the scientific computing community; to pro- Speakers: vide training to senior undergraduate and gradu- Jan Bruinier (TU Darmstadt), Henri Darmon ate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young re- (McGill), Ehud DeShalit (HUJI), Gerard Freixas i searchers in the form of three mini-courses given Montplet (CICMA postdoctoral fellow), Steve Kudla by world recognized experts in the general areas (Toronto), Shouwu Zhang (Columbia) of scientific computing in Science, Engineering and Number of participants: 33 Medicine; to maximize interactions between the stu- The workshop was dedicated to Borcherds’ the- dents, the senior participants, and the main speak- ory concerning a singular theta li from weakly ers by reserving up to half of the time for student holomorphic elliptic modular forms to automor- presentations; to encourage the participation of non- phic forms on orthogonal groups that are forms of academic (private or public sector) research or other SO(2, n), and its applications and generalizations. organizations. Jan Bruinier gave a series of five lectures on this e participants of the 6th edition of the Mon- topic. ese lectures took place in the mornings and treal Scientific Computing Days enjoyed dazzling were supplemented by lectures from aending ex- lectures by Yvon Maday on the latest developments perts, which took place in the evenings. e goal in Approximation of Nonlinear PDE’s by Reduced Ba- of the workshop was to provide an access point to sis Methods. ese lectures had a tremendous im- the field; the participants were expected to have a pact not only on mathematicians but also on engi-
29 C neering students from École Polytechnique and Car- and applications of discrete structures and its goal is leton University. e participants were also spoiled to highlight the most salient trends in the field, which by Spencer J. Sherwin and Mike Kirby. Professor has close links with such diverse areas as cryptog- Kirby gave two talks, respectively entitled Compu- raphy, computer science, large-scale networks, and tational Methods for antifying Uncertainty in Bio- biology. e conference brings together researchers logical Modelling and Visualization of High-Order Fi- from the various disciplines with which discrete and nite Element Methods. Professor Sherwin gave three algorithmic mathematics interact. talks on the topic of Spectral/hp Element Methods: One of the primary goals of the conference was Implementation to Application. Moreover, Professors to encourage the participation of Canadian graduate Kirby and Sherwin gave a joint tutorial that was students and postdoctoral fellows. e three Cana- much appreciated by the participants. dian mathematical institutes (CRM, Fields, PIMS) as well as the MITACS network provided some financial CanaDAM 2009 support to encourage graduate students and post- 2nd Canadian Discrete and Algorithmic doctoral fellows to aend. In addition to its mon- Mathematics Conference etary contribution, the CRM provided a substantial May 25 – 28, 2009, CRM amount of its resources as an in-kind contribution to sponsored by CRM, the Fields Institute, PIMS, and the running of the meeting. In order to receive fi- MITACS nancial support, graduate students were encouraged Program Commiee: to contribute talks; there was also a problem ses- Carla Savage (NC State, Chair), Jean-Paul Allouche sion (followed by a reception) devoted to the pre- (Paris-Sud 11), David Avis (McGill), François Ber- sentation of research problems appropriate for grad- geron (UQÀM), Rodney Canfield (Georgia), Antoine uate students. ese problems are now available Deza (McMaster), Chris Godsil (Waterloo), Penny on the web page of the conference (http://crm. Haxell (Waterloo), Marni Mishna (Simon Fraser), math.ca/CanaDAM2009/). About 40% of the aen- Patric Östergård (TKK), Sang-Il Oum (KAIST), Frank dees were graduate students or postdoctoral fellows, Ruskey (Victoria), József Solymosi (UBC), John Wa- which pleased the organizers very much. is solid trous (Waterloo) participation of young researchers could not have Executive Commiee: happened without the generous support of the spon- Daniel Panario (Carleton, Chair), Jason Brown (Dal- sors. housie), Pavol Hell (Simon Fraser), Odile Marcoe A great deal of the credit for the success of (UQÀM & CRM), Ortrud Oellermann (Winnipeg), the conference goes to the Program Commiee of Bruce Richter (Waterloo) CanaDAM 2009 and the Local Arrangements Com- Local Arrangements Commiee: miee. e strength of a conference is directly re- Gena Hahn (Montréal, Chair), Srečko Brlek (UQÀM), lated to its scientific program. e chair of the Pro- Benoit Larose (Champlain St-Lambert & Concordia), gram Commiee, Carla Savage, and the other Pro- Odile Marcoe, Adrian Vea (McGill) gram Commiee members put together a magnif- Plenary Speakers: icent program consisting of 8 plenary lectures, 47 Valérie Berthé (Montpellier 2), Sylvie Corteel (Paris- talks in the 9 invited minisymposia, 75 talks in the 15 Sud 11), Jesús De Loera (UC Davis), Dannie Durand contributed minisymposia, and about 94 contributed (Carnegie Mellon), Shafi Goldwasser (MIT & Weiz- talks. In addition there was a special talk by Jason mann Inst.), Joel Spencer (NYU), Carsten omassen Brown on the connections between mathematics and (DTU), Qing Xiang (Delaware) music. e lectures by the plenary speakers were Number of participants: 312 outstanding; here are their titles. The Canadian Discrete and Algorithmic Mathe- • Discrete Geometry and Word Combinatorics (Valérie matics conference (CanaDAM 2009) was held at the Berthé) CRM on May 25 – 28, 2009. is was the second • Enumeration of Fillings of Young Diagrams (Sylvie conference in the new series on discrete mathemat- Corteel) ics that is held every two years (in the odd years) • Two Geometric Algorithms and eir Many Applica- in Canada. e conference has a format similar to tions in Discrete Optimization (Jesús De Loera) that of the SIAM Conference on Discrete Mathemat- • Genes as LEGO: What Trees and Graphs Can Tell Us ics (held every two years, in the even years). e first About the Evolution of Modular Proteins (Dannie Du- CanaDAM conference was held in Banff in May 2007. rand) e general topics of the conference are the theory
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• Program Obfuscation and One-Time Programs CRM staff (especially Louis Pelletier and Suzee Par- (Shafi Goldwasser) adis) and graduate students to ensure the smooth • 78 Years of Ramsey R(3, k) (and Counting!) (Joel running of the conference. e organizers are grate- Spencer) ful to their sponsors (CRM, Fields, PIMS, MITACS) • Graph Decomposition (Carsten omassen) for their generous support of CanaDAM 2009. e • Modular Ranks and Smith Normal Forms of Some strong Canadian and international aendance at Incidence Matrices (Qing Xiang) CanaDAM 2009 clearly indicates that the CanaDAM e dedication of the Local Arrangements Com- conference series is already established as one of the miee, led by Gena Hahn and Odile Marcoe, played main international conferences on discrete and algo- a vital role in the success of the conference. is rithmic mathematics. commiee worked in close collaboration with the
Colloquium Series
e CRM, together with the Institut des sciences mathématiques du ébec (the ébec universities graduate mathematics consortium), runs two Montréal colloquium series, one in mathematics and the other in statis- tics (the laer jointly with GERAD, an operations research centre located in the André-Aisenstadt building). During the academic year, these series offer survey talks on topics of current interest by distinguished math- ematicians and statisticians. CRM-ISM Mathematics Colloquium In 2008 – 2009 the colloquium coordinators were Abraham Broer (Université de Montréal) and Alexander Shnirelman (Concordia University). September 5, 2008 Nonequilibrium Statistical Meanics and Smooth Dy- Iku Nakamura (Hokkaido) namical Systems Stability and Compactification of the Moduli of October 31, 2008 Abelian Varieties Robert Seiringer (Princeton) September 12, 2008 Dilute antum Gases Andrei Okounkov (Princeton) November 7, 2008 e Algebra and Geometry of Random Surfaces Jean-Louis Loday (CNRS & Strasbourg) September 19, 2008 Combinatorial Hopf Algebras Kenneth McLaughlin (Arizona) November 14, 2008 Some( Classes) of Random( Hermitian) Matrices: Bernard Shiffman (Johns Hopkins) F (Tr V (M) Instead of Tr V (M) Overcrowding and Undercrowding of Random Zeros on September 26, 2008 Complex Manifolds Vladimir Sverak (Minnesota) November 21, 2008 PDE Aspects of the Navier-Stokes Equations Claude Bardos (Paris Diderot) October 3, 2008 Turbulence from Statistical eory to Wigner Measure Ellio Lieb (Princeton) November 28, 2008 Some Calculus of VariationsProblems in antum Me- Alexandre Girouard (Cardi) anics Carl Herz Prize recipient (2007 – 2008) October 10, 2008 Shape Optimization for Low Eigenvalues of the Laplace Leonid Bunimovich (Georgia Tech) Operator Visual Chaos: Dispersing, Defocusing, Absolute Focus- December 5, 2008 ing and Astigmatism Robert Coquereaux (CPT) October 17, 2008 Fundamental Interactions and Classical or antum Svante Janson (Uppsala) Geometries Random Graphs: New Models and the Internet December 12, 2008 October 24, 2008 Alexander Turbiner (UNAM) David Ruelle (IHÉS) Solvable Srödinger Equations and Representation eory
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December 19, 2008 February 20, 2009 Jie Shen (Purdue) Louigi Addario-Berry (Montréal) Spectral-Galerkin Methods for High-Dimensional Braning Random Walk and Searing in Trees PDEs Mar 13, 2009 January 23, 2009 Sergei Yakovenko (Weizmann Inst. & Fields) Chantal David (Concordia) Infinitesimal Hilbert 16th Problem Statistics for the Zeroes and Traces of Zeta Functions Mar 27, 2009 over Finite Fields Bjorn Poonen (MIT) January 30, 2009 Undecidability in Number eory Alexei Miasnikov (McGill) April 3, 2009 Around Tarski’s Problems Olivier Schiffmann (CNRS & ÉNS) February 6, 2009 Problème de Riemann-Hilbert sur la sphère et combi- André D. Bandrauk (Sherbrooke) natoire des systèmes de racines Nonlinear High-Dimensional PDE’s in High Inten- April 17, 2009 sity Laser-Maer Interactions – New Mathematics for Alexandru Buium (New Mexico) a New Science Arithmetic Laplacians February 13, 2009 April 24, 2009 William Byers (Concordia) Gang Tian (Princeton) Mathematics in the Light of Metaphor and Ambiguity Ricci Flow, Monge – Ampère Equation and Algebraic Spaces
CRM – ISM – GERAD Statistics Colloquium In 2008 – 2009 the organizing team of the Statistics Colloquium included Geneviève Lefebvre (Université du ébec à Montréal), Alejandro Murua (Université de Montréal), Lea Popovic (Concordia University), and Russell Steele (McGill University). September 26, 2008 December 5, 2008 Jon A. Wellner (Washington) Peter Hoff (Washington) Testing for Sparse Normal Means: Is ere a Signal? Hierarical Eigenmodels for Pooled Covariance Esti- October 3, 2008 mation Ranjan Maitra (Iowa State) January 23, 2009 Assessing Significance in Finite Mixture Models Andreas Kyprianou (Bath) October 10, 2008 Refracted Levy Processes Pierre-Jérôme Bergeron (Oawa) January 30, 2009 Studying the Natural History of Diseases through Christian Robert (Paris-Dauphine) Prevalent Cases: Can One Exploit Untapped Features Computational Approaes to Bayesian Model Choice of Length-Biased Data? February 6, 2009 October 24, 2008 Taoufik Bouezmarni (Montréal) Paul McNicholas (Guelph) A Nonparametric Test for Conditional Independence Model-Based Clustering of Longitudinal Data using Bernstein Density Copulas October 31, 2008 February 13, 2009 Surajit Ray (Boston) omas A. Louis (Johns Hopkins) Clustering and Classification of Functional Data Trend Tests that Accommodate Genotyping Errors November 7, 2008 February 20, 2009 Peter McCullagh (Chicago) Marina Meila (Washington) Sampling Bias in Logistic Models Consensus Ranking under the Exponential Model November 21, 2008 February 27, 2009 Duncan Murdoch (Western Ontario) Sayan Mukherjee (Duke) Two Recursive Simulation Semes Two Representations of Graphical Models
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Mar 13, 2009 April 17, 2009 Fernando Camacho (Damos Inc., Toronto) David Dunson (Duke) Statistical Analysis for Life Cycle Management of Bayesian Density Regression with Epidemiology Appli- Steam Generators cations Mar 20, 2009 April 24, 2009 Susan Shortreed (McGill) Jinko Graham (Simon Fraser) Learning in Spectral Clustering Graphical Displays to Uncover Gene-Environment In- Mar 27, 2009 teraction from Data on Case-Parent Trios Lei Sun (Toronto) May 1st, 2009 Unifying Stratified and Weighted FDR Methods with Constantine Frangakis (Johns Hopkins) Applications to Large-Scale Genetic Studies e Role of Principal Stratification in Instrumental April 3, 2009 Variables in Case-Control Designs – An Application to Mary Lesperance (Victoria) Mendelian Randomization Testing for Benford’s Law and Possible Fraud Detection
33 Multidisciplinary and Industrial Program M I P
main vehicles for the CRM’s efforts in this area are the research networks to which it belongs, princi- T pally MITACS, a national network focusing on the mathematics of information technology and complex systems, and the National Institute on Complex Data Structures (NICDS). e reports are presented in the language in whi they were submied.
Activities of the Multidisciplinary and Industrial Program
Workshop on Signal Processing Methods the workshop. e discussions aer the talks and in Brain Imaging throughout the aernoon were lively and involved June 4, 2008, Institut universitaire de gériatrie de all the participants, and the organizers were espe- Montréal cially pleased with the access that our younger par- sponsored by MITACS and PhysNum ticipants had to senior well-known investigators. As Organizers: well they were delighted that no whiff of argumen- Mathieu Dehaes (UPMC), Louis Gagnon (Harvard- tative or competitive exchanges was detected during MIT HST), Frédéric Lesage (Polytechnique Mont- the workshop. Variation in expertise, sophistication, réal), Jean-Marc Lina (ÉTS) technical level, and so on, was taken as natural and Speakers: as providing opportunities for support and encour- Jorge Armony (Hôpital Douglas, Montréal), Philippe agement. Ciuciu (NeuroSpin, CEA Saclay), Christophe Grova Highlights of the workshop include (McGill), Jean-Marc Lina, Vincent Perlbarg (UPMC), • a presentation of recent work on the metabolic re- Amir Schmuel (McGill) sponse and its modelling by Amir Schmuel, Number of participants: 32 • a presentation of an exciting wavelet approach ap- This workshop was part of the Second Canada- plied to diffuse optical imaging by Jean-Marc Lina, France Congress, which took place at Université du • an application of multi-modal imaging and in- ébec à Montréal from June 1 to 5, 2008 (see the verse problems to the diagnosis and understanding section General Program). It brought together ap- of epilepsy, presented by Christophe Grova, plied mathematicians and practitioners working on • a review of protocol design in fMRI imaging and models of physiological processes. e goals of the the assumptions underlying this modality, by Jorge workshop were Armony, and • to explore the mathematics of multimodal imag- • a presentation of recent work on the use of signal ing, processing techniques for identifying the rest state • to study physiological models and measurements, of the brain, by Vincent Perlbarg. and e organizers are very grateful to the CRM, to MI- • to study approaches to signal processing in order TACS, and to MathWorks for their generous support. to understand new imaging modalities. The Eighth Canadian Summer School on Each half-day of the workshop consisted of three ses- antum Information sions, and each session featured a 30-minute intro- June 9 – 16, 2008, Université de Montréal (Depart- ductory talk followed by a one-hour advanced lec- ment of Computer Science and Operations Research) ture. e organizers believe that this format was op- sponsored by MITACS, CRM, INTRIQ, Perimeter In- timal, given that the participants came from many stitute for eoretical Physics, McGill University, disciplines. Two related themes were explored: mod- Université de Montréal, and the Canadian Institute elling of neuronal activity and metabolism, and new for Advanced Research imaging techniques in biomedical engineering. Organizers: Given the reactions of the participants and the Patrick Hayden (McGill, Cochair), Alain Tapp (Mont- fact that full participation was maintained through- réal, Cochair), Ashton Anderson (McGill), Kamil out the day, the organizers think that their goals Bradler (McGill), Paul Chouha (Montréal), omas were met. Indeed, a consensus emerged that the Decker (McGill), Nicolas Dutil (McGill), Frédéric workshop should be held on a yearly basis. Among Dupuis (Montréal), Abubakr Muhammad (McGill) the participants were a dozen or so graduate stu- Speakers: dents, as well as a number of new researchers, and Alexandre Blais (Sherbrooke), Kamil Bradler, Anne they were stimulated and excited by this area. ey also derived a great deal of new knowledge from
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Broadbent (Montréal), Andrew Childs (Waterloo), ingly quantitative as new technologies facilitate col- Claude Crépeau (McGill), Frédéric Dupuis, Ed Farhi lection and analysis of vast amounts of data, ranging (MIT), Daniel Goesman (Perimeter), Patrick Hay- from complete genomic sequences of organisms to den, Peter Hoyer (Calgary), Barry Sanders (Calgary), satellite imagery of forest landscapes on continen- Alain Tapp, John Watrous (Waterloo) tal scales. As a consequence, mathematics and com- Number of participants: 102 putational science have become crucial technologies The Canadian antum Information Summer for the study of complex models of biological pro- School has become an annual Canadian tradition and cesses. e SIAM Activity Group on Life Sciences welcomes students from all over the world. e goal brings together researchers who seek to develop and of the Eighth instalment was to introduce the par- apply mathematical and computational methods in ticipants to quantum algorithms, quantum error cor- all areas of the life sciences. e SIAM Conference rection, quantum information theory, and quantum on the Life Sciences, organized by the activity group, cryptography. Lectures were also given on imple- provides a cross-disciplinary forum for catalyzing mentations, quantum complexity theory, nonlocal- mathematical research relevant to the life sciences. ity, and some recent developments in quantum al- Its themes are biomechanics, cell signaling, evolu- gorithms, namely quantum walks. e School is de- tionary dynamics, imaging, neuroscience, regulatory signed for graduate students and postdocs in com- networks, and systems biology. puter science, physics, or mathematics who wish to e CRM and the Fields Institute were the spon- learn about quantum information science. e stu- sors of the public lecture, given by Professor Stuart dents specializing in a specific area of quantum infor- Kauffman. Until 2009, S. Kaufmann was Professor mation find that it is an ideal opportunity to broaden of Biological Sciences and Physics and Astronomy, their knowledge of the field as a whole. Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Aer an introduction to quantum informa- Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics (IBI) at tion given by Alain Tapp, the following topics the University of Calgary. He was awarded the Her- were covered by the lecturers: Grover’s algorithm bert A. Simon Award in 2000 and held a John D. and its lower bound (Peter Hoyer), factoring (An- and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship from 1987 drew Childs), error correction and fault tolerance to 1992. His areas of interest include developmen- (Daniel Goesman), nonlocality and communication tal genetics, theoretical biology, evolution, and the complexity (Anne Broadbent), information theory origin of life. At the SIAM Conference on the Life (Patrick Hayden), quantum computational complex- Sciences, he gave a lecture entitled Reinventing the ity (John Watrous), quantum optics implementations Sacred: Science, Faith and Complexity. e following (Barry Sanders), superconducting circuits imple- is adapted from a report wrien by Dr. Steve Cox, mentations (Alexandre Blais), cryptography (Claude cochair of the conference. Crépeau), and quantum walks (Ed Farhi). Kamil Professor Kaufman engaged an audience of 250, Bradler and Frédéric Dupuis were in charge of the of which more than 100 were not conference par- problem session. ticipants, in a serious discussion of the limits of re- ductionism. e crowd was rapt as he spoke in a SIAM Conference on the Life Sciences slow, deliberate fashion, without slides or notes, for August 4 – 7, 2008, Hya Regency Montreal 90 minutes on themes, metaphors and analogies that sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), he has developed in three earlier books as prepara- Merck & Co., Inc., the National Institute of Biomed- tion for the following proposal: as reductionism can- ical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), CRM, and not be the whole truth, we cannot “mathematicize” the Fields Institute the class of Darwinian pre-adaptations and therefore Organizers: much about our immediate future remains, and will Steven J. Cox (Rice, Cochair), Jonathan E. Rubin always remain, a mystery. S. Kaufmann also pro- (Pisburgh, Cochair) Carlos Castillo-Chavez (Ari- poses that since this mystery has historically been zona State), Lisa J. Fauci (Tulane), Leon Glass a wellspring of creativity, we should agree to call (McGill), Joyce R. McLaughlin (Rensselaer), Qing this mystery sacred. His lecture closed with a vi- Nie (UC Irvine), Dave Polidori (Johnson & Johnson), brant question and answer period where audience Michael C. Reed (Duke) members struggled to distinguish argument from as- In 2008, the Society for Industrial and Applied sertion and skeptics sought to expose the semantic Mathematics held its Conference on Life Sciences in sleight of hand that “must” underlie any proposal Montreal. e life sciences have become increas- “explaining” religion. Advance press for his lecture
36 M I P appeared in three places in the Saturday, August 2 posed by the following organizations: Hydro- issue of e Gazee. In summary, S. Kaufman’s lec- ébec, CanmetENERGY, FPInnovations (the Feric ture succeeded on every possible front. It aracted a division), Exact Modus and the company Les Bois significant audience and sparked a healthy, serious, Francs L’Islet-Sud, and GIRO. e organizers are and ongoing discussion regarding science and reli- very grateful to the persons who supplied the prob- gion and the perceived limits of mathematics. lems, in particular Dr. Sophie D’Amours, professor at Université Laval and co-director of CIRRELT, Mr. Second Montreal Industrial Problem Christian Rouleau, of the FORAC consortium, and Solving Workshop Dr. Paul Stuart, who holds the NSERC Environmen- August 18 – 22, 2008, CRM tal Design Chair at the École Polytechnique de Mon- Organized by CRM, MITACS, GERAD, CIRRELT, tréal. Network for Computing and Mathematical Mod- e five problems studied during the work- elling (ncm ), and CIRANO 2 shop fell within the broad scope of optimization Financed by MITACS and ncm 2 and operations research, areas well represented Organizing commiee: at GERAD (hp://www.gerad.ca) and CIRRELT Jean-Marc Rousseau (CIRANO & ncm2, Chair), Eric (hp://www.cirrelt.ca), two centres with which the Bosco (MITACS), Michel Gendreau (CIRRELT & CRM has enduring collaborations. e goal of the Montréal), Bernard Gendron (Montréal), Alexandra first problem, proposed by Hydro-ébec, was to de- Haedrich (ISM), François Lalonde (Montréal), Roland termine the optimal location of gamma monitoring Malhamé (Polytechnique Montréal), Odile Marcoe instruments for measuring the snow pack in North- (UQÀM & CRM), Dominique Orban (Polytechnique ern ébec. e second problem, proposed by Can- Montréal), Louis-Martin Rousseau (Polytechnique metENERGY, consisted of retrofiing the heat recov- Montréal) ery network of a pulp and paper mill in order to min- Participating researchers: imize energy and water consumption. Charles Audet (Polytechnique Montréal), Fabian e goal of the third problem, proposed by FPIn- Bastin (Montréal), Gilles Caporossi (HEC Mont- novations, was to model the planning of operations réal), Jean-François Cordeau (HEC Montréal), Jean- in a forestry supply chain; the ultimate goal of this Marc Frayret (Polytechnique Montréal), Pierre project, which has just started, is of course to find Hansen (HEC Montréal), taibeh Katatbeh (JUST), good or even optimal solutions for the planning of Sébastien Lemieux (FORAC, Laval), Odile Mar- operations. e fourth problem was proposed by two coe, Sylvain Perron (HEC Montréal), Mason Porter companies, Exact Modus and Les Bois Francs L’Islet- (Oxford), Jean-Yves Potvin (Montréal), Jean-Marc Sud, and consisted of predicting the distribution of a Rousseau, Bala Srinivasan (Polytechnique Montréal) saw mill production among planks of varying quali- Industry representatives: ties, given the characteristics of the logs used to pro- Stéphane Alarie (Hydro-ébec), Étienne Ayoe- duce the planks. Finally, the fih problem was pro- Sauvé (CanmetENERGY, Natural Resources Canada), posed by GIRO and was a variant of the pickup and Danielle De Sève (Hydro-ébec), Marc Drouin delivery problem; in this variant, one considers po- (Exact Modus Inc.), Charles Fleurent (GIRO), tential hubs and allows some demands to be split into Frédéric Guay (Hydro-ébec), Sébastien Lacroix “subdemands” going through hubs. (Feric, FPInnovations,), Luciana Savulescu (Canmet- Although most of the participants came from ENERGY, Natural Resources Canada), Patrick St- Montréal and ébec City, the workshop welcomed Louis (GIRO), François Vachon (Hydro-ébec) researchers and students from Oxford, Toronto, Wa- Number of participants: 14 researchers, 10 in- terloo, and Maryland, as well as French students who dustry representatives, and 22 students and postdoc- were staying in Montréal at the time as part of their toral fellows work-study projects. e atmosphere of the work- As part of its multidisciplinary and industrial shop was very friendly, and as in the first Montréal program, the CRM organizes workshops where aca- IPSW, the participants (especially those who were demic researchers, industry representatives, stu- taking part in an IPSW for the first time) found the dents, and postdoctoral fellows model and solve experience intense and very profitable! e reader problems brought forward by industrial partners. may find more details (including the problem de- e second Montreal Industrial Problem Solving scriptions and the workshop proceedings) on the Workshop (IPSW) was held on August 18-22, 2008, workshop web site (http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/ and its participants worked on five problems pro- probindustriels2008/index_e.shtml).
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CI/CS 2009 Spring Technical Meeting Richard Mills (Toronto), Greg Pucher (RMCC), Matei May 10 – 13, 2009, McGill University Radulescu (Oawa), Yi Ren (Waterloo), Moham- sponsored by the Applied Mathematics Laboratory mad Mahdi Salehi (UBC), Mani Sarathy (Toronto), and CRM Syed Imran Shah (Alberta), Greg Smallwood (NRC), Local organizer: Ahmed Sobh (Windsor), Andrzej Sobiesiak (Wind- Anne Bourlioux (Montréal) sor), Jérôme iebaud (Toronto), Kevin omson Technical program coordinators: (NRC), Luis A. Torres (Alberta), Tommy Tzanetakis Kevin omson (NRC), Vahid Hosseini (NRC) (Toronto), Patrizio Vena (Carleton), James Wallace Invited speakers: (Toronto), Graeme Watson (McGill), Beth Weck- Murray J. omson (Toronto), Pierre Q. Gauthier man (Waterloo), John Wen (Waterloo), Ming Zheng (Rolls-Royce Canada), Andrew J. Higgins (McGill) (Windsor) Other speakers: Number of participants: 84 Benjamin Akih Kumgeh (McGill), Jeff Bergthor- Le Combustion Institute est une société éduca- son (McGill), Madjid Birouk (Manitoba), William tive, internationale et sans but lucratif ayant pour but Kendal Bushe (UBC), Marc Charest (Toronto), de promouvoir et disséminer la recherche en science Gaby Ciccarelli (een’s), Adam Coderre (Car- de la combustion. Cet institut comporte trente sec- leton), Brian Crosland (NRC), Kyle Daun (Wa- tions nationales. Du 10 au 13 mai 2009 la section terloo), Cécile Devaud (Waterloo), Cosmin Du- canadienne du Combustion Institute tint à Montréal mitrescu (NRC), Ahmad El Sayed (Waterloo), Nico- sa réunion technique annuelle, dont l’organisatrice las Farra (Toronto), David Gardiner (RMCC), Philip principale était Anne Bourlioux. La réunion eut lieu Geddis (Toronto), Nima Gharib (Windsor), Sandra dans le cadre magnifique du Faculty Club de l’Uni- Goldthorp (CERL), Jean-Sébastien Grondin (McGill), versité McGill, avec l’aide logistique du personnel Clinton Groth (Toronto), Ömer L. Gülder (Toronto), du CRM, en particulier Guillermo Martinez-Zalce et Hongsheng Guo (NRC), Dale Haggith (Windsor), Suzee Paradis. La réunion aira plus d’une cen- William Halle (Oawa), Vahid Hosseini (NRC), taine de participants et comporta 3 conférences plé- Christopher Iyogun (Manitoba), Sandeep Jella (Rolls- nières et 57 présentations orales. Les thèmes abor- Royce Canada), Anne Jesuthasan (McGill), Craig dés couvraient un spectre très large de questions de Johansen (een’s), Mahew Johnson (Carleton), pointe en combustion, y compris les approches via la Michael Johnson (Windsor), Vsevolods Kamen- modélisation mathématique et la résolution numé- skihs (McGill), Ahmet Emre Karatas (Toronto), Se rique des phénomènes de combustion (à la fois très Won Kim (KITECH), Alexander Koch (Waterloo), complexes et très importants en pratique). Un point Larry Kostiuk (Alberta), Carlos Leung (Oawa), saillant de cee réunion est l’accent mis sur la pré- Teresa Leung (Calgary), Oliver Link (NRC), Feng- sentation de leurs résultats par les étudiants et autres shan Liu (Delaware State), Philip Mach (Oawa), chercheurs débutants ; à la réunion de Montréal une Brian Maxwell (Oawa), James McEwen (Carleton), trentaine d’exposés furent donnés par des étudiants. Navid Mehrjoo (McGill), Adrian Milford (Waterloo),
38 CRM Prizes C
CRM created and administers, either alone or jointly, four of the eight major national prizes in the T mathematical sciences, namely: the CRM – Fields – PIMS Prize, the Prize for eoretical Physics awarded in collaboration with the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP), the Prize for Young Researchers in Statis- tics awarded jointly with the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC), and the CRM André-Aisenstadt Prize awarded to rising young Canadian stars, selected by the CRM’s Scientific Advisory Commiee. e CRM has invested enormously in time, effort and in its own resources, to propel leading Canadian scientists into the spotlight, giving them international recognition when they most need it.
CRM – Fields – PIMS Prize 2009 Awarded to Martin Barlow
Martin Barlow from the University of British community that is now within mathematical reach. Columbia is the recipient of the 2009 CRM – Fields – Barlow remains at the leading edge of this research PIMS Prize. Martin Barlow is a leading figure in with his recent work, giving best possible results for probability and the leading international expert in the behaviour of transition probabilities for random diffusion on fractals and other disordered media. In walks on super-critical percolation clusters. e pi- addition, the impact of his work has been important oneering papers on the diffusion on the Sierpiński in such diverse fields as partial differential equations carpet aracted to the domain experts in Dirichlet (including major progress on the De Giorgi conjec- forms, diffusions on manifolds, and statistical me- ture), stochastic differential equations, the mathe- chanics. Martin Barlow is currently at the forefront matical finance of electricity pricing, filtration en- of a program to study the transport properties of a largement and branching measure diffusions. broad class of graphs and manifolds. Martin Barlow received his undergraduate de- gree from the University of Cambridge in 1975 and his doctoral degree at the University College of Swansea in Wales in 1978 (with David Williams as supervisor). He held a Royal Society University Re- search Fellowship at the University of Cambridge from 1985 to 1992. In 1992 he joined the Depart- ment of mathematics at the University of British Columbia, where he is currently Professor of Math- ematics. He has held a number of visiting professor- ships at leading universities, including the Univer- sity of Tokyo, Cornell University, Imperial College London, and the Université de Paris. Already in the 1980s, Martin Barlow seled a Martin Barlow gave an invited lecture at the 1990 long-standing open problem of probability theory, ICM in Kyoto and was an invited lecturer at the pres- by providing necessary and sufficient conditions (the tigious Saint-Flour Summer School in 1995. In 2008 laer with J. Hawkes) for the continuity of local he received the Jeffery-Williams Prize of the Cana- times of Lévy processes. is was the resolution of a dian Mathematical Society. Other past distinctions thirty-year old problem that had aracted the efforts include the Rollo Davidson Prize from the Univer- of Hale Troer, Ronald Getoor, and Harry Kesten sity of Cambridge and the Junior Whitehead Prize (among others). His conditions have paved the way from the London Mathematical Society. He has been for the study of the connection between local times a leader of the international probability community, and Gaussian processes. as a lead organizer of numerous conferences, Asso- In the 1990s his detailed study of diffusions on a ciate Editor of all the top probability journals, and variety of fractals and fractal-like sets opened a new Editor-in-Chief of the Electronic Communications in area of study in probability, making him the leading Probability. He has been a Fellow of the Institute of international expert in the behaviour of diffusions on Mathematical Statistics since 1995 and of the Royal fractals and other disordered media. e study of Society of Canada since 1998. In 2006 he was elected the diffusion on the Sierpiński carpet, started with Fellow of the Royal Society (United Kingdom). Ed Perkins and then Richard Bass in 1986, served as More detals on the contributions of Professor a testing ground for diffusion in highly inhomoge- Barlow to mathematics may be found in Le Bulletin neous media, a domain of interest for the physics du CRM (Spring 2009).
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The CRM – Fields – PIMS Prize prize are H.S.M. (Donald) Coxeter (1995), George A. Ellio (1996), James Arthur (1997), Robert V. Moody is prize was established in 1994 as the CRM – (1998), Stephen A. Cook (1999), Israel Michael Sigal Fields Prize to recognize exceptional research in (2000), William T. Tue (2001), John B. Friedlander the mathematical sciences. In 2005, PIMS became (2002), John McKay (2003), Edwin Perkins (2003), an equal partner in the awarding of the prize and Donald A. Dawson (2004), David Boyd (2005), Nicole its name was changed to the CRM – Fields – PIMS Tomczak-Jaegermann (2006), Joel S. Feldman (2007), Prize. A commiee appointed by the three institutes and Allan Borodin (2008). chooses the recipient. e previous recipients of the
André-Aisenstadt Prize 2009 Awarded to Valentin Blomer
Following his master’s degree in 2001, Valentin A detailed description of the contributions of Blomer burst onto the number theory scene by solv- Valentin Blomer may be found in Le Bulletin du CRM ing a deep and difficult problem of Paul Erdős, which (Spring 2009). allowed him to obtain his Ph.D. in 2002 at the Uni- versity of Stugart (under Jörg Brüdern), aer just one year! Aer spending the 2003-2004 year as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, he accepted a position as an assistant professor at the University of Göingen. He has been an assistant professor at the University of Toronto since 2005. Blomer’s solution to Erdős’s problem revolved around precise estimates for the number of inte- gers represented by a binary quadratic form and not greater than a given point, where that point is small enough for the coefficients of the form to have a sig- nificant impact on the shape of the solution. is type of question goes back to Lagrange and Gauss, The André-Aisenstadt Prize and it is not surprising that Blomer’s work on this problem had a great impact. Created in 1991, the André-Aisenstadt Mathematics Recently Blomer has focused on the subconvex- Prize is intended to recognize and reward research ity problem for automorphic L-functions, obtaining achievements in pure and applied mathematics by (in papers with Harcos and Michel) the best results talented young Canadian mathematicians. is prize known in this central question, in several differ- consists of a $3,000 award and a medal. e recipi- ent aspects. Recently Blomer and Harcos obtained ent is chosen by the Scientific Advisory Commiee the complete spectral decomposition for the shied of the CRM. At the time of consideration, candidates convolution problem, a problem that goes back to must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Selberg. Blomer has many other fine works in all Canada, and no more than seven years from their sorts of different directions. He seems to generate Ph.D. a wealth of ideas, aided by great technical prowess. e previous recipients of the André-Aisenstadt ere is obviously much more to come. Prize are Niky Kamran (1992), Ian Putnam (1993), Valentin Blomer’s exceptional research has been Michael Ward (1995), Nigel Higson (1995), Adrian recognized by several prizes and honors, including S. Lewis (1996), Lisa Jeffrey (1997), Henri Dar- the 2005 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize in Germany and mon (1997), Boris Khesin (1998), John Toth (1999), a Sloan Research Fellowship (in 2008). Valentin Changfeng Gui (2000), Eckhard Meinrenken (2001), Blomer is also an exceptional pianist, having per- Jinyi Chen (2002), Alexander Brudnyi (2003), formed throughout Europe, in Japan, and in Canada, Vinayak Vatsal (2004), Ravi Vakil (2005), Iosif and having even won an international competition Polterovich (2006), Tai-Peng Tsai (2006), Alexander in Belgium in 2002. E. Holroyd (2007), Gregory G. Smith (2007), József Solymosi (2008), and Jonathan Taylor (2008).
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CAP – CRM Prize 2009 Awarded to Hong Guo
e 2009 CAP – CRM Prize in eoretical and Math- librium closed/isolated or periodic systems conven- ematical Physics was awarded to Hong Guo, from tionally seen in quantum chemistry and solid state McGill University, for his pioneering work on the physics. Guo’s work represents a qualitative ad- ab initio theory of transport in nanoscale sys- vance of quantum transport as well as electronic tems, including the theory of circuits in which structure theory; it has become the state-of-the-art current flows through molecules. Hong Guo has in nanoelectronic device theory and is now used produced many original works covering a wide by a wide range of researchers, including indus- range of topics in quantum transport theory, non- trial device researchers. Guo has also contributed equilibrium Green’s function formalism, electron extensively to other important issues of quantum scaering theory in semiconductor nanostructures, transport. Very notable was his work on the so- time-dependent and high frequency quantum trans- lution of the alternating current partition prob- port theory, strongly correlated phenomena in quan- lem using the non-equilibrium Green’s function ap- tum dots, new nanoscale quantum device concepts proach. His work has provided very important in- and operation principles, and application of den- sight concerning high frequency quantum transport in nanoscale systems, nonlinear quantum capaci- tance, operational speed of nano-scale devices, and quantum RLC circuits. He has built a unique re- search program in Canada and his work has a top international reputation; it is of the highest scien- tific value but has also direct relevance to practical applications. The CAP – CRM Prize e Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM) and the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) cre- ated in 1995, on the occasion of the 50th anniver- sity functional theory atomistic techniques for un- sary of the CAP, a joint prize for recognizing excep- derstanding charge/spin transport. Hong Guo has tional achievements in theoretical and mathematical developed a new theoretical formalism and asso- physics. e prize consists of a $2,000 award and a ciated modelling tools that involve a close cou- medal. pling of quantum physics, non-equilibrium statistical e previous recipients of the prize are Werner physics, materials physics, and atomistic first princi- Israel (1995), William G. Unruh (1996), Ian Affleck ples methods, for investigating nano-electronic de- (1997), J. Richard Bond (1998), David J. Rowe (1999), vices. Gordon W. Semenoff (2000), André-Marie Tremblay Hong Guo has solved the crucial theoreti- (2001), Pavel Winternitz (2002), Mahew Choptuik cal problem of quantitative prediction of non- (2003), Jiří Patera (2004), Robert Myers (2005), John equilibrium quantum transport in atomic/molecular Harnad (2006), Joel S. Feldman (2007), and Richard scale devices, by developing an entirely new elec- Cleve (2008). tronic structure theory that goes beyond the equi-
CRM – SSC Prize 2009 Awarded to Hugh Chipman
e Centre de recherches mathématiques and the sis. His work on Bayesian variable selection in ex- Statistical Society of Canada were pleased to award perimental design, on a Bayesian paradigm for non- the 2009 CRM – SSC Prize to Professor Hugh Chip- parametric wavelet regression, and on a Bayesian ap- man, from the Department of Mathematics and proach to CART (Classification and Regression Tree) Statistics at Acadia University. Professor Chipman modelling is seminal. He has also carried out innova- has made outstanding contributions to the applica- tive work in discriminant analysis and clustering and tion of Bayesian statistical inference for data analy-
42 CRM P interdisciplinary research in bioinformatics and ma- parametric wavelet regression, and on a Bayesian chine learning, and trained many graduate students. approach to CART modelling. In particular, he ex- tended the recursive partitioning in CART (origi- nally a tool for exploring data) in order to turn it into a model; then he developed prior distributions for the space of all CART models and used the MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) method for computing the posterior distribution. He has also worked on Bayesian treed models, Bayesian additive regression trees, and Bayesian ensemble learning. His papers are widely cited and have a profound impact on the development of computer intensive nonparametric data analysis. In 2006 his work was selected for a full oral presentation at the Neural Information and Processing Systems (NIPS) meeting. Hugh Chipman obtained a B.Sc. in mathemat- A report on the conference given by Hugh Chip- ics at Acadia University (in 1990) and an M.Sc. and man at the CRM may be found in Le Bulletin du CRM a Ph.D. in statistics at the University of Waterloo (Autumn 2009). (in 1991 and 1994, respectively). During his doc- The CRM – SSC Prize toral studies he was supervised by C.F.J. Wu et M.S. Hamada. Aer obtaining his Ph.D. he became assis- e SSC, founded in 1977, is dedicated to the pro- tant professor at the University of Chicago Gradu- motion of excellence in statistical research and prac- ate School of Business. Aer spending three years tice. e prestigious CRM – SSC Prize, jointly spon- in Chicago, he went back to the University of Wa- sored by the SSC and the CRM, is given each year to terloo, where he stayed during seven years as an as- a Canadian statistician in recognition of outstanding sistant professor and then an associate professor. In contributions to the discipline during the recipient’s 2004, Hugh Chipman was awarded a Tier 2 Canada first 15 years aer earning a doctorate. Research Chair in mathematical modelling at Acadia Hugh Chipman is the eleventh recipient of the University, where he became a full professor in 2006. CRM – SSC Prize. e previous winners of the award In 2002 he was a visiting associate professor at Stan- are Christian Genest (1999), Robert J. Tibshirani ford University. (2000), Colleen D. Cutler (2001), Larry A. Wasser- Professor Chipman has made exceptional contri- man (2002), Charmaine B. Dean (2003), Randy Sier butions to the application of Bayesian statistical in- (2004), Jiahua Chen (2005), Jeffrey Rosenthal (2006), ference to data analysis. He has carried out funda- Richard Cook (2007), and Paul Gustafson (2008). mental work on Bayesian variable selection in ex- perimental design, on a Bayesian paradigm for non-
43 The CRM Outreach Program T CRM O P
CRM is eager to fulfill the public’s desire for understanding the latest developments in the mathemat- T ical sciences. To this end, the CRM initiated in the spring of 2006 a series of lectures called the Grandes Conférences du CRM, which feature outstanding lecturers able to convey the beauty and power of mathemat- ical research to a wide audience. Les Grandes Conférences du CRM are now well established and there were three lectures geared towards a general audience in 2008 – 2009. Two of the lectures took place at the Univer- sité de Montréal: a lecture by Professor Jacques Laskar on October 9, 2008, and a lecture by Professor Gilles Brassard, on April 16, 2009. Another lecture was given by Professor Yvan Saint-Aubin at Université Laval on November 28, 2008. e reader will find summaries of these lectures below. Each Grande Conférence at- tracted hundreds of people of all ages, and was followed by a “vin d’honneur” that enabled the participants to ask questions, reconnect with friends and colleagues, and meet people interested in mathematics and science in general. In 2008 – 2009, the Grandes Conférences program was under the stewardship of Christiane Rousseau and Yvan Saint-Aubin, professors at the Département de mathématiques et de statistique of the Université de Montréal. The Chaotic Motion of the Solar System – Jacques Laskar (Observatoire de Paris) by Christiane Rousseau (Université de Montréal)
On October 9, 2008, that he did not expect to find chaos in the solar sys- Jacques Laskar gave tem. the first Grande Confé- Jacques Laskar then turned to the modern period, rence of the 2008 – where the solar system is simulated on computers. 2009 academic year. He spoke of the exponential divergence of trajecto- e audience included ries and the ensuing problems in numerical simula- groups of college stu- tion: the step must not be too large with respect to dents and other par- the period. e trajectories cannot be controlled af- ticipants with a keen ter a certain number of steps, because of the cumu- interest in astronomy. lative effect of errors. One is thus led to consider the e lecture started averaged system in fast time and to focus on the slow with a historical over- motions. Since the period is much larger, one can view of the area and take time steps that are much larger and control the the many proofs of the simulations over longer periods. ese simulations solar system stability. Jacques Laskar recalled the enable one to look at the variations in the orbit pa- laws of Kepler and spoke on the “stability proofs” due rameters: eccentricity, precession (the rotation axis to Euler and Lagrange. Initially these proofs were of the Earth), etc. Jacques Laskar mentioned recent found not to agree with the experimental data, but work revealing the remarkable correlation between they were eventually replaced by new methods, the the Earth axis oscillations and the ice ages, which sci- perturbative methods (in the case of Euler) and the entists study by looking at marine sediments. invariance of the planet major axes (in the case of La- e results obtained by Jacques Laskar during the grange), related to the study of the linearized system. 1990s prove the existence of chaos among the solar e speaker presented the Chaldeans’ historical data, system internal planets (Mercury, Earth and Venus). transmied to us by Ptolemy and which led Halley Chaos follows from resonances in the orbit param- to conclude that Jupiter was geing closer to the Sun eters of these planets; it entails a weak expansion and Saturn further from the Sun. Because Laplace of the orbit eccentricity for each internal planet, and looked at perturbative terms of higher order, he was this expansion in turn enables one to give many dif- able to discover the periodic oscillations of the plan- ferent values to the revolution periods of planets. ets major axes (with an approximate period of 800 ese variations bring the system into a state close years); these oscillations provided a perfect fit of the to resonance, which speeds up the phenomenon and variations that had been observed since antiquity. demonstrates that there exist trajectories where the Jacques Laskar then explained the discovery of chaos Mercury orbit crosses that of Venus. When simulat- by Henri Poincaré and mentioned that chaos could ing the averaged system over five billion years, one occur in the solar system (in theory, at least). He observes that the Mercury and Venus eccentricities stressed the fact that in a later text, Poincaré wrote exhibit variations allowing for the possibility of col-
45 C lisions. Comparing simulations based on models in- for Mercury. is enables one to prove the existence cluding general relativity and those based on models of trajectories (built piece by piece) leading to colli- not including it, Professor Laskar concluded that the sions. en a “shadowing lemma” technique can be system is much more chaotic without general rela- used to conclude that there exists a real trajectory tivity. similar to a trajectory built piece by piece, with ini- Professor Laskar then explained how to get tial conditions very close to those of the simulated round the problem of exponential divergence in or- trajectory. ese methods enable scientists to go be- der to obtain realistic trajectories through simula- yond the study of the averaged system and study the tion. e simulation process first produces sets of real system, including the position of the planet on trajectories whose initial conditions are close to one its orbit. A large simulation is under way to show another over relatively short periods of time. en that a collision between Mercury and Venus may oc- the simulation process produces a new set of trajec- cur. tories whose initial conditions are close to the final Jacques Laskar also spoke on a statistical study of state of the first set. is method amounts to build- the semi-major axes of internal planets. e distribu- ing trajectories piece by piece. In order to find tra- tion of their values is very regular when one makes jectories that can lead to collisions, one chooses tra- numerous simulations over very long time periods. jectories exhibiting the largest possible eccentricity
Disorder and Beauty – Yvan Saint-Aubin (Université de Montréal) by Jean-Marie De Koninck and Claude Levesque (Université Laval)
On November 28, 2008, Professor Yvan Saint-Aubin mathematician Helge von Koch (1870 – 1924). e it- delivered a Grande Conférence du CRM in the Hydro- erative construction of von Koch’s Snowflake (very ébec auditorium of Université Laval. On the well illustrated) convinced the audience that it was poster advertising his conference one could read: indeed a closed curve of infinite perimeter whose di- “e mathematician who uncovers new paerns or mension is greater than one. In order to compute structures will oen say that they are beautiful in or- this “fractal dimension,” Professor Saint-Aubin eval- der to describe his new understanding, because his uated the number of brushstrokes necessary to cover breakthrough is similar to an aesthetic experience. the Snowflake. He was able to show that its dimen- is point of view is especially startling when the sion is comprised between 1 and 2; actually it equals object of study is disorder itself.” e lecturer’s goal log 4/ log 3 ≈ 1.26. was to “describe topics where mathematicians un- e same kind covered structures in situations where only disorder of calculation was seemed to reign.” Yvan Saint-Aubin reached his goal carried out by Tay- with brilliance and humour, in front of an audience lor to show that of more than 250 people. Pollock’s works are e audience was first introduced to Jackson Pol- fractals whose di- lock, one of the greatest American painters of the mension can be es- twentieth century. His approach is unusual: he timated. is leads to the hypothesis that the brain seems to be throwing paint randomly on canvas, and is hardwired to appreciate fractal objects. Taylor although the result looks disordered, his paintings claims to have been able to identify forgeries (paint- are pleasing to the eye. Why is this so? Richard Tay- ings aributed to Pollock) by computing the frac- lor, a theoretical physicist and amateur artist (not tal dimension of these paintings and observing that to be confused with Andrew Wiles’ collaborator), their dimension was 0! Mathematics can be used to argues that Pollock’s works (drippings) have fractal support great art by helping detect forgeries… properties. How can one describe the geometrical In the second part of his lecture Professor Saint- objects called “fractals,” usually produced by com- Aubin spoke on disorder at the atomic level, espe- puters? cially the work of the botanist Robert Brown (1773 – Professor Saint-Aubin gave the example of the 1858) and the scientist Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955). famous von Ko’s Snowflake, one of the first fractal As Brown observed, inert molecules actually move! curves that were described at the beginning of the eir motion is disordered, as illustrated in a short twentieth century; it was named aer the Swedish film presented by the lecturer. Einstein proposed to
46 T CRM O P use this disordered motion in order to compute the density is at a “critical level.” He explained that con- Avogadro constant (i.e., the number of atoms in 12 formal transformations are a crucial part of the criti- grams of carbon-12). Jean Perrin carried out this ex- cal level description and showed pictures displaying periment and was awarded the Nobel Prize for his conformal and non-conformal transformations. e groundbreaking experiments on the atomic hypoth- audience was able to observe the action of a family of esis. When the step and the time between two steps conformal transformations allowing the removal of become very small (i.e., tend towards zero), Brow- slots from the complex half-plane. If the slot repre- nian motion looks like a random walk. Professor sents an interface between the coffee and the water, Saint-Aubin illustrated this model by playing a clip the real point where the slot originates is a multiple from Madama Buerfly. Not all disorders are the of Brownian motion. same! Mathematicians were stunned to discover that Professor Saint-Aubin concluded his wonderful Brownian motion is almost surely continuous but lecture by citing Poincaré: “If a new result is signifi- cannot be differentiated at any point. cant, it is because it ties together elements that have Yvan Saint-Aubin also spoke on percolation and been known for a long time but seemed unrelated, used the modelling of a coffee filter as an example. and thus introduces order in an area that looked dis- As in the case of Brownian motion, he illustrated his ordered” (see L’avenir des mathématiques by Henri topic with short films, and in particular he localized Poincaré). for his audience the precise point where the grind
Secret Codes Throughout the Ages – Gilles Brassard (Université de Montréal) by Yvan Saint-Aubin (Université de Montréal)
In his Grande Confé- History records several examples of the use of ci- rence du CRM Gilles phers. According to Suetonius, author of De vita Cae- Brassard gave the au- sarum, Julius Caesar used a cipher based on a shi of dience a sweeping the leers. Each of the plaintext leers is replaced overview of the his- by another leer according to the table below. To tory of secret codes. produce such a table, an integer n is chosen (in the Although geometry present case n equals 3); then the complete alphabet and number theory is wrien twice on two consecutive rows, the second are generally believed row being derived by shiing the first one n times to to be the only sciences the le. To create the ciphertext, one replaces each having drawn the at- leer in the plaintext by looking for this leer in the tention of several civ- top row and replacing it by the leer below (in the ilizations over two millennia, Brassard’s lecture al- boom row). In order for Ms. A and Mr. B to com- lows one to think that cryptography is on a par with municate, they need only agree to use this kind of those two sciences. In this report I cannot address all cipher and choose the number n. the historical steps to which Gilles Brassard alluded …WXYZABCDE… in his lecture, and I will focus on some of them. ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ Render Unto Caesar… …ZABCDEFGH… A person, say, Ms. A, wishes to send a confiden- is cipher does not really prevent a serious adver- tial message (also called plaintext) to another person, sary from understanding the plaintext, but a sim- say, Mr. B. To ensure that the message will not be ple adaptation of the cipher will make the adver- understood if it is intercepted by a third party, Ms. A sary’s task much more difficult. If Ms. A chooses a converts her message into an unintelligible one (also random permutation of the 26 leers, for instance called ciphertext) according to rules known to herself JAROC…DGSNL, and shares this secret “key” with and Mr. B. When he receives the ciphertext, Mr. B Mr. B, then she can convert the plaintext by system- will use certain rules to decipher the original mes- atically replacing A by J, B by A, …, Z by L. Mr. B sage. Cryptographers study ciphers (that is, the rules can then easily decrypt the ciphertext, i.e., recover that enable one to convert messages in a secure fash- the plaintext, since he knows the key. is method, ion) and the techniques to break them. known as monoalphabetic cipher, is obviously beer than Caesar’s method, because the adversary wish-
47 C ing to break the cipher may have to try each of converted by using the row m, the seventh by us- 26! > 4 × 1026 possible keys (while in the case of ing a, and so on. When using this kind of cipher Caesar’s method, he only has to try each of 26 keys, (called polyalphabetic), one does not replace each oc- including the trivial one). currence of e in the plaintext by the same leer in Is this monoalphabetic cipher a secure method, the ciphertext. us it cannot be broken as easily as even against a supercomputer? e answer is “no,” the monoalphabetic cipher. Indeed, it was not bro- especially if the ciphertext (and thus the plaintext) is ken until 1854, when Charles Babbage proposed an sufficiently long and the language of the plaintext is efficient method for breaking it… 301 years aer its known. It took several centuries before the polymath invention by Bellaso! Abu Yusuf Ya’qub ibn Ishaq ibn as-Sabbah ibn Oòm- Enigma, Bletchley Park, and the ran ibn Ismaïl Al-Kindi, author of 290 manuscripts, Colossus… discovered how to break this cipher by making use of the leer frequencies in the language of the plaintext. Many other concepts were introduced by Gilles Bras- In French, for instance, the leer e is the one with the sard during his lecture, but I will now skip many highest frequency, followed by the leers a and s.A centuries to mention the work carried out by British first aempt to decipher the message consists of re- cryptanalysts during the Second World War. e ci- placing the leer with the highest frequency by e, the pher underlying the Enigma machine, used by the leer with the second highest frequency by a, and so Nazi army to encrypt its messages, is too compli- on. e leer frequencies in the plaintext may not cated to be described here. It must be said, however, be exactly the same as in Les Trois Mousquetaires that the success of British cryptanalysts in break- (say), but it is likely that one will be able to deci- ing the majority of enemy messages, while working pher the message by taking other information into at Bletchley Park and following in the footsteps of account, for instance the fact that the French lan- their Polish colleagues, is both a military feat and a guage does not feature many two-leer words (le, la, great achievement of twentieth-century mathemat- de, en, un,…). ics. Professor Brassard indicated that this achieve- ment by mathematicians was accompanied by the Fast Forward to the Renaissance… design and construction of the first programmable e main drawback of the monoalphabetic substitu- electronic computer, the Colossus. e secret sur- tion is that a given leer is always replaced by the rounding the first computer was so well kept that the same leer. As explained above, the use of leer fre- ENIAC, built in the United States at the end of the quencies enables the adversary to decipher the mes- war, was for a long time thought to be the first pro- sage. Vigenère’s cipher gets round this drawback! grammable electronic computer… although it was Blaise de Vigenère (1523 – 1596) was a French diplo- only the eleventh one (ten Colossi were built!). e mat with an interest in cryptology. e cipher we technical reports of the time, made public by the are about to describe bears his name, but it was orig- British Public Record Office in October 2000, allow inally described by Giovan Baista Bellaso in 1553. us to give the builders of the Colossus their due. Vigenère’s cipher uses a keyword that is chosen (and Code Designers and Code Breakers… kept secret) by A and B. Ms. A and Mr. B also need the so-called “Vigenère’s square,” in which each row Modern cryptology concepts were introduced by contains all the leers (shied one time to the le Professor Brassard during the short time of his con- with respect to the preceding row). e rows and ference, for instance, the notions of asymmetric key columns of Vigenère’s square are labelled by the let- and public key. He also described the impact of cryp- ters, in the usual alphabetical order. tology on everyday life, but I must now conclude my As in Caesar’s method, Ms. A will look for a given report. Edgar Allan Poe was a fan of cryptanalysis. leer in the top row of the square and replace it by He considered this science as a match between two a leer that is at the intersection of the same col- teams, that of scientists who invent new ciphers and umn and a row determined by the keyword. Assume that of “adversaries” who break them. Poe and many that the keyword is maths. en Ms. A will use the scientists are convinced that any cipher can be bro- row labelled by m to convert the first leer of the ken by the human mind, given enough time. Gilles plaintext, the row labelled by a to convert the sec- Brassard, however, invites us to challenge this belief. ond one, the row labelled by t to convert the third Couldn’t one use a computer to implement ciphers one, and so on. Aer the five rows m, a, t, h, s have that no mind or machine would be capable of break- been used, the sixth leer of the plaintext will be ing? If the answer is “yes,” then the invention of the
48 T CRM O P computer by the Code Breakers, while allowing them tant topic was barely mentioned during his lecture. to win a round, will make them lose the match! Was this out of modesty? “No, an introduction to e audience was captivated by Professor Bras- this topic would have required too much time,” an- sard’s lecture. Professor Brassard is one of the swered the lecturer. We must invite him for another founders of quantum cryptography, but this impor- Grande Conférence du CRM!
49 CRM Partnerships CRM P
CRM is strongly commied to its national mission and takes measures to ensure that as many Cana- T dian scientists as possible benefit from its activities and become involved in their planning. For instance, it appoints to its International Scientific Advisory Commiee eminent Canadian scientists from various parts of the country; it is present in all important forums where the future directions of the Canadian mathematical sciences are discussed; it urges its organizers to ensure that Canadian specialists are included in their activ- ities; it organizes and supports scientific events across the country; it collaborates with Canadian institutes, societies, and associations. A specific budget is set aside each year for the participation of Canadian graduate students in its programs. e CRM is the only national institute that operates in the two official languages of Canada and it is highly visible on the international scene. In keeping with its national role, it coordinates its activities with the Fields Institute, PIMS, the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS), MITACS, the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society (CAIMS), the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC), the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP), as well as with other societies and institutes abroad.
CRM Partners
The Fields Institute (FI) and the Pacific physics, are published by Springer. e CRM has ex- Institute for the Mathematical Sciences change agreements with the Fields Institute, PIMS, (PIMS) MSRI, the Institute for Mathematics and its Appli- cations (IMA), École normale supérieure (France), Since the early 1990s two other research insti- the Isaac Newton Institute, the Institut des Hautes tutes have joined the CRM on the Canadian scene: Études Scientifiques (France), and BIRS. Toronto’s Fields Institute (FI) and the Pacific Insti- tute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS). As well Associations and Professional Societies as coordinating their scientific activities, the three e CRM maintains close ties with the different institutes have worked closely on a variety of initia- professional societies in the mathematical sciences: tives, the most important of which is the Mathemat- CMS, CAIMS, SSC, and CAP. e president of the ics of Information Technology and Complex Systems CMS is an ex-officio member of the CRM Inter- network (MITACS). e three institutes were also in- national Scientific Advisory Commiee. e CRM volved in other initiatives, such as the CRM – Fields has also supported financially certain initiatives of Prize awarded in recognition of outstanding accom- the CMS, such as the mathematical camps. To- plishments in the mathematical sciences in Canada. gether with the other institutes, the CRM organizes It was created in 1994 and in 2006 became the CRM – or sponsors special sessions at the CMS, CAIMS, and Fields – PIMS Prize. e administrative responsibil- SSC meetings. e CRM awards a prize each year ity for this prize rotates between the three institutes. jointly with the SSC; similarly, it awards a prize each International and National Collaborations year with the CAP in mathematical and theoretical physics. In 2008 – 2009, the CRM collaborated with or re- The Mathematics of Information ceived financial assistance from the following insti- Technology and Complex Systems tutions: INSERM (Paris), INRIA, the Banff Interna- tional Research Station (BIRS), the Universidad de La Network (MITACS) Habana (Cuba), the Groupe d’études et de recherche MITACS was conceived by the three Canadian math- en analyse des décisions (GERAD), and the National ematical sciences institutes. ey envisioned a pan- Institute for Complex Data Structures (NICDS). e Canadian network of projects each using sophis- CRM has signed an agreement with the Tata Institute ticated mathematical tools for modelling industrial of Fundamental Research; the CRM is already collab- problems in key sectors of the Canadian economy. orating with the Tata Institute, especially its Centre MITACS was officially launched on February 19, for Applicable Mathematics (located in Bangalore). 1999. By March 1999, all 21 initial research projects In its publishing activities, the CRM is contin- were under way. uing its partnership with the American Mathemat- MITACS leads Canada’s effort in the generation, ical Society (AMS), in particular through its two se- application, and commercialization of new mathe- ries of joint publications, the CRM Monograph Series matical tools and methodologies within a world-class and the CRM Proceedings and Lecture Notes Series. research program. e network initiates and fosters Two CRM series, in statistics and in mathematical
51 C linkages with industrial, governmental, and not-for- • the creation of interdisciplinary research teams profit organizations that require mathematical tech- with quantitative leadership; nologies to deal with problems of strategic impor- • the training of the next generation of quantita- tance to Canada. MITACS is driving the recruiting, tive researchers to ensure that they will become well training, and placement of a new generation of per- versed in the language of multiple disciplines and be sonnel with highly mathematical skills that is vital to prepared to hold leadership positions in long-term Canada’s future social and economic well-being. scientific collaborations; MITACS creates links between academia, indus- • the raising of the national profile of the statistical try, and the public sector to develop cuing edge sciences. mathematical tools vital to a knowledge-based econ- In the context of this model, and supported by a omy. e only Network of Centres of Excellence proactive management team, the NICDS elicits re- (NCE) for the mathematical sciences, MITACS cur- search proposals and builds research projects that are rently has around four hundred scientists, one thou- national in scope and involve numerous disciplines sand students, and three hundred partner organiza- and partners. tions working on its projects. To improve Canada’s To conclude, let us mention that the National international competitiveness, MITACS research fo- Program on Complex Data Structures ended an cuses on five key sectors of the economy: extraordinarily successful five years on April 30, • biomedical and health; 2008. e program established 8 projects, engaged • environment and natural resources; 60 statistical scientists from across Canada, and • information processing; trained 70 graduate students and postdoctoral fel- • risk and finance; lows. irty collaborators worked within NPCDS • communication, networks and security. teams and NPCDS partnered with 20 organizations, MITACS Inc. is a federally incorporated not-for- including government agencies, research laborato- profit society formed to administer the MITACS Net- ries, industry, research hospitals, and foundations. work of Centres of Excellence. NICDS Projects MITACS also gives financial support to some events organized by the CRM and other institutions. • Statistical Methods for Complex Survey Data For instance, in 2008 – 2009, it supported CanaDAM Project Leader: Changbao Wu (Waterloo) 2009 and the Eighth International Conference on • Canadian Consortium on Statistical Genomics Monte Carlo and asi-Monte Carlo Methods in Sci- Project Leader: Rafal Kustra (Toronto) entific Computing (see the section General Program) and the Workshop on Signal Processing Methods in • Data Mining with Complex Data Structures Brain Imaging, the Eighth Canadian Summer School Project Leaders: Hugh Chipman (Acadia), Antonio on antum Information, and the Second Montreal Ciampi (McGill), eodora Kourti (McMaster), Hel- Industrial Problem Solving Workshop (see the sec- mut Kröger (Laval) tion Multidisciplinary and Industrial Program). e • Design and Analysis of Computer Experiments for CRM is grateful to MITACS for its generous financial Complex Systems support in 2008 – 2009. Project Leader: Derek Bingham (Simon Fraser) The National Institute for Complex Data • Forests, Fires and Stoastic Modelling Structures (NICDS) Project Leaders: John Braun (Western Ontario), Charmaine Dean (Simon Fraser), Dave Martell In 2008-2009, the Canadian statistical community (Toronto) took the initiative and transformed the NPCDS, a national network in statistics created by the statisti- • Spatial/Temporal Modelling of Marine Ecological cal community and the three Canadian mathematics Systems institutes, into an institute, the NICDS. e NICDS Project Leaders: Michael Dowd (Dalhousie), Joanna was created in response to a pressing need to in- Flemming (Dalhousie), Chris Field (Dalhousie), Rick volve statisticians in collaborations with researchers Routledge (Simon Fraser) from various disciplines. Its mandate is to enrich and • Statistical Innovation for the Analysis of Complex enlarge the national research enterprise through a Data in Medical and Health Science powerful new model for the statistical sciences. is Project leaders: Richard Cook (Waterloo), Michal model has three striking, unique features: Abrahamowicz (McGill), Paul Gustafson (UBC),
52 CRM P
Wendy Lou (Toronto), Peter Song (Waterloo), Liqun Brunswick), Henri Moscovici (Ohio State), Bahram Wang (Manitoba) Rangipour (New Brunswick) Atlantic Association for Research in the • APICS Meeting: Mathematics Colloquium and Mathematical Sciences (AARMS) Statistics Colloquium October 17 – 19, 2008, Moncton AARMS was founded in March 1997 at a time when Organizer: Jacques Allard (Moncton) the National Network for Research in the Mathe- matical Sciences was being discussed and planned. • Combinatorial Algebra Meets Algebraic Combina- AARMS exists to encourage and advance research torics: Sixth Annual Meeting in all mathematical sciences, including statistics and January 16 – 18, 2009, Memorial computer science, in the Atlantic region. In addi- Organizers: Yuri Bahturin (Memorial), Nantel Ber- tion, AARMS acts as a regional voice in discussions geron (York), Sara Faridi (Dalhousie), Tony Geramita of the mathematical sciences on a national level. (een’s), Mikhail Kotchetov (Memorial) Since its inception, AARMS has played an impor- • Atlantic General Relativity Meeting tant role in the research activities in the Atlantic re- April 25-26, 2009, New Brunswick gion, sponsoring or co-sponsoring numerous meet- Organizers: Jack Gegenberg (New Brunswick), Viqar ings and workshops. In the summer of 2002, AARMS Husain (New Brunswick) initiated an annual Summer School for graduate stu- • Workshop on Mathematical Biology dents and promising undergraduates. AARMS is April 27, 2009, Dalhousie grateful to Canada’s three mathematical institutes, Organizers: James Watmough (New Brunswick), the Centre de recherches mathématiques, the Fields Sina Adl (Dalhousie) Institute, and the Pacific Institute for the Mathemat- ical Sciences, as well as to the member universities, • Fih Annual East Coast Combinatorics Conference for providing funding for its activities. Its mem- April 30-May 1, 2009, New Brunswick ber universities are Acadia University, Cape Breton Organizer: Tim Alderson (New Brunswick) University, Dalhousie University, Memorial Univer- Academic Partners sity of Newfoundland, Mount Allison University, St. Francis Xavier University, Saint Mary’s University, e activities of the CRM rest on a solid basis of co- the Université de Moncton, the University of New operation with regional universities, in particular the Brunswick, and the University of Prince Edward Is- Montréal universities, and most particularly the Uni- land. versité de Montréal, whose support for the CRM has been unfailing. e Université de Montréal releases AARMS Scientific Activities five of its faculty members to work at the CRM each • Workshop on Foundational Methods in Computer year, and the support of these faculty members is Science an essential asset for the CRM’s scientific activities. May 30 – June 1, 2008, Dalhousie ere is in addition a regular program of teaching re- Organizers: Doree Pronk (Dalhousie), Peter leases with the other Montréal universities, bringing Selinger (Dalhousie) the equivalent of another two positions to the CRM each year. On an ad-hoc basis linked to the thematic • Groups of Self-Homotopy Equivalences and Related program, the CRM has also been arranging the re- Topics lease of research personnel from nearby universities June 29 – July 5, 2008, Dalhousie such as Laval, Sherbrooke, een’s, and Oawa. e Organizers: Keith Johnson (Dalhousie), Renzo Pic- partnerships of the CRM with the other research in- cinini (Milano-Bicocca) stitutes in the Montréal area have been very prof- • Graded Algebras and Superalgebras itable. August 29 – September 2, 2008, Memorial With the financial support of the Université de Organizer: Atlantic Algebra Centre Montréal, McGill University, the Université du é- • Canadian Hopf Algebras and Noncommutative Ge- bec à Montréal, Concordia University, Université La- ometry Meeting val, and Université de Sherbrooke, as well as grants September 2 – 5, 2008, New Brunswick from NSERC and the Fonds québécois de recherche Organizers: Alain Connes (Collège de France), Pi- sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT), the CRM otr M. Hajac (Warsaw), Dan Kucerovsky (New finances the activities of its ten laboratories, which collectively represent the most active branches of the mathematical sciences. ese laboratories are
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the perfect illustration of scientific vitality and serve (ncm2), a network created by several research cen- to feed the national and international scientific pro- tres in order to respond to the needs of industry in grams of the CRM. We refer the reader to the section fields related to computing and mathematical mod- Research Laboratories for descriptions of the activi- elling. e research of the network focuses on five ties of each of these laboratories. major themes: risk management, information pro- cessing, imaging and parallel computing, transport Association with the University of Oawa and telecommunications, and health and electronic In 2003, the Department of Mathematics and Statis- commerce. e ncm2 was founded by the CRM, the tics of the University of Oawa became a member Centre de recherche en calcul appliqué (CERCA), the of the Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM). Center for Interuniversity Research and Analysis of In partnership with the University of Oawa, the Organizations (CIRANO), the Center for Research on CRM co-finances the CRM – University of Oawa Transportation (CRT), and the Group for Research in Distinguished Lecture Series, postdoctoral fellow- Decision Analysis (GERAD). Since then, three new ships, and teaching releases so that University of Ot- members have joined the network: the Cooperative tawa faculty members can undertake research with Centre for Research in Mesometeorology (CCRM), colleagues in the CRM’s laboratories or participate the Centre de Recherche Informatique de Montréal in the scientific activities of the CRM. (CRIM), and the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique-Énergie, Matériaux et Télécommunica- CRM – University of Oawa Distinguished tions (INRS-EMT). e ncm2 was involved in the or- Lecture Series ganization and financing of the first two Montreal e series features talks by prominent mathemati- Industrial Problem Solving Workshops. cians from Canada and abroad on topics at the fore- ébec Neuroimaging Initiative (RNQ) front of today’s mathematical research. • Asymptotic Properties of Finite Groups and Finite Di- In recent years, CRM’s PhysNum laboratory has de- mensional Algebras veloped a strong collaborative network with vari- Efim Zelmanov (UCSD), September 19, 2008 ous partners in neuroimaging in the Montréal area. is network became an officially recognized net- • An Epidemic Treatment Model with Drug Resistance work with the founding of the “Regroupement Neu- Fred Brauer (Wisconsin – Madison & UBC), February roimagerie ébec” (RNQ), under the umbrella of the 13, 2009 Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie in Montréal. RNQ, • Linear Predictability and Biological Invasions with its 70 researchers, has recently purchased some Mark Lewis (Alberta), March 6, 2009 key equipment in neuroimaging thanks to a very large grant ($11M). One of the strongest alliances of Network for Computing and the CRM within that network is its association with Mathematical Modelling (ncm ) 2 the INSERM laboratory for brain imaging at Jussieu- e CRM is one of the founding members of the Net- La Salpêtrière (Paris), whose director is Dr. Habib Be- work for Computing and Mathematical Modelling nali.
Joint Initiatives
e annual meetings of the CMS, SSC, and CAIMS, May 25 – 29, 2008, Oawa Congress Centre as well as some of their training and promotion ac- sponsored by the French Embassy, Canadian Her- tivities, are jointly sponsored by the CRM, the Fields itage, Carleton University, CRM, the Fields Insti- Institute, PIMS, and MITACS. In 2008 the annual tute, ISM, MITACS, PIMS, the SAS Institute, Statistics meeting of the SSC was replaced by a joint meet- Canada, and the University of Oawa ing with the Société Française de Statistique and the Scientific Program Chairs: Summer Meeting of the CMS and the annual meet- Marc Hallin (ULB), Bruno Rémillard (HEC Montréal) ing of CAIMS were replaced by the Second Canada – Local Arrangements Commiee: France Congress. Pierre Lavallée (Statistics Canada, Chairman), Joint Meeting of the Statistical Society of Canada and the Société Française de Statistique
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Hélène Bérard (Statistics Canada), Michel Dele- Scientific Commiee: croix (ÉNSAI), Diane Galarneau (Statistics Canada), Jean-Pierre Bourguignon (IHÉS), Ivar Ekeland (UBC Carole Jean-Marie (Statistics Canada), Jean-Michel & PIMS), Étienne Ghys (ÉNS Lyon), Arvind Gupta Marin (Montpellier 2), Isabelle Michaud (Statistics (Simon Fraser & MITACS), Barbara Keyfitz (Fields Canada), Mike Sirois (Statistics Canada), Paola Ver- & Houston), François Lalonde (CRM & Mont- solato (Statistics Canada), Carolyn Zirbser (Statistics réal), William F. Langford (Guelph), Claude Le Bris Canada) (ÉNPC), Étienne Pardoux (Provence), Gilles Pisier To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the (Paris Diderot), Christiane Rousseau (Montréal) establishment of the first permanent French sele- Local Organization: ment in Canada, the Statistical Society of Canada and Christiane Rousseau (Montréal), Alexandra Hae- the Société Française de Statistique decided to hold a drich (ISM & UQÀM), Gertrud Jeewanjee (CMS, ex Joint Annual Meeting. is daring venture material- officio), Jo-Anne Rockwood (MITACS, ex officio) ized in a meeting of exceptional breadth, whose sci- The Congress was a resounding success, in no entific program reflects the multiple and oen com- small part thanks to the involvement of CRM mem- plementary concerns of European and North Amer- bers, who took part in the organization of the ican statisticians. e program included many pres- congress itself and its sessions and gave numerous tigious lectures, oen delivered by award winners. talks. ere were 523 Canadians and 196 French Here is a list of the main lectures. mathematicians among the 775 participants. e • e SSC Presidential Invited Address (Paul Em- Congress featured 18 lectures delivered by plenary brechts, ETH Zürich). speakers or award winners, 27 sessions, 7 minisym- • e Lucien Le Cam Address (Richard Gill, Leiden). posia, three workshops, and several networking ac- • e SFdS Presidential Invited Address (Davy Pain- tivities. e Congress was pleased to host Plenary daveine, ULB). Speakers Yves André (CNRS & École normale su- • e SSC Gold Medal Award Address (Don périeure), Olivier Biquard (Université Pierre et Ma- McLeish, Waterloo). rie Curie), Luc Devroye (McGill University), Andrew • e Special Invited Session of the Survey Methods Granville (Université de Montréal), Alice Guionnet Section (David Binder, Statistics Canada). (CNRS & École normale supérieure de Lyon), Rick • e Pierre Robillard Award Addresses (Juli Ather- Kenyon (Brown), Gérard Laumon (CNRS & Uni- ton, McGill, and Jingjing Wu, Calgary). versité Paris-Sud 11), Éric Séré (Université Paris- • e Canadian Journal of Statistics Award Address Dauphine), Jean-Pierre Serre (Collège de France), (Hwashin Shin, Health Canada). Nicole Tomczak-Jaegermann (University of Alberta), • e Marie-Jeanne-Laurent-Duhamel Addresses Nizar Touzi (École Polytechnique), and Jianhong Wu (Gilles Stoltz, CNRS & ÉNS, and Jean-François (York University). essy, UQTR). e Prize Speakers were Alysson M. Costa from • e Address of the winner of the CRM – SSC Prize Universidade de São Paulo (CAIMS Cecil Graham (Paul Gustafson, UBC). Doctoral Dissertation Award), Alan George from the • e Isobel Loutit Invited Address on Business and University of Waterloo (CAIMS Research Prize), Ed- Industrial Statistics (Vijay Nair, Michigan). ward Bierstone from the University of Toronto (CMS Excellence in Teaching Award), Izabella Laba from Second Canada – France Congress 2008 University of British Columbia (CMS Krieger-Nelson June 1 – 5, 2008, Université du ébec à Montréal Prize), and Martin Barlow from University of British Congress Partners Columbia (CMS Jeffery-Williams Prize). Yvan Saint- CAIMS, CMS, CRM, e Fields Institute, ISM, MI- Aubin, from the Université de Montréal, gave the TACS, PIMS, Société de mathématiques appliquées public lecture. et industrielles (SMAI), Société Mathématique de Here is a list of the sessions, along with their or- France, Université du ébec à Montréal ganizers. Congress Sponsors: • Algebraic Combinatorics Concordia University, ministère de l’Éducation, du Organizers: Christophe Hohlweg (UQÀM), Franco Loisir et du Sport du ébec, University of Oawa, Saliola (UQÀM) CIRGET, CICMA Congress Scientific Directors: • Algebraic Groups and Related Topics Octav Cornea (Montréal), Nassif Ghoussoub (UBC), Organizers: Philippe Gille (CNRS & ÉNS), Zinovy François Loeser (ÉNS) Reichstein (UBC)
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• Algebraic Topology • Partial Differential Equations Organizers: Alejandro Ádem (UBC), Bob Oliver (Pa- Organizers: Henri Berestycki (ÉHÉSS), Robert Jer- ris 13) rard (Toronto) • Analytic Number eory • Probability Organizers: Philippe Michel (Montpellier 2), Ram Organizers: Martin Barlow (UBC), Jean-François Le Murty (een’s) Gall (Paris-Sud 11 & ÉNS), Edwin Perkins (UBC), • Arithmetic Geometry and Number eory Wendelin Werner (Paris-Sud 11) Organizers: Gaëtan Chenevier (Paris 13; CNRS), • Scientific Computing Henri Darmon (McGill) Organizers: Christine Bernardi (UPMC; CNRS), • Automorphic Forms Anne Bourlioux (Montréal), Brian Weon (UBC) Organizers: Stephen Kudla (Toronto), Colee • Set eory and its Applications Moeglin (IMJ; CNRS) Organizers: Alain Louveau (UPMC), Stevo Todorce- • Complex Analysis and Operator eory vic (Toronto & Paris-Dauphine) Organizers: Emmanuel Fricain (Lyon 1), Javad • Statistics Mashreghi (Laval), omas Ransford (Laval) Organizers: Yannick Baraud (Nice Sophia Antipolis), • Complex Dynamical Systems Boris Levit (een’s) Organizers: Xavier Buff (Paul Sabatier), Tan Lei • Stoastic Processes in Evolution, Ecology and Genet- (Cergy-Pontoise), Misha Lyubich (Toronto) ics • Financial Mathematics Organizers: Don Dawson (Carleton), Sylvie Méléard Organizer: Tom Salisbury (York) (École Polytechnique & Paris Ouest) • Geometric and Nonlinear Analysis • Symplectic and Contact Geometry Organizers: Pengfei Guan (McGill), Emmanuel Organizers: Emmanuel Giroux (ÉNS Lyon; CNRS), Hebey (Cergy-Pontoise) Yael Karshon (Toronto) • Industrial Fluid Meanics • Topology, Knots and Related Fields Organizers: Neil Balmforth (UBC), Jean-Frédéric Organizers: Michel Boileau (Paul Sabatier), Steven Gerbeau (INRIA Rocquencourt), Bertrand Maury Boyer (UQÀM) (Paris-Sud 11) • Variational and Numerical Methods in Geometry, • Kinetic Methods in Partial Differential Equations Physics and Chemistry Organizers: François Castella (Rennes 1), Reinhard Organizers: Lia Bronsard (McMaster), Éric Cancès Illner (Victoria) (ÉNPC), Maria J. Esteban (Paris-Dauphine; CNRS) • Mathematics Education • Women in Mathematics Organizers: Michèle Artigue (Paris Diderot), Organizers: Maritza Branker (Niagara), Barbara Key- Bernard Hodgson (Laval) fitz (Fields), Marie-Françoise Roy (Rennes 1) • Model eory and Applications to Geometry e Congress also featured 7 minisymposia in Organizers: Zoé Chatzidakis (CNRS & Paris Dide- applied mathematics, listed below. rot), Patrick Speissegger (McMaster) • Asymptotic analysis of localized paerns in PDEs • Non-Commutative Geometry and K-eory for Op- (CAIMS) erator Algebras Organizers: David Iron (Dalhousie), eodore Organizers: Alain Connes (Collège de France & Kolokolnikov (Dalhousie) IHÉS), George Ellio (Toronto), Andrew Toms (York) • Canadian Symposium on Fluid Dynamics (CSFD) • Nonlinear Dynamics in Life Sciences Organizers: John Bowman (Alberta), Lucy Campbell Organizers: Jaques Bélair (Montréal), Pascal Chos- (Carleton), Kai Schneider (Provence), Lennaert van sat (CIRM), Fahima Nekka (Montréal), Jianhong Wu Veen (Concordia) (York) • Modelling Fluid-Structure Interaction in Naval Ar- • Numerical Analysis for Hyperbolic Systems itecture (CAIMS) Organizers: Paul Arminjon (Montréal), Marc Lafor- Organizer: Serguei Iakovlev (Dalhousie) est (Polytechnique Montréal), Emmanuel Lorin (UOIT)
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• Models for transmission of communicable diseases • Algorithmic Mathematics (CAIMS) Organizers: Prosenjit Bose (Carleton), Evangelos Organizers: Fred Bauer (UBC), Pauline van den Kranakis (Carleton) Driessche (Victoria) • Applied Partial Differential Equations • Models of Motion in Biology (CAIMS) Organizers: David Amundsen (Carleton), Lucy Organizer: Dan Coombs (UBC) Campbell (Carleton), Francis Poulin (Waterloo) • New soware for the numerical solution of differen- • Bana Spaces tial equations (CAIMS) Organizers: Robb Fry (ompson Rivers), Srinivasa Organizers: Paul Muir (Saint Mary’s), Ray Spiteri Swaminathan (Dalhousie) (Saskatchewan) • Combinatorics • Singular perturbations and the Ginzburg-Landau Organizers: Daniel Panario (Carleton), Bre Stevens model (CAIMS) (Carleton) Organizers: Stan Alama (McMaster), Lia Bronsard • Commutative Algebra and Algebraic Geometry (McMaster) Organizers: Sara Faridi (Dalhousie), Anthony V. CMS Winter 2008 Meeting Geramita (een’s) December 6 – 8, 2008, Marrio Hotel, Oawa (hosted • Cryptography and Coding eory by Carleton University) Organizers: Isabelle Déchène (Oawa), Ariane Ma- sponsored by Carleton University, CRM, the Fields suda (Oawa), Monica Nevins (Oawa) Institute, MITACS, and PIMS • Dynamics of Large Groups and Semigroups Scientific Directors: Organizers: Stefano Ferri (Los Andes), Alica Miller Mahias Neufang (Carleton), Benjamin Steinberg (Louisville), Vladimir Pestov (Oawa) (Carleton) The Congress was pleased to host Plenary Speak- • Geometric Group eory ers David Acheson (University of Oxford), Fan Organizers: Inna Bumagin (Carleton), Denis Serbin Chung (University of California, San Diego), Gilles (McGill), Benjamin Steinberg (Carleton) Godefroy (Université Pierre et Marie Curie), Sorin • History and Philosophy of Mathematics Popa (University of California, Los Angeles), Lau- Organizers: Tom Archibald (Simon Fraser), Alexan- rent Saloff-Coste (Cornell University), Mark Sapir der Jones (Toronto) (Vanderbilt University), and Keith Taylor (Dalhousie • Infinite-Dimensional Lie eory University). e Adrien Pouliot Award was awarded Organizers: Yuly Billig (Carleton), Alistair Savage to Harley Weston (University of Regina), the Cox- (Oawa) eter – James Prize to Ravi Vakil (Stanford University), the David Borwein Distinguished Career Award to • Mathematical Aspects of antum Information Hermann Brunner (Memorial University of New- Organizer: David Kribs (Guelph) foundland), and the Doctoral Prize to Mahew • Mathematical Biology Greenberg (University of Calgary). e G. de B. Organizers: Frithjof Lutscher (Oawa), Robert Smith Robinson Award was awarded to Dmitry Jakobson (Oawa) (McGill University), Nikolai Nadirashvili (CNRS & • Mathematics Education Université de Provence), and Iosif Polterovich (Uni- Organizers: Benoit Dionne (Oawa), John Poland versité de Montréal), and the Graham Wright Award (Carleton) for Distinguished Service to Bill Sands (University of Calgary). Finally, the participants thanked Gra- • Mathematics and Classical Meanics ham Wright for services rendered to the CMS over Organizers: Manuele Santoprete (Wilfrid Laurier), the course of thirty years. Cristina Stoica (Wilfrid Laurier) e meeting featured 22 sessions, listed below. • Number eory • Algebraic Combinatorics Organizers: Alina C. Cojocaru (UIC), Damien Roy Organizers: François Bergeron (UQÀM), Srečko (Oawa) Brlek (UQÀM), Christophe Hohlweg (UQÀM), • Numerical Analysis and Computational Mathemat- Christophe Reutenauer (UQÀM) ics Organizer: A. Bass Bagayogo (Saint-Boniface)
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• Operator Algebras Co-chairs of the Forum Commiee Organizers: Benoît Collins (Oawa), ierry Gior- Malgorzata Dubiel (Simon Fraser), Viktor Freiman dano (Oawa) (Moncton), Peter Taylor (een’s) • Probability This conference featured a pre-forum, a closing Organizers: Antal Jarai (Carleton & Bath), Yiqiang session, three plenary sessions, and three panel dis- Zhao (Carleton) cussions. Here is a list of the sessions and discus- sions. • Representation eory of Algebras • Reconsidering Basic Mathematical Assumptions in Organizers: Vlastimil Dlab (Carleton), Ragnar-Olaf Teaer Education (Rina Zazkis, Simon Fraser) Buchweitz (Toronto) • Making Sool Mathematics Functional: A Stool • Tenology Use in Post-Secondary Mathematics In- Needs ree Legs (Hugh Burkhardt, Shell Center for struction Mathematical Education, Noingham) Organizers: Chantal Buteau (Brock), Daniel Jarvis • e Vantage Point of Publisher: One View of Cur- (Nipissing), Zsolt Lavicza (Cambridge) riculum Development (Steven Rasmussen, Key Cur- riculum Press) • eory and Applications of Functional Differential Panel I: What did I need then? What do I need now? Equations Chair: Egan Chernoff (Saskatchewan) Organizers: Pietro-Luciano Buono (UOIT), Victor Panel II: Presentation and discussion of the LeBlanc (Oawa) Burkhardt plenary Canadian Mathematics Education Forum Chair: France Caron (Montréal) 2009 Panel III: Presentation and discussion of the Ras- April 30 – May 3, 2009, Simon Fraser University mussen plenary organized by CMS and PIMS Chair: Harley Weston (Regina) sponsored by CMS, PIMS, Simon Fraser University, MITACS, the Fields Institute, the CRM, CAIMS, SSC, Mapleso, Nelson Education, Pearson, and Wiley
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part of its mandate to promote and stimulate research in the mathematical sciences, at every level, the A CRM provides funding and support for many activities and programs related to mathematical education and the training of researchers. Many of these activities and programs are carried out jointly with the Institut des sciences mathématiques (ISM).
Institut des sciences mathématiques
Created in 1991 by the departments of mathemat- schools in ébec. In this way, it contributes to ics and statistics of the four Montréal universities, spreading mathematical knowledge among teachers, the ISM is a consortium of seven ébec universi- young students and the general public. Each year, ties (Concordia, Laval, McGill, Université de Mont- ISM professors give talks aended by thousands of réal, UQÀM, UQTR, and Université de Sherbrooke), cegep students; these talks present the latest break- six of which offer a Ph.D. program in mathemat- throughs in mathematics and the careers available to ics. As an institute to which belong almost all the mathematics graduates. ébec researchers in the mathematical sciences, the As the above list demonstrates, the CRM has sev- ISM has at its disposal vast material and intellectual eral joint activities with the ISM, in particular two resources, and as a result, Montréal and ébec it- colloquia, a joint program of postdoctoral fellow- self have become one of the main centres of training ships, and the planning of graduate courses related and research in the mathematical sciences in North to the thematic programs of the CRM. Since the sum- America. e ISM is funded by the ministère de mer of 2003, the CRM has also supported the Under- l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport du ébec and by graduate Summer Scholarships program, which al- the seven universities in the consortium. lows postdoctoral fellows to supervise undergradu- e reader will find below an overview of the ac- ate students doing research. tivities and programs of the ISM. CRM – ISM Postdoctoral Fellowships • Coordination and harmonization of graduate pro- grams e CRM-ISM postdoctoral fellowships enable e ISM was created to bring together the strengths promising young researchers to devote themselves of its member departments, in order to turn them to their research work. e ISM organizes a single into a great school of mathematics. us the ISM competition on behalf of the seven universities of coordinates the graduate studies of the mathemat- the consortium, and it receives a large number of ics departments, supports the sharing of expertise applications, which are then evaluated by the 150 among its researchers and facilitates student mobil- ISM professors. e selection of the fellows is rig- ity between the Montréal universities. orous and only one in forty applicants is awarded a • Scholarships and financial support fellowship. e applications are handled electroni- e ISM helps students and beginning researchers cally in order to streamline the selection process and carry out their research activities in several ways, for economize the resources consumed during the se- instance through the ISM Scholarships for Graduate lection. e postdoctoral fellows play a crucial role Studies, the Carl Herz Scholarship (financed by the in the Montréal universities: they collaborate with Carl Herz Foundation), the Travel Bursaries, the Un- the established researchers, stimulate their work, dergraduate Summer Scholarships, and the CRM – and bring new ideas from other great centres of ISM postdoctoral fellowships. mathematical research. Also they are a vital link between the professors and the students, especially • Scientific activities when they organize on their own study groups on Since its creation, the ISM has initiated several activ- emerging topics. ities that are by now an integral part of the ébec scientific scene: the CRM – ISM Mathematics Col- 2008-2009 Postdoctoral Fellows loquium, the CRM – ISM – GERAD Statistics Collo- Nadine Badr (Ph.D. 2007, Université Paris-Sud 11) quium, the ISM Graduate Student Conference, and is working in harmonic analysis, functional analy- the ISM Graduate Student Seminar. sis, and analysis in metric measure spaces with Galia • Promotion of the mathematical sciences Dafni, Alina Stancu, Dmitry Jakobson, John Toth, e ISM produces the Accromαth journal and dis- and Stephen Drury. In the summer of 2009, she su- tributes it freely in all the cegeps and secondary pervised an ISM Undergraduate Summer Scholarship
60 M E student. She is now a “maître de conférences” at the $20,000 per year. e students filled an application Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1. form online and the applications were made avail- Bryden Cais (Ph.D. 2007, University of Michigan) is able to all the ISM professors. An interuniversity se- working with Henri Darmon and Eyal Goren in num- lection commiee drew up a short list of candidates ber theory. In the Winter 2009 term, he gave an ISM (taking the departments’ recommendations into ac- course entitled p-adic Hodge eory. count). e 2008 – 2009 scholarship was awarded to Sepideh Farsinezhad, who is doing a Ph.D. in statis- Norman Do (Ph.D. 2008, e University of Mel- tics at McGill University. bourne) is working with Jacques Hurtubise in geom- etry and topology, especially on problems related to Undergraduate Summer Scholarships combinatorics and mathematical physics. In collaboration with the CRM and the ISM pro- Xander Faber (Ph.D. 2008, Columbia University) is fessors, the ISM awards summer scholarships to working in arithmetic geometry, dynamic algebraic promising undergraduates who want to do research systems, and tropical geometry. He has published during the summer and plan to study mathematics at two articles in 2009 and wrien an article with An- the graduate level. ese undergraduates are super- drew Granville (Université de Montréal). vised by postdoctoral fellows, who in general are su- Seung-Yeop Lee (Ph.D. 2007, University of Chicago) pervising students for the first time. e reader will is working with Marco Bertola, John Harnad, S. find below the list of the undergraduate scholars. Twareque Ali, and Dmitry Korotkin on the dynamics Ryan Benty (Concordia) of two-dimensional fluids. He has wrien two arti- Topic: e Topology of the Moduli Spaces of Planar cles with Marco Bertola (Concordia University). Polygons with Fixed Angles Dan Mangoubi (Ph.D. 2006, Technion) is working in Duration: 2 months (May – June) spectral geometry with Dmitry Jakobson and Iosif Supervisor: Nadine Badr Polterovich. During his stay in Montreal, he wrote a Alina Stancu contributed to the financing of this paper with Dmitry Jakobson and supervised an ISM scholarship. Undergraduate Summer Scholarship student. He is Jean-François Désilets (Montréal) now a Senior Lecturer at the Hebrew University in Topic: Systèmes intégrables et super-intégrables en Jerusalem. mécanique quantique impliquant les particules avec Jeehoon Park (Ph.D. 2007, Boston University) is spin Duration: 3 months working in algebraic number theory and p-adic mod- Supervisor: Ismet Yurdusen ular forms with Henri Darmon. Pavel Winternitz contributed to the financing of this scholarship. Igor Wigman (Ph.D. 2006, Tel Aviv University) is doing research in analysis with Dmitry Jakobson and Jean-Sébastien Leasseur (Laval) Iosif Polterovich. During his stay in Montreal, he Topic: Notion d’ensemble TF dans des études de fonc- also worked with Granville and Toth and supervised tions faiblement presque périodiques two ISM Undergraduate Summer Scholarship stu- Duration : 4 months (May – August) dents. He is now a postdoctoral fellow at the KTH Supervisor: Yemon Choi (Stockholm). omas Ransford contributed to the financing of this scholarship. Benjamin Young (Ph.D. 2008, University of British Columbia) carries out a research program (with Jonathan L. Moscovici (McGill) Jacques Hurtubise) involving combinatorics, geom- Topic: éorie des nœuds etry and physics. Duration: 4 months (May – August) Supervisor: Jeremy Van Horn-Morris ISM Doctoral Fellowships Steven Boyer contributed to the financing of this In 2007 – 2008 the ISM initiated a doctoral fellow- scholarship. ships program in order to recruit outstanding Ph.D. Guillaume Poliquin (Montréal) students. e doctoral fellowships provide financial Topic: Maximization of higher Neumann eigenvalues support to outstanding, new students to pursue a on disjoint unions of rectangles and disks doctoral program at one of the ISM member univer- Duration: 4 months (May – August) sities. Awarded for a two-year period, and renew- Supervisor: Dan Mangoubi able for a further two years, the scholarship is worth Iosif Polterovich contributed to the financing of this scholarship.
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Alan Regis (McGill) sity of Oawa), Jean-Philippe Labbé, Ariane Garon Topic: Numerical investigation of Laplacian eigen- (Université du ébec à Montréal), Sébastien Labbé functions in planar domains for various boundary con- (Université du ébec à Montréal), Sarah Dufour ditions (Université du ébec à Montréal), Mélina Mail- Duration: 3 months (May – July) hot (Université du ébec à Trois-Rivières), Benoît Supervisor: Igor Wigman Pouliot (Université Laval), Jérôme Fortier (Université Dmitry Jakobson contributed to the financing of this Laval), Maxime Fortier Bourque (Université Laval), scholarship. Malik Younsi (Université Laval), Patrick Letendre Guillaume Roy-Fortin (Montréal) (Université Laval), Denis Talbot (Université Laval), Topic: Shape optimization for Neumann eigenvalues Alexis Selezneff (Université Laval), and Sophie Bur- of planar domains rill (Simon Fraser University). Duration: 4 months (May – August) Promotion of the mathematical sciences Supervisor: Dan Mangoubi Iosif Polterovich contributed to the financing of this Produced by the ISM and financed by the ISM, the scholarship. CRM, the MITACS network, and the Canadian Math- ematical Society, the Accromαth magazine aims to ISM Graduate Student Conference draw more young people to the mathematical sci- e eleventh ISM Graduate Student Conference (Col- ences. Accromαth, whose editor-in-chief is André loque panquébécois annuel des étudiants) was held Ross, instructor of mathematics at the Cégep de on May 29 – 31, 2009, at Université du ébec à Lévis-Lauzon, is available free of charge in all the Montréal. About 60 students from ébec, British high schools and cegeps of ébec. Accromαth is Columbia, Ontario, and even Taiwan and Algeria at- designed by an exceptional team of researchers and tended the conference, which was organized by Jean- instructors with a broad experience in the promotion Philippe Labbé (Université du ébec à Montréal) of mathematics; it provides high school and cegep and Jonathan Lortie (Université du ébec à Mont- teachers with stimulating and topical articles on the réal). e plenary lectures were given by omas most recent discoveries and applications, as well as Ransford (Université Laval), Fabrice Larribe (Univer- articles on the history of mathematics and its links sité du ébec à Montréal), Damien Calaque (Uni- with the arts. versité Claude Bernard Lyon 1) and Nantel Bergeron Currently 1500 persons or institutions (mostly (York University). teachers from ébec) subscribe to the magazine. e following students gave talks during the In April 2007, Accromαth was awarded a bronze Graduate Student Conference: Valérie Hudon (Con- medal for its design at the prestigious Summit Cre- cordia University), Waldo Arriagada (Université de ative Awards, where thousands of works from 23 Montréal), Alexandre Desfossés Foucault (Université different countries were submied. In July 2008 de Montréal), Isabelle Ascah-Coallier (Université de the magazine won a Grand Award, the highest dis- Montréal), François Charee (Université de Mont- tinction, at the Apex Awards. Finally it was also réal), Colin Jauffret (Université de Montréal), Car- awarded (in June 2009) a prix spécial de la ministre oline Lambert (Université de Montréal), Laurence de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport. For more infor- Boulanger (Université de Montréal), Rahma Guen mation on Accromαth, we refer the reader to the site (Université Djillali Liabes), Abdelkrim El Basraoui http://www.accromath.ca/. (University of Oawa), Ratnadha Kolhatkar (Univer-
Other Joint Initiatives
CMS Mathematics Camps Olympiad. e CRM sponsors these camps, along with the Fields Institute, PIMS, the Association Ma- In order to promote mathematics, the CMS pro- thématique du ébec, PromoScience (NSERC), the vides extracurricular activities for high school stu- host universities, various foundations, and most dents, especially a National Math Camp and Re- Canadian provinces (cf. http://www.cms.math.ca/ gional Math Camps. Each year the CMS also of- MathCamps/). fers training camps for the Canadian Team selected for competing at the International Mathematical
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Sciences et mathématiques en action introductory lectures on mathematics for cegep stu- dents. is program draws its inspiration from the e CRM contributes to the Sciences et mathéma- Mathematical Circle, a program of the Moscow uni- tiques en action program, created by Professor Jean- versities that was instrumental in training several Marie De Koninck from Université Laval in order to generations of mathematicians. e program objec- popularize mathematics and science for high school tive is to present various mathematical fields in an students and the general public. We refer the reader accessible and entertaining way. About 25 students to the site http://www.smac.ulaval.ca/ for more from the Montreal area aended the lectures. Here information. is a sample of the notions introduced in the lectures: Mathematical Excursions juggling, Rubik cube, number theory, complex num- ber, Escher’s pictures, graph theory, and combina- In the winter of 2009, Professor Dmitry Jakobson torics. from McGill University launched a new program of
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Applied Mathematics
Description of the laboratory. In 2009, Eliot Fried was made the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Interfacial and De- e research interests of the laboratory members are fect Mechanics. quite diverse although there are a number of com- Jacques Bélair became president of the Cana- mon threads that make interaction and collabora- dian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society this tion both possible and fruitful. Active areas of re- year, a post that he will hold until 2011. Members of search represented within the laboratory include, for the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics example, the application of dynamical systems the- (SIAM) approved the SIAM Fellows Program in 2008 ory to complex phenomena, high-dimensional chaos, to designate as Fellows of the Society certain mem- and biology. ere is an interest in numerical lin- bers who have made outstanding contributions to ear algebra and its applications, including the de- fields served by SIAM. e laboratory is very pleased sign, analysis, and implementation of effective com- to announce that two of its regular members, André puter algorithms. Amongst the membership one Bandrauk and Michel Delfour, were made Fellows will also find expertise in numerical simulation, ap- of SIAM in May 2009. In October 2009 Cambridge plied dynamical systems, quantum chemistry, turbu- University Press will publish e Meanics and er- lence, combustion, biomechanics, numerical meth- modynamics of Continua, by Morton E. Gurtin, Eliot ods in fluid mechanics and electromagnetism, hp- Fried, and Lallit Anand. AUTO is a soware for con- finite element methods, molecular dynamics, con- tinuation and bifurcation problems in ordinary dif- trol, optimization, preconditioners, and large-scale ferential equations, originally developed by Eusebius eigenvalue problems. As irrefutable evidence of the Doedel, with subsequent major contributions by sev- excellence of the research conducted by laboratory eral other people. Version 0.6 of AUTO-07p, the suc- members we present below some of the prizes, hon- cessor to both AUTO97 and AUTO2000, was made ours, and distinctions awarded to them in recogni- available on January 13, 2009. Also, at least 43 ref- tion of their achievements, as well as information on ereed international journal articles were authored or invitations received to speak at prestigious scientific co-authored by the 14 regular members of the labo- meetings. e objective of the laboratory is princi- ratory (source: ISI Web of Knowledge 2008 – 2009). pally to foster and encourage collaboration and sci- Michel Delfour gave a plenary talk entitled e entific interaction between its own members, with dose under periodic flow conditions for coated stent other researchers in Montréal, as well as with the nu- at the International Conference on Systems e- merous visitors and conference and seminar speak- ory: Modelling, Analysis and Control, which took ers invited to Montréal by members of the labora- place on May 25 – 28, 2009, at Fez in Morocco. Pe- tory. e weekly applied mathematics seminar is ter Bartello was named a Senior Visiting Fellow by a core laboratory event and an important gathering the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences point for the members, their research personnel, and (University of Cambridge) during the Fall of 2008. He other interested parties. was also named a Visiting Research Fellow by the In- News and highlights stitute for Mathematical Sciences (Imperial College London) for the Spring of 2009. Robert Owens was We are very pleased to welcome Eliot Fried (McGill an “hôte académique” in the Mathematics Institute of University) as a regular member of the laboratory. Computational Science and Engineering at the École Eliot’s tertiary education, right through to his Ph.D., Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne during August was in applied mathematics at the California In- 2008 and “professeur invité” at the Institut de Math- stitute of Technology. Before joining McGill last ématiques (Université de Toulouse) from May 11 to September he was full professor in the Department of June 8, 2009. Mechanical, Aerospace and Structural Engineering Peter Bartello gave an invited talk entitled e at Washington University in St. Louis. His research Small-scale transition from QG to something else at interests are in continuum mechanics and thermody- the Tenth Annual CAOS Winter Workshop 2009 namics and this broad area has a number of interest- (Oceanography at the Observational and Modeling ing intersections with current research interests of Frontier: Submesoscale Dynamics), which was held the other members of the laboratory. As a senior and at the Courant Institute, NYU on February 20–21, experienced academic we are sure that his leadership 2009. He also gave an invited talk entitled Internal qualities will add greatly to the effective functioning
65 C waves in nearly geostrophic stratified turbulence at the anks to job interviews at McGill, the laboratory second meeting of the research group Wave-Flow In- benefited from having an unusually large number teractions: A Network in Mathematics, which took of visiting speakers in 2008 – 2009. ese included place at the International Centre for Mathematical Dmitry Pelinovsky (McMaster), L. Pamela Cook Sciences (Edinburgh, Scotland) on May 25 – 29, 2009. (Delaware), Geoffrey Hinton (Toronto & CIFAR), Chen Grief (UBC), Francisco-Javier Sayas (Min- Students, postdoctoral fellows, visitors nesota & Zaragoza), Michael Saunders (Stanford), An important aspect of the laboratory’s mission is David A. Steinman (Toronto), Rebecca Tyson (UBC the training of graduate students and postdoctoral Okanagan), Helmut Kröger (Laval), David Ander- researchers. To this end, the annual Scientific Com- son (Wisconsin – Madison), Margaret Beck (Brown), puting Days event (which lasts 3 days) plays a crucial Irina Mitrea (Virginia), Vera Mikyoung Hur (MIT), role. e target audience for this meeting is young Laurent Demanet (Stanford), Jin Rebecca Li (INRIA researchers and the mandate given to the speakers Rocquencourt), Xuemin Tu (UC Berkeley), George is to present a graduate-level mini-course on a mod- Haller (MIT), Gantumur Tsogtgerel (UCSD), Rus- ern topic in scientific computing of their own choice. tum Choksi (Simon Fraser), Chi-Kun Lin (NCTU), Lecture notes are made freely available to all par- Wayne Hayes (UC Irvine), John F. Gibson (Geor- ticipants and time is set aside for the students and gia Tech), orsten Reiss (Bristol), Nicola Guglielmi postdoctoral fellows to present the results of their (Aquila), Zhilin Li (NC State), Yuan Yuan (Memo- own research in a friendly, non-threatening environ- rial), and Georges Griso (UPMC). A number of the ment. Registration is free and financial support from speakers mentioned above stayed for a few days the laboratory is available for all out-of-town student to pursue collaboration with laboratory members, participants, in order for the meeting to be a service thus bringing further benefit to the research of the to the wider numerical mathematics community. members. Professor Jie Shen visited the Department e laboratory is keen to help its members’ re- of Mathematics and Statistics of the Université de search by giving partial financial support for them Montréal during the autumn semester in 2008 and to hire postdoctoral fellows. Claude Mangoubi (e gave a seminar to the laboratory, as well as a collo- Hebrew University of Jerusalem) worked with Robert quium entitled Spectral – Galerkin Methods for High- Owens for the first 6 months of 2009. During the Dimensional PDEs (in December). summer Tony Humphries and Eusebius Doedel will Workshops, special sessions, and others be welcoming Renato Calleja to Montreal; he will be working with them for a period of two years. Travel e reader will find a detailed report on the 6th Mon- money for the postdoctoral fellows is also available treal Scientific Computing Days in the section Gen- via the laboratory to support their aendance at con- eral Program. ferences. anks to the careful stewardship of its fi- • e 6th Montreal Scientific Computing Days nancial resources over the past few years, the labo- May 4 – 6, 2009, CRM ratory envisages supporting at least one more post- Organizers: Michel Delfour (Montréal), André Fortin doctoral fellow in 2009 – 2010. (Laval), omas Wihler (Bern) During the 2008 – 2009 academic year, 9 master’s e reader will find a detailed report on the fol- students, 20 Ph.D. students, and 6 postdoctoral fel- lowing activity in the section Multidisciplinary and lows were supervised by members of the Applied Industrial Program. Mathematics laboratory. • CI/CS 2009 Spring Tenical Meeting Seminars May 10 – 13, 2009, McGill University e backbone of the laboratory’s activities, the sponsored by the Applied Mathematics Laboratory weekly seminar, was organised by Xiao-Wen Chang and CRM (McGill University) in the 2008 autumn semester and Local organizer: Anne Bourlioux (Montréal) by Lennaert van Veen (Concordia University) in the Michel Delfour was a member of the Interna- 2009 winter semester. Both are thanked for their tional Program Commiee of the International Con- labours in the service of the Montreal applied math- ference on Systems eory: Modelling, Analysis and ematics community! A number of local speakers Control, which was held on May 25 – 28, 2009, at agreed to give a seminar: Chris Paige, Lennaert van Fez in Morocco. He was also co-organizer, with M. Veen, David Titley Peloquin, Bart Oldeman, Claude iriet, of a joint IACM – IUTAM mini-symposium Mangoubi, and Eliot Fried are thanked sincerely. consisting of 3 sessions and entitled Composite Mate- rials and Multiscale Modeling and Design in Medicine
66 R L and Engineering. is mini-symposium was part of Xiao-Wen Chang (McGill) the Joint 8th World Congress on Computational Me- Numerical linear algebra and applications chanics and 5th European Congress on Computa- Miel C. Delfour (Montréal) tional Methods in Applied Science and Engineer- Control, optimization, design, shells, calculus, ing, which took place in Venice, Italy, from June 30 biomechanics to July 5, 2008. Robert Owens organized the mini- Eusebius J. Doedel (Concordia) symposium Hemorheological Modelling and Simula- Numerical analysis, dynamical systems, differential tion within the framework of the Joint 13th Inter- equations, bifurcation theory, scientific soware national Congress on Biorheology and 6th Interna- tional Conference on Clinical Hemorheology, which Eliot Fried (McGill) took place in State College (Pennsylvania) on July 9 – Mechanics and thermodynamics of continuous me- 13, 2008. dia From August 26 to December 19, 2008, Peter Antony R. Humphries (McGill) Bartello was the co-organizer of a four-month pro- Numerical analysis, differential equations gram on the nature of high-Reynolds number tur- Sherwin A. Maslowe (McGill) bulence that took place at the Newton Institute for Asymptotic methods, fluid mechanics Mathematical Sciences, at Cambridge in the United Lennaert van Veen (Concordia) Kingdom (see the site http://www.newton.ac.uk/ Application of dynamical systems theory to complex programmes/HRT/ws.html). is program consisted phenomena and high-dimensional chaos of 6 workshops, several of which aracted more Jian-Jun Xu (McGill) than 100 participants. Peter Bartello co-organized Asymptotics and numerical analysis, nonlinear the whole program as well as two of the workshops. PDEs, materials science He also organized the workshop “Clouds and Turbu- lence” at the Imperial College London, from March Associate Members 23 to 25, 2009. Finally, André Bandrauk organized a session on aosecond science at the ACS Annual Tuer Carrington (een’s) Meeting, which took place in Salt Lake City in March Chemical dynamics 2009. Martin J. Gander (Genève) Domain decomposition, preconditioning Members of the laboratory Nilima Nigam (McGill) Regular members Applied analysis, numerical methods in electromag- netism Robert G. Owens (Montréal) director Mechanics, numerical simulation of complex fluids Paul F. Tupper (McGill) Numerical analysis, stochastic processes, statistical Paul Arminjon (Montréal) mechanics Numerical methods in fluid mechanics omas P. Wihler (Bern) André D. Bandrauk (Sherbrooke) Numerical analysis, computational methods for antum chemistry PDEs Peter Bartello (McGill) Jean-Paul Zolésio (INRIA Sophia Antipolis) Turbulence, CFD Control, optimization Jacques Bélair (Montréal) Dynamical systems in physiology Anne Bourlioux (Montréal) Modelling, numerical simulation in turbulent com- bustion
CICMA
Description Contemporary number theory follows two major courses. On the one hand, there is the theory of spe- is centre comprises researchers working in num- cial values of L-functions aached to arithmetic ob- ber theory, group theory, and algebraic geometry. jects, originating in the work of Gauss and Dirichlet
67 C and leading to the modern conjectures of Deligne, Seminars Beilinson and Bloch – Kato. On the other hand, the e ébec – Vermont Number eory Seminar is Langlands program postulates a close link between the main scientific activity of CICMA, is held ev- arithmetic L-functions and automorphic representa- ery second ursday for a full day and is aended tions. An area where these two currents intersect is by about 30 regular participants from Montréal, Ver- the study of elliptic curves. is area is particularly mont, ébec, and Oawa. In 2008 – 2009, Eyal well represented in the Centre, with Darmon, Iovita, Goren and Henri Damon were the organizers of the and Kisilevsky. CICMA also acquired an expertise in seminar and the laer consisted of 40 lectures. We many aspects of analytic number theory when An- also mention an activity related to the seminar, a drew Granville, one of the leaders in the field, be- mini-course held at the McGill Research Centre in came a member of CICMA. On the group theory side, Bellairs (Barbados). is activity (see below) gath- Kharlampovich and Miasnikov are world-renowned ered about fieen students, three postdoctoral fel- specialists on group varieties and McKay is one of lows, and three CICMA teachers; it was a great suc- the originators of the moonshine program. cess and also the first instalment of a series that will e problems to be studied by the group in the be repeated every year in May. coming years include the construction of rational points on elliptic curves both from the algorithmic Workshops, special sessions, and others and theoretical viewpoints; zeta functions of vari- CICMA was involved in the organization of several eties over finite fields and the algorithmic approach; activities in 2008 – 2009. e reader will find detailed canonical liing of elliptic curves and Abelian vari- reports on the first two activities below in the section eties; cryptography, Abelian varieties; and many as- General Program. pects of analytic number theory, for instance aver- • ébec – Maine Conference on Number eory ages of special values of L-functions, distribution of October 4 – 5, 2008, Université Laval prime numbers and prime divisors, and problems in Organizers: Claude Levesque (Laval), Hugo Chapde- additive number theory. laine (Laval), Jean-Marie De Koninck (Laval) News and highlights • e Bellairs Workshop in Number eory 2008 – 2009 was marked by the arrival of three new Borerds products and their applications to arithmetic members at CICMA: Matilde Lalín, who will be geometry teaching at Université de Montréal, as well as Jayce May 3 – 10, 2009, Bellairs Research Institute Getz and Heekyoung Hahn, who will both be at Organizer: Eyal Z. Goren (McGill) McGill University. Ram Murty was elected to the • Summer Sool in Analytic Number eory and Dio- Indian National Science Academy (INSA) in 2009; phantine Approximation INSA is analogous to the National Academy of Sci- June 30 – July 11, 2008, University of Oawa ences (in the United States) and the Royal Society of sponsored by the Fields Institute Canada. Organizers: Nathan Ng (Oawa), Damien Roy (Ot- tawa) Students, postdoctoral fellows, visitors Regular members of the laboratory In 2008 – 2009 Damien Roy supervised two postdoc- toral fellows: Emmanuel Delsinne (September 2008 – Henri Darmon (McGill) director June 2010) and Pierre Bel (January 2009 – May 2010). Algebraic number theory, geometry, arithmetic, L- Dmitrij Zelo, who was also supervised by Damien functions, Diophantine equations, elliptic curves Roy, defended his thesis successfully in January 2009. Hugo Chapdelaine (Laval) In 2008 – 2009 there were 12 postdoctoral fellows Algebraic number theory, algebraic geometry in CICMA, among whom Bryden Cais (who obtained Chris Cummins (Concordia) his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan), Ger- Group theory, modular functions, moonshine ard Freixas (from Université Paris-Sud 11), JeeHoon Park (from Boston University), Arnaud Chadozeau Chantal David (Concordia) L (from Université Bordeaux 1), and Xander Faber Analytic number theory, -functions (from Columbia University). Also 42 Ph.D. students, Jean-Marie De Konin (Laval) 25 master’s students, and 5 undergraduate students Analytic number theory: distribution of prime num- were supervised by CICMA members. bers, factorization of numbers, asymptotic behaviour of arithmetic functions, Riemann zeta function
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David S. Dummit (Vermont) Matilde Lalín (Alberta) Algebraic number theory, arithmetic algebraic ge- Mahler measures, L-functions, zeta functions ometry, computational mathematics Claude Levesque (Laval) David Ford (Concordia) Algebraic number theory, units, class number, cyclo- Computational number theory, algorithmic number tomic fields theory Miael Makkai (McGill) Jayce R. Getz (Princeton & IAS) Mathematical logic Number theory John McKay (Concordia) Eyal Z. Goren (McGill) Computational group theory, sporadic groups, com- Arithmetic geometry, algebraic number theory, putation of Galois groups moduli spaces of abelian varieties, Hilbert modular Alexei G. Miasnikov (McGill) forms, p-adic modular forms Group theory Andrew Granville (Montréal) M. Ram Murty (een’s) Analytic number theory, arithmetic geometry, com- Number theory: Artin’s conjecture, elliptic curves, binatorics modular forms, automorphic forms, Langlands pro- Heekyoung Hahn (Albany) gram, Selberg’s conjectures, sieve methods, cryptog- Eisenstein series, L-functions, trace formula, q- raphy series, theta functions and partitions Damien Roy (Oawa) Adrian Iovita (Concordia) Transcendental number theory Number theory, p-adic cohomology Peter Russell (McGill) Olga Kharlampovi (McGill) Algebraic geometry Combinatorial group theory and Lie algebras Francisco aine (Concordia) Hershy Kisilevsky (Concordia) Cyclotomic fields, cyclotomy, rational points on L-functions, Iwasawa theory, elliptic curves, class curves field theory John Labute (McGill) Pro-p-groups, Lie Algebras, Galois eory
CIRGET
Description cation of special Kähler metrics; the study of sym- plectic invariants, especially in dimension 4; non- Geometry and topology are fundamental disciplines linear partial differential equations in Riemannian of mathematics whose richness and vitality have geometry, convex geometry, and general relativity; been evident throughout human history and reflect and Hamiltonian dynamical systems. their deep link to our experience of the universe. ey are a focal point of modern mathematics and News and highlights in effect several domains of mathematics have re- Several CIRGET members were honoured this year: cently shown a strong trend towards a geometriza- Pengfei Guan was named a Fellow of the Royal Soci- tion of ideas and methods: two cases in point are ety of Canada; Iosif Polterovich, CIRGET’s youngest mathematical physics and number theory. During member and a professor at the Université de Mont- the last twenty-five years, several researchers of in- réal, was awarded a Canada Research Chair (Tier II) ternational calibre in geometry and topology have in Geometry and Spectral eory; and a conference been hired by ébec universities. e research cen- in honour of Peter Russell is being organized in June tre, based at Université du ébec à Montréal, now 2009 at McGill University. Finally, former doctoral comprises eighteen professors together with a large student Alexandre Girouard was awarded the Carl number of postdoctoral fellows and graduate stu- Herz Prize in 2008 for his work on spectral geometry dents. e main themes to be pursued in the com- and topological methods in critical point theory. ing years include the topological classification of 3- dimensional manifolds; quantization of Hitchin sys- tems and the geometric Langlands program; classifi-
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Students, postdoctoral fellows, visitors the centre for short research visits. CIRGET gradu- ate students from Université du ébec à Montréal, Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are an Université de Montréal, and McGill University con- integral part of CIRGET scientific life, organizing tinued to participate in the CIRGET Junior Seminar, working groups and seminars, mentoring under- organized by the doctoral student Liam Watson. is graduate students, and occasionally giving special- seminar gives graduate students a forum to present ized courses. In 2008 – 2009, CIRGET members su- their research to their peers. A total of 19 talks were pervised 7 postdoctoral fellows, 13 doctoral stu- given this year. dents, and 15 master’s students. Two of our doc- CIRGET working groups meet on a regular ba- toral students are being co-supervised through the sis to explore specific topics over a period of several France-ébec exchange program: Eveline Legen- months or more. is year two working groups were dre is enrolled at Université du ébec à Montréal organized, one by Vestislav Apostolov on Kählerian and the École Polytechnique, while François Charest Geometry, and a second one by doctoral student has started a doctorate at Université de Montréal and Liam Watson on low-dimensional topology with a the École normale supérieure de Lyon. view towards Heegaard-Floer homology. Most of our postdoctoral fellows and students are continuing next year, but those who have com- Workshops, special sessions, and others pleted their stays at CIRGET are moving on to good CIRGET organized an international workshop in positions: postdoctoral fellow Jeremy Van Horn- Montréal this year. e reader will find a detailed Morris was offered a position at Stanford Univer- report on this workshop in the section General Pro- sity; ierry Daude will start a position in Nantes in gram. January 2010; and graduating doctoral student Liam Watson has accepted an NSERC postdoctoral fellow- • Workshop on Arithmetic and Hyperbolic Geometry ship, a Hedrick Instructorship at the University of November 8 – 9, 2008, Université du ébec à Mont- California, Los Angeles, and a research membership réal at MSRI (Berkeley) for their Spring 2010 thematic sponsored by CIRGET and the Fields Institute program in knot homologies. Doctoral students Organizers: John Bland (Toronto), Andrew Granville Dennis e and Mélisande Fortin Boisvert graduated (Montréal), Steven Shin-Yi Lu (UQÀM), Peter Russell in 2008. Both were awarded NSERC postdoctoral fel- (McGill), Noriko Yui (een’s) lowships: D. e is currently working at Texas A&M As mentioned above, CIRGET also organized a University and M. Fortin Boisvert is on maternity workshop in honour of Peter Russell. is workshop leave. took place in June 2009 and a report on it will be in- CIRGET members greatly benefit from the many cluded in the CRM annual report for 2009-2010. international visitors who come to work with them. Members of the laboratory In addition to the 14 short-term visitors who came over the 2008 – 2009 year, Georges Dloussky (Uni- Regular members versité de Provence), Michel Vaquié (Université de Steven Boyer (UQÀM) director Toulouse), and Denis-Charles Cisinki (Université Pa- Topology of manifolds, low-dimensional geometry ris 13) all spent one month at CIRGET. and topology Seminars Vestislav Apostolov (UQÀM) In 2008 – 2009 CIRGET invited and partially funded Complex geometry, Kähler geometry two colloquium speakers for the CRM – ISM Mathe- Abraham Broer (Montréal) matics Colloquium lecture series: Bernard Shiffman Algebraic transformation groups, invariant theory (Johns Hopkins University) and Gang Tian (Prince- Virginie Charette (Sherbrooke) ton University). Discrete group actions on affine varieties, Lorentz CIRGET’s everyday scientific life revolves manifolds, Riemann surfaces discretization, discrete around its weekly seminars and working groups differential geometry where professors, postdoctoral fellows, and students Olivier Collin (UQÀM) meet on a regular basis. e CIRGET Geometry and Invariants of knots and 3-manifolds arising from Topology Seminar, organized by Vestislav Apos- global analysis tolov, is a general seminar series aended by all CIRGET members. Of the 22 talks given this year, Octavian Cornea (Montréal) 14 were given by invited speakers who stayed at Algebraic topology, dynamical systems
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Pengfei Guan (McGill) ysis, differential geometry, partial differential equa- Partial differential equations, geometric analysis, tions several complex variables Peter Russell (McGill) Jacques Hurtubise (McGill) Algebraic geometry Algebraic geometry, integrable systems, gauge the- Daniel T. Wise (McGill) ory, moduli spaces Geometric group theory, low-dimensional topology André Joyal (UQÀM) Associate Members Algebraic topology, category theory Niky Kamran (McGill) Syed Twareque Ali (Concordia) Geometric approach to partial differential equations Coherent states, wavelets, quantization techniques, harmonic analysis, Wigner functions François Lalonde (Montréal) Symplectic topology and geometry, global analysis John Harnad (Concordia) on manifolds, infinite dimensional transformation Mathematical physics, classical and quantum groups physics, geometrical methods, integrable sys- tems, group theoretical methods, random matrices, Steven Lu (UQÀM) isomonodromic deformations, isospectral flows Chern number inequalities, semi-stability of tenso- rial sheaves, log jets, log and hyperbolic geometry, John A. Toth (McGill) algebraic degeneracy Microlocal analysis, partial differential equations Iosif Polterovi (Montréal) Geometric analysis, spectral theory, functional anal-
GIREF
Description et endoprothèse) project, concerned with numerical modelling in the biomedical field. GIREF is an acronym for “Groupe Interdisciplinaire de Recherche en Éléments Finis,” which can be trans- News and highlights lated into English as “Interdisciplinary Research Group in Finite Element Methods.” It is based at Uni- e Scientific Computing Research Chair was versité Laval and headed by Professor André Fortin. launched in 2008 – 2009. e development of the fi- e objective of GIREF is to gather researchers and nite elements soware (MEF++) was greatly acceler- research groups from several universities to support ated thanks to the usual contributions of the GIREF’s research, development, the training of graduate stu- research professionals (Éric Chamberland, Cristian dents and postdoctoral fellows, and industrial collab- Tibirna, Nicolas Tardieu, and Jean Deteix), but also orations in the field of numerical modelling and sim- thanks to Michelin’s engineers at the Ladoux Labo- ulation. In particular the members of GIREF work ratory near Clermont-Ferrand (France). e joint de- in the area of finite elements, finite differences, and velopment of MEF++ enables us to provide the stu- finite volumes methods. GIREF is associated with dents with an extremely efficient soware with both the NSERC Research Chair in High-Performance Sci- academic and industrial uses. entific Computing, held by Professor André Fortin. Within the framework of a strategic project e goal of this chair is to study numerical simula- grant obtained from NSERC in 2006, the collabora- tions in the field of tires (hyperelastic and viscoelas- tion with Mr. Alain Cloutier, Director of the Cen- tic materials, rolling of tires, tire wear, rubbing con- tre de recherche sur le bois (CRB), continued. is tact, mathematical formulations, adaptive meshing, project focuses on the modelling of thermo-hygro- etc.). Here are some other projects led by GIREF: mechanical phenomena for wood-based composite the development of a state-of-the-art finite elements materials. Note that three industrial partners (BOA- soware (the MEF++ project) to be used by several FRANC, Uniboard Canada Inc., and FPInnovations) GIREF members; a numerical modelling project in contribute to this project. e goal of the project is the wood sciences; a modelling project for flows in to provide industry with a numerical simulation tool. a natural environment; and the ACE (aérosol, cœur GIREF’s members participate actively in the CLUMEQ network and more specifically in the CLUMEQ site at Université Laval. Under the direc-
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René errien (Laval) Claire Desênes (Laval) Underground water flows, hydrology, geothermics Axial hydraulic turbines José Urquiza (Laval) Mohamed Farhloul (Moncton) Numerical analysis, control of partial differential Finite elements and finite volumes method, partial equations differential equations, applications of the mixed fi- nite elements method to fluid mechanics, numerical Associate members analysis Alain Cloutier (Laval) Forestry, forest engineering
INTRIQ
Description Students and postdoctoral researchers e central theme of INTRIQ (INstitute for Transdis- INTRIQ members supervised 10 postdoctoral fel- ciplinary Research in antum computing) is quan- lows, 52 Ph.D. students, 24 master’s students, and 3 tum information. antum information is the gen- undergraduate students in 2008 – 2009. eralization of the classical notion of information, ob- Workshops, special sessions, and others tained by including the most fundamental law of physics, i.e., quantum mechanics. Indeed, classi- David Poulin organized the first biannual INTRIQ cal information can be derived from quantum infor- workshop, entitled antum Coding eory for mation when decoherence is present. Until now, antum Information and antum Cryptography in most fields related to information, quantum ef- (held at Jouvence, ébec, on May 21 – 22, 2009). fects have oen been neglected. For instance, when Guillaume Gervais, Patrick Hayden, and Michael information is transmied through optical fibres, Hilke organized the 2nd biannual INTRIQ workshop, the transmied information is classical because the entitled Physical Implementation of antum Infor- number of photons used to transmit this information mation (held at Val David, ébec, on October 2 – 3, is so large that quantum effects barely enter the pic- 2009). ture and can easily be neglected. However, thanks to Members of the laboratory the impressive recent advances in the development of optical communication and fibre technologies, it antum information brings together many differ- has become possible to send single photons, so that ent fields, including computer science, engineer- an understanding at the quantum level becomes nec- ing, and physics, which are all represented in IN- essary. In fact, nowadays, commercial devices can TRIQ. At the Université de Montréal the IN- be acquired that transmit quantum information (for TRIQ members are: Michel Boyer (Computer Sci- example, id antique and MagiQ). A very similar ence), Gilles Brassard (Computer Science), Richard paern is starting to emerge in the field of informa- Mackenzie (Physics), Louis Salvail (Computer Sci- tion processing, where the increasing miniaturiza- ence, new member), and Alain Tapp (Computer Sci- tion of our electronic components will have the con- ence). At the École Polytechnique de Montréal sequence that information is not processed by bil- the INTRIQ members are: José Manuel Fernan- lions of electrons at a time but only a small num- dez (Computer Engineering), Nicolas Godbout (En- ber. is implies that the quantum nature of devices gineering Physics), and Suzanne Lacroix (Engineer- will become more and more important. e same is ing Physics). At the Université de Sherbrooke the true of magnetic memories, which might ultimately INTRIQ members are: Alexandre Blais (Physics), be based on single spins. Hence it is no longer unrea- Patrick Fournier (Physics), David Poulin (Physics), sonable to think that parts of our information sup- Michel Pioro-Ladrière (Physics, new member), and port will soon be of a quantum nature. André-Marie Tremblay (Physics). At McGill Univer- sity the INTRIQ members are: David Avis (Com- News and highlights puter Science), Aashish Clerk (Physics), Claude Alain Tapp was elected Director of INTRIQ; his term Crépeau (Com puter Science), Guillaume Ger- will start in the summer of 2010. vais (Physics), Peter Grüer (Physics), Hong Guo (Physics), Patrick Hayden (Computer Science),
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Michael Hilke (Physics, INTRIQ Director), Zetian Mi puter Science), and omas Szkopek (Electrical En- (Electrical Engineering), Prakash Panangaden (Com- gineering).
LaCIM
Description and Repetitions in Words” in the CRM Monograph Se- ries. LaCIM (French acronym meaning “Combinatorics and Mathematical Computer Science Laboratory”) is Students, postdoctoral fellows, visitors home to mathematics and theoretical computer sci- In 2008 – 2009 LaCIM members supervised 8 post- ence researchers whose interests comprise discrete doctoral fellows (including Éric Fusy, Amy Glen, and mathematics and the mathematical aspects of com- Li Huilan), 40 Ph.D. students, 34 master’s students, puter science. LaCIM was founded in 1989 and is and 7 undergraduate students. associated with the Department of Mathematics, the ree students who obtained their Ph.D. in Department of Computer Science, and the Canada 2008 – 2009 have been awarded postdoctoral fellow- Research Chair in Algebra, Combinatorics and Math- ships: Annie Lacasse (NSERC fellowship), Geneviève ematical Computer Science of the Université du é- Paquin (FQRNT fellowship), and Xavier Provençal bec à Montréal. LaCIM includes 15 regular mem- (FQRNT fellowship). All three are now pursuing bers (of which 9 are Université du ébec à Mont- their postdoctoral studies in Montpellier or Cham- réal professors), 5 associate members and 14 collab- béry, thus strengthening the cooperation between orating members. It welcomes postdoctoral fellows LaCIM and CNRS laboratories. and its regular members supervise or cosupervise In 2008 – 2009 LaCIM hosted several visitors and many M.Sc. or Ph.D. students, undergraduate stu- outstanding researchers in combinatorics: Adriano dents who do research work during the summer, and Garsia (University of California, San Diego) in June some cégep students. Many renowned mathemati- 2008, Jean-Louis Loday (Université de Strasbourg; cians visit LaCIM and collaborate with its members CNRS) in October and November 2008, and Olivier in the following areas: enumerative and bijective Schiffman (École normale supérieure) in April 2009. combinatorics, theory of species, algebraic combina- Yeong-Nan Yeh, a very dynamic former postdoctoral torics, combinatorics of finite and infinite words, dis- fellow of LaCIM now working at Academia Sinica, crete geometry, theory of languages and automata, spent two months at LaCIM. Gray codes, bioinformatics, and combinatorial opti- mization. Seminars News and highlights e Combinatorics Seminar, held weekly on Fri- day morning, is aended by the laboratory mem- Christophe Hohlweg is now a regular member of bers, students, and postdoctoral fellows, and some- LaCIM and a very dynamic one; since his arrival at times other CRM members. Most lectures are given Université du ébec à Montréal he has recruited by visitors. Let us mention Christian Lenard (Al- many students pursuing graduate studies. Alexan- bany), Yann Bugeaud (Strasbourg), Bruno Cour- dre Blondin Massé and Sébastien Labbé, both super- celle (LaBRI), Kevin Purbhoo (Waterloo), Bruno vised by Srečko Brlek, have been awarded NSERC Leclerc (ÉHÉSS), Adolfo Rodriguez (LaCIM), Jean- scholarships to carry out their doctoral studies. Each Louis Loday (Strasbourg,; CNRS), Philippe Cho- of them also holds a Frontenac scholarship, awarded quee (York), Mike Zabrocki (York), Angèle Hamel to outstanding students who are cosupervised by a (Wilfrid Laurier), Franco Saliola (Marne-la-Vallée), ébec professor and a French professor. Aïda Ouangraoua (Simon Fraser), Mark Skandera e ematic Semester on Recent Advances (Lehigh), Andrew Douglas (City Tech, CUNY), De- in Combinatorics (January – June 2007) resulted, laram Kahrobaei (City Tech, CUNY), Linda Chen among other things, in a book based on the courses (Swarthmore), Geneviève Paquin (Savoie), Lauren K. given by Jean Berstel and Christophe Reutenauer on Williams (Harvard), Greg Musiker (MIT), and Luca word combinatorics. Aaron Lauve and Franco Sali- Ferrari (Firenze). Overall the Seminar featured 30 ola, both postdoctoral fellows, took the notes. e lectures in 2008 – 2009. four authors (J. Berstel, A. Lauve, C. Reutenauer, and F. Saliola) have just published a beautiful text en- titled “Combinatorics on Words: Christoffel Words
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Workshops, special sessions, and others Sylvie Hamel (Montréal) Bioinformatics and algorithms, theory of languages During the Second Canada – France Meeting, which and automata, algebraic combinatorics took place at Université du ébec à Montréal in 2008 (see the section CRM Partnerships), Christophe Christophe Hohlweg (UQÀM) Hohlweg and Franco Saliola organized a special ses- Algebra, algebraic combinatorics, and convex geom- sion on algebraic combinatorics. e session took etry place on June 2 – 5 and was aended by around 50 Gilbert Labelle (UQÀM) participants. Enumerative combinatorics, analysis A significant part of the summer was devoted to Vladimir Makarenkov (UQÀM) Sage sessions. Under the leadership of Franco Sali- Computational biology, mathematical classification ola, who benefited from the technical expertise of Ar- Marni Mishna (Simon Fraser) naud Bergeron and the help extended by Ph.D. stu- Algorithms and enumerative, analytical, and alge- dents Alexandre Blondin Massé and Sébastien Labbé, braic combinatorics a program library for word combinatorics was de- veloped within the Sage environment. is library John Mullins (Polytechnique Montréal) was accepted and included in Version 3.2.2 of Sage. Analysis of cryptographic protocols and e-commerce Subsequent improvements were also made to this li- protocols, formal semantics, secure mobile code brary and are now part of Version 4.1.1. specification, operational concurrency models Gilbert Labelle gave a special lecture entitled John Mullins has not been a regular member since “Mes aventures mathématiques avec Pierre Leroux” Mar 16, 2009. during the 20th edition of the FPSAC annual confer- Christophe Reutenauer (UQÀM) ence (June 23 – 27, 2008, Valparaiso, Chile). During Algebraic combinatorics, noncommutative algebra, the 61th Lotharingian Combinatorics Conference, automata theory, coding theory, free algebras held on September 21 – 24, 2008, at Curia (Portugal), Denis érien (McGill) a special session to honour Pierre Leroux’s memory Complexity theory, logic, combinatorics, probability was organized and chaired by Srečko Brlek. Pierre theory Leroux, who died unexpectedly a few months be- Denis érien has not been a regular member since fore this conference, was the founder of LaCIM. e Mar 16, 2009. Winter 2008 Meeting of the CMS included a session Timothy R.S. Walsh (UQÀM) on algebraic combinatorics organized by François Algorithmics, enumerative combinatorics, graph Bergeron, Srečko Brlek, Christophe Hohlweg, and theory Christophe Reutenauer. Associate members Members of the laboratory Pierre Lalonde (Maisonneuve) Regular members Enumerative and bijective combinatorics, alternat- François Bergeron (UQÀM) director ing sign matrices, enumeration of involutions with Combinatorics, algebra, representations of finite respect to various parameters, use of Pfaffians and groups determinants in enumeration Robert Bédard (UQÀM) Cédric Lamathe (UQÀM) Representations of finite groups, Lie theory Combinatorics of tree-like structures, theory of species, indicator series of partially labelled struc- Anne Bergeron (UQÀM) tures and asymmetric structures Bioinformatics Luc Lapointe (Talca) Srečko Brlek (UQÀM) Algebraic combinatorics, symmetric functions, inte- Combinatorics of words, algorithmics grable systems, supersymmetries Cedric Chauve (Simon Fraser & UQÀM) Odile Marcotte (UQÀM & CRM) Enumerative combinatorics, trees, bioinformatics Combinatorial optimization, integer programming, Alain Goupil (UQTR) graph theory Combinatorics, algebra, linear representations of Dominic Roon (UQTR) groups, symmetric group Complex analysis, hypercomplex numbers
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Collaborating members Adriano Garsia (UCSD) Algebraic combinatorics, symmetric functions, har- Marcello Aguiar (Texas A&M) monic and co-invariant spaces, quasiharmonic and Algebraic combinatorics, non-commutative algebra, quasi-invariant functions Hopf algebras and quantum groups, category theory André Joyal (UQÀM) Luc Bélair (UQÀM) Algebraic topology, category theory Mathematical logic, model theory Jacques Labelle (UQÀM) Nantel Bergeron (York) Combinatorics, topology Applied algebra Louise Laforest (UQÀM) Pierre Bouard (UQÀM) Data structures, combinatorics, asymptotic analysis, Commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, and com- quaternary trees binatorics Daniel Lemire (TÉLUQ) Miel Bousquet (Vieux-Montréal) Database theory, data warehousing, multidimen- Enumeration of combinatorial structures, planar sional databases (OLAP), data mining, time series, maps and cacti, theory of species, Lagrange inver- collaborative filtering, information retrieval sion formulas Simon Plouffe Yves Chiricota (UQÀC) Integer sequences, generalized expansions of real Computer graphics, mathematical methods in com- numbers puter graphics, combinatorics, computational geom- etry, symbolic computation Xavier G. Viennot (Bordeaux 1) Enumerative, algebraic, and bijective combinatorics, Sylvie Corteel (Paris-Sud 11; CNRS) interactions between combinatorics, theoretical in- Enumerative and bijective combinatorics, partitions formatics, and theoretical physics of integers, and q-series
Mathematical Analysis
Description fessor. Christiane Rousseau was Interim Director of CRM from September 2008 to June 2009. Iosif At the same time classical and central to modern Polterovich and Dmitry Jakobson were awarded the mathematics, analysis involves the study of contin- G. de B. Robinson Prize by the Canadian Mathe- uous systems, from dynamical systems to solutions matical Society. Javad Mashreghi, omas Ransford, of partial differential equations and spectra of oper- and Kristian Seip organized a conference on Hilbert ators. In 2008 – 2009 the laboratory had 30 regular Spaces of Analytic Functions at CRM, on December and 8 associate members working at eight different 8 – 12, 2008. universities in ébec, the United States, and France. e members of the laboratory work in the following Students, postdoctoral fellows, visitors areas: harmonic analysis, complex analysis and sev- In 2008 – 2009 laboratory members supervised 11 eral complex variables, potential theory, functional postdoctoral fellows (the names of supervisors are analysis, Banach algebras, microlocal analysis, anal- within parentheses): Sara Derivière (T. Kaczynski); ysis on manifolds, nonsmooth analysis, spectral the- Igor Wigman (I. Polterovich, A. Granville, D. Jakob- ory, partial differential equations, geometric analy- son, A. Shnirelman, and J. Toth); Zhenbin Yan (J. sis, ergodic theory and dynamical systems, control Toth and D. Jakobson); Xiangjin Xu (J. Toth and D. theory, mathematical physics, applied mathematics, Jakobson); Denis G. Gaydashev (C. Rousseau and A. probability, nonlinear analysis, nonlinear differen- Shnirelman); Elena Naidenova (D. Schlomiuk); Dan tial equations, topological methods in differential Mangoubi (D. Jakobson and I. Polterovich); Nadine equations, fluid dynamics, and turbulence. Badr (G. Dafni and A. Stancu); Nicolas Chevrot (T.J. News and highlights Ransford); Yemon Choi (F. Gourdeau and T.J. Rans- ford); Mostafa Nasri (J. Mashreghi). Iosif Polterovich was awarded a Canada Research Altogether, 31 Ph.D. students, 24 master’s stu- Chair in Spectral Geometry. Javad Mashreghi was dents, and 8 undergraduate students were supervised promoted to the rank of Full Professor. Jérémie Ro- or co-supervised by regular or associate members of stand was promoted to the rank of Associate Pro- the laboratory.
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Seminars ematical Analysis Laboratory and aended by mem- bers of the laboratory. Detailed reports on these e members of the Mathematical Analysis labo- workshops can be found in the section ematic Pro- ratory organize several seminars at four main lo- gram. cations. Université Laval hosts an Analysis Sem- inar, which featured 23 talks in 2008 – 2009, and • Mathematical Aspects of antum Chaos an Analysis Workshop, which featured 17 talks. June 2 – 7, 2008, CRM Alex Shnirelman (Concordia University) and Dmitry Organizers: Nalini Anantharaman (École Polytech- Jakobson (McGill University) organize jointly the nique), Stéphane Nonnenmacher (CEA/Saclay), Zeev McGill/Concordia Analysis Seminar, which featured Rudnick (Tel Aviv), Steve Zelditch (Johns Hopkins) 31 talks in 2008 – 2009. A Seminar on Dynam- • Random Functions, Random Surfaces and Inter- ical Systems, featuring 2 talks, was also held at faces Concordia. At the Université de Sherbrooke, Mad- January 4 – 9, 2009, Sainte-Adèle (ébec) jid Allili, Virginie Charee, François Dubeau, and Organizers: Dick Bond (Toronto), Michael R. Dou- Tomasz Kaczynski organize a Seminar in Compu- glas (Stony Brook), Sco Sheffield (Courant Inst.), tational Geometry and Topology that featured 17 Senya Shlosman (CPT; CNRS), Steve Zelditch (Johns talks in 2008 – 2009. e activities of the Groupe Hopkins) de recherche en topologie computationnelle (GRTC) Members of the laboratory at the Université de Sherbrooke came to an end in March 2009. Tomasz Kaczynski is currently on sab- Regular members batical at the Jagiellonian University. e creation Dmitry Jakobson (McGill) director of a new laboratory with the same mission as the Pure mathematics, global analysis, spectral geome- GRTC, under the leadership of Madjid Allili, is ex- try, quantum chaos, harmonic analysis, eigenvalues pected soon at Bishop’s University. At the Université and eigenfunctions de Montréal, Paul Gauthier (Université de Montréal) and Richard Fournier (Dawson College) organize an Line Baribeau (Laval) Analysis Seminar that featured 8 talks in 2008 – 2009. Complex and functional analysis, Banach algebras, Professor David Ruelle (Institut des Hautes holomorphic iterations, discrete groups Études Scientifiques) gave a mini-course consisting Abraham Boyarsky (Concordia) of 8 lectures at McGill University in September and Dynamical systems October 2008. Vojkan Jakšic organized a working Francis H. Clarke (Lyon 1) seminar on Gaussian random fields (comprising 25 Nonlinear and dynamic analysis, control theory, cal- hours) in the Spring of 2009. Sergei Yakovenko, culus of variations from the Weizmann Institute of Science, gave a col- Galia Dafni (Concordia) loquium on March 13, 2009, and two informal pre- Harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, sentations during his stay in Montréal. complex variables Workshops, special sessions, and others Donald A. Dawson (Carleton) Probability, stochastic processes Vojkan Jakšic organized and taught a 40-hour work- shop on “Mathematical aspects of quantum statisti- S. W. Drury (McGill) cal mechanics” at the Université de Cergy-Pontoise Harmonic analysis, matrix theory in France; in particular the workshop was aended Riard Duncan (Montréal) by 6 students from Montréal. e following work- Ergodic theory, martingale theory, probability the- shop was organized by members of the Mathemat- ory in Banach spaces ical Analysis laboratory. A detailed report on it is Riard Fournier (Dawson) included in the section General Program. Complex analysis, function theory • Hilbert Spaces of Analytic Functions Marlène Frigon (Montréal) December 8 – 12, 2008, CRM Nonlinear analysis, differential equations, fixed Organizers: Javad Mashreghi (Laval), Kristian Seip point theory, critical point theory, multivalent anal- (NTNU), omas J. Ransford (Laval) ysis e following workshops, which were part of the Paul M. Gauthier (Montréal) ematic Year on Probabilistic Methods in Mathe- Complex analysis, holomorphy, harmonicity, ana- matical Physics, were supported in part by the Math- lytic approximation
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Paweł Góra (Concordia) Dana Slomiuk (Montréal) Ergodic theory, dynamical systems, fractal geometry Global analysis, dynamical systems, singularities, bi- Frédéric Gourdeau (Laval) furcations, algebraic curves, primary integral Banach algebras, cohomology, amenability, func- Alexander Shnirelman (Concordia) tional analysis Applications of geometric analysis to fluids and Vojkan Jakšic (McGill) “weak” solutions of the Euler and Navier-Stokes Mathematical physics, quantum statistical mechan- equations ics, random Schrödinger operators Alina Stancu (Concordia) Tomasz Kaczynski (Sherbrooke) Geometric analysis Topological methods, Conley index, applications to Ron J. Stern (Concordia) dynamical systems Functional analysis and theory of operators, linear Ivo Klemes (McGill) and nonlinear systems, non-smooth analysis, stabil- Harmonic analysis, trigonometric series ity, optimal order Alexey Kokotov (Concordia) John A. Toth (McGill) Spectral geometry of Riemann surfaces, hyperbolic Spectral theory, semi-classical analysis, microlocal partial differential equations analysis, Hamiltonian mechanics Paul Koosis (McGill) Associate Members Harmonic analysis Octavian Cornea (Montréal) Javad Mashreghi (Laval) Algebraic topology, dynamical systems Complex analysis, harmonic analysis, Hardy spaces Kohur Gowrisankaran (McGill) Yiannis N. Petridis (UC London) Potential theory Automorphic forms and their spectral theory, ana- Pengfei Guan (McGill) lytic number theory, spectral and scaering theory Partial differential equations, geometric analysis, of manifolds several complex variables Iosif Polterovi (Montréal) John Harnad (Concordia) Geometric analysis, spectral theory, functional anal- Mathematical physics, classical and quantum ysis, differential geometry, partial differential equa- physics, geometrical methods, integrable sys- tions tems, group theoretical methods, random matrices, omas J. Ransford (Laval) isomonodromic deformations, isospectral flows Complex and harmonic analysis, functional analysis Niky Kamran (McGill) and theory of operators, spectral analysis, potential Geometric approach to partial differential equations theory Dmitry Korotkin (Concordia) Dominic Roon (UQTR) Integrable systems, isomonodromic deformations, Complex analysis, hypercomplex numbers classical and quantum gravity, Frobenius varieties Jérémie Rostand (Laval) Nilima Nigam (McGill & Simon Fraser) Complex analysis, experimental mathematics Applied analysis, numerical methods in electromag- Christiane Rousseau (Montréal) netism Dynamical systems, bifurcations, qualitative theory, Samuel Zaidman (Montréal) polynomial systems, analytic invariants, integrable Functional analysis and differential equations in ab- systems stract spaces, pseudo-differential operators
Mathematical Physics
Description 20 doctoral students and around 20 master’s students were working under the supervision of regular mem- e mathematical physics group is one of the old- bers of the Mathematical Physics laboratory in the est and most active at the CRM. It consists of 14 2008 – 2009 academic year. e laboratory also in- regular members, all full-time faculty at five e- cludes research associates and postdoctoral fellows. bec Universities, and 18 associate members. Around e group hosts many visiting researchers and car-
78 R L ries out research in many of the most active areas of • Karl Liechty (IUPUI; Student Long-term Visitor): mathematical physics: coherent nonlinear systems August 2 – September 25, 2008. in fluids, optics, and plasmas; classical and quantum • Igor Loutsenko (SISSA, Trieste): August 19 – 29, integrable systems; the spectral theory of random 2008. matrices; percolation phenomena; conformal field • Jean-Michel Maillet (Lyon 1): June 23 – July 5, 2008. theory; quantum statistical mechanics; spectral and • Nicholas Makarov (Caltech): August 3 – 30, 2008. scaering theory of random Schrödinger operators; • Barry McCoy (Stony Brook): June 29 – July 12, quasi-crystals; relativity; spectral transform meth- 2008. ods; asymptotics of eigenstates; foundational ques- • Kenneth McLaughlin (Arizona): August 17 – tions in quantization; coherent states; wavelets; su- September 6, and September 13 – 28, 2008. persymmetry; the symmetry analysis of PDE’s and • Jason Newport (UNC-Chapel Hill; Student Long- difference equations; representation theory of Lie term Visitor): August 25 – September 28, 2008. groups and quantum groups; and the mathematical • Stéphane Nonnenmacher (CCEA/Saclay): April structure of classical and quantum field theories. 1 – June 10, 2008. • Andrei Okounkov (Princeton; Aisenstadt Chair): News and highlights September 1 – 16, 2008. In 2008 – 2009 the life of the laboratory revolved • Alexandre Orlov (Shirshov Inst.): August 22 – around the CRM thematic program, since the theme September 20, 2008 and May 17 – June 15, 2009. of the year was “Probabilistic Methods in Mathemat- • Herbert Spohn (TU München): August 19 – ical Physics.” Members of the Mathematical Physics September 9, 2008. laboratory also took an active part in the organiza- • Răzvan Teodorescu (Los Alamos): August 18 – tion of the CRM – PIMS joint thematic program on September 6, 2008. “Challenges and Perspectives in Probability.” We re- • Alexander Tovbis (Central Florida): May 21 – 28, fer the reader to the section ematic Program for 2009. detailed reports on these activities. Vasilisa Shram- • Craig Tracy (UC Davis; Aisenstadt Chair): August chenko, professor at the Université de Sherbrooke, 26 – 31, 2008, and March 3 – 6, 2009. became an associate member of the laboratory in • Wendelin Werner (Paris-Sud 11; Aisenstadt Chair): 2009. July 31 – August 12, 2008. • Anton Zabrodin (ITEP): August 17 – 30, 2008. Students, postdoctoral fellows, visitors • Valentin Zagrebnov (CPT): September 21 – e members of the Mathematical Physics laboratory October 10, 2008. supervised 14 master’s students, 20 Ph.D. students, Seminars and 13 postdoctoral fellows in 2008 – 2009. Many re- searchers visited the CRM and the laboratory during In 2008 – 2009 the Mathematical Physics Seminar the thematic year; they collaborated with the labo- featured 32 talks. Also 8 talks were given within ratory members and their students and postdoctoral a Working Seminar on Integrable Systems, Random fellows. Matrices, and Random Processes. e reader will find below a list of the researchers Workshops, special sessions, and others who visited the laboratory in 2008 – 2009. • Louis-Pierre Arguin (Courant Inst.): June 7 – 14, Members of the Mathematical Physics laboratory 2009. helped organize a summer school and an interna- • Pavel Bleher (IUPUI): August 2 – October 4, 2008. tional conference on symmetries and integrability of • Alexei Borodin (Caltech; Clay Institute Emissary): difference equations. June 9 – 28 and August 25 – September 6, 2008. • Summer School • Robert Coquereaux (CPT): November 29 – SMS 2008 December 13, 2008. Symmetries and Integrability of Difference Equations • Benjamin Doyon (Durham): August 3 – 22, 2008, June 9 – 20, 2008, Université de Montréal (Depart- and August 26 – September 11, 2009. ment of Mathematics and Statistics) • Ilya Gruzberg (Chicago): August 3 – September 7, sponsored by CRM, ISM, Université de Montréal, and 2008. the NSF • Greg Lawler (Chicago; Clay Institute Emissary): Scientific Directors: Pavel Winternitz (Montréal), August 1 – 31, 2008. Vladimir Dorodnitsyn (Keldysh Inst.) • Decio Levi (Roma Tre): June 9 – 28, 2008. Organizing Commiee: Vladimir Dorodnitsyn,
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Véronique Hussin (Montréal), François Lalonde Jean LeTourneux (Montréal) (Montréal), Decio Levi (Roma Tre), Peter J. Olver Symmetry properties of systems, special functions (Minnesota), Pavel Winternitz Pierre Mathieu (Laval) • International Conference Conformal field theory, classical and quantum inte- Symmetries and Integrability of Difference Equations grable systems, affine Lie algebras (SIDE8) Jiří Patera (Montréal) June 22 – 28, 2008, Hôtel Mont-Gabriel, Sainte-Adèle Applications of group theory, quasi-crystals, Lie al- (ébec) gebras sponsored by CRM, the NSF, and the Mathematical Yvan Saint-Aubin (Montréal) Physics Laboratory Conformal field theory, statistical mechanics, 2- Organizers: Pavel Winternitz (Montréal, Chair), John dimensional phase transition model Harnad (Concordia), Véronique Hussin (Montréal), Decio Levi (Roma Tre), Peter J. Olver (Minnesota), Luc Vinet (Montréal) Luc Vinet (Montréal) Symmetry properties of systems, special functions For other conferences and workshops organized Pavel Winternitz (Montréal) by laboratory members we refer the reader to Methods of group theory in physics, nonlinear phe- the site http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/~physmath/ nomena, symmetries of difference equations, super- LabPhysMathEn/events_members.html. integrability Members of the laboratory Associate members Regular members Robert Brandenberger (McGill) eoretical Cosmology John Harnad (Concordia) director Robert Conte (CEA/Saclay) Mathematical physics, classical and quantum Integrable and partially integrable systems, Painlevé physics, geometrical methods, integrable sys- analysis, exact solutions, finite difference equations tems, group theoretical methods, random matrices, Chris Cummins (Concordia) isomonodromic deformations, isospectral flows Group theory, modular functions, moonshine Syed Twareque Ali (Concordia) Stéphane Durand (Édouard-Montpetit) Coherent states, wavelets, quantization techniques, Classical and quantum physics, mathematical harmonic analysis, Wigner functions physics, symmetries, parasupersymmetries, frac- Marco Bertola (Concordia) tional supersymmetries, KdV equations, quantum Axiomatic quantum field theory, invariant theory of mechanics, relativity discrete groups, random matrices, isomonodromic Bertrand Eynard (CEA/Saclay) deformations Matrix models, integrable systems, string theory, re- Alfred Miel Grundland (UQTR) lationship between matrix models, integrability, and Symmetry of differential equations in physics algebraic geometry Riard L. Hall (Concordia) Jean-Pierre Gazeau (Paris Diderot) Spectra of Schrödinger, Klein-Gordon, Dirac, and Coherent states, wavelets, relativistic quantum Salpeter operators, many-body problems, relativis- frames, symmetry groups for beta-laices tic scaering theory, iterative solution to ODEs, and Alexander Its (IUPUI) boundary-value problems Soliton theory, integrable systems, special functions, Jacques Hurtubise (McGill) mathematical physics Algebraic geometry, integrable systems, gauge the- Dmitry Jakobson (McGill) ory, moduli spaces Pure mathematics, global analysis, spectral geome- Véronique Hussin (Montréal) try, quantum chaos, harmonic analysis, eigenvalues Group theory, Lie algebras and applications in and eigenfunctions physics, supersymmetries in classical and quantum Vojkan Jakšic (McGill) mechanics Mathematical physics, quantum statistical mechan- Dmitry Korotkin (Concordia) ics, random Schrödinger operators Integrable systems, isomonodromic deformations, Niky Kamran (McGill) classical and quantum gravity, Frobenius varieties Geometric approach to partial differential equations
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François Lalonde (Montréal) Vasilisa Shramenko (Sherbrooke) Symplectic topology and geometry, global analysis Frobenius manifolds, integrable systems, Riemann – on manifolds, hamiltonian systems Hilbert problems, isomonodromic deformations of Decio Levi (Roma Tre) systems of linear differential equations, function the- Symmetries of differential and difference equations, ory on Riemann surfaces integrable nonlinear equations on the laice and re- John A. Toth (McGill) ductive perturbation theory on the laice Spectral theory, semi-classical analysis, microlocal Manu Paranjape (Montréal) analysis, Hamiltonian mechanics eoretical particle physics: field theory, solitons, Carolyne M. Van Vliet (Miami) noncommutative geometry, alternative gravity Non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, fluctuations Alexander Shnirelman (Concordia) and stochastic processes, quantum transport in con- Applications of geometrical analysis to fluids and densed maer, electronic behavior in submicron “weak” solutions of the Euler and Navier-Stokes quantum devices equations
PhysNum
Description in a quantitative manner. Pharmacometrics con- sists of the study of measurement, regression analy- e PhysNum laboratory was created by physicists sis (data fiing), and system reproduction (modelling (hence its acronym, which means “Physique numé- and simulation), for the estimation, evaluation, un- rique”). At the present time its members conduct derstanding, and prediction of pharmaceutical pro- research in medical imaging and pharmacokinetics. cesses in terms of their general trends and variabil- e researchers whose field is medical imaging take ity. part in the activities of the Laboratoire International Within this area, Fahima Nekka’s group is work- de Neuroimagerie et Modélisation (LINeM), which ing on the efficient integration of different drug- was created (in 2008) by three institutions: the Insti- related aspects and mechanisms. e group’s mod- tut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale elling approach, whether driven by hypotheses or (INSERM, France), the Université Pierre et Marie Cu- data, aims to increase our understanding and to ex- rie (Paris), and the Université de Montréal. In partic- plain the complex relationship between drugs and ular, PhysNum researchers have ongoing collabora- living systems. e team is working on the following tions with researchers from the Centre de recherche topics: de l’Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal • Compliance metrics and ranking; (CRIUGM) and from Unité UMR-S 678 (INSERM). • Metrics to evaluate the clinical impact of variable e goal of LINeM is to develop the best mathe- drug intake behaviour; matical models and tools in diverse areas of neu- • Pharmacometrics and mechanistic modelling in roimaging. Here are the topics studied by LINeM re- animal drug use; searchers: • Objective evaluation of a treatment efficacy • Physiological and biochemical sources of func- through the extension of classical breakpoint estima- tional brain imaging signals; tion methods to the case of variable pharmacokinetic • Cerebral activation networks; profiles; • Haemodynamic responses in optical imaging; • Development of physiology-based pharmacoki- • Inverse problems and wavelets; netic (PBPK) models to predict drug-drug interac- • Functional neuroanatomy of the spinal cord; tions; and • Intrinsic optical imaging of the spinal cord and the • Development and use of global sensitivity ap- brain and data analysis; proaches for PBPK models. • antitative imaging of ageing; and • Seizure prediction for epileptic patients with im- Students plants. In all 13 master’s students, 9 Ph.D. students, and Fahima Nekka and her team conduct research 2 postdoctoral fellows were supervised or cosuper- in pharmacometrics, a discipline whose goal is to vised by regular or associate members of PhysNum interpret and describe pharmacological phenomena in 2008 – 2009.
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Workshops, special sessions, and others Habib Benali (UPMC) antitative analysis in brain imaging, medical e workshop below was organized by PhysNum imaging and multimodal systems and sponsored by the MITACS network. A detailed report on it is included in the section Multidisci- Line Garnero (UPMC) plinary and Industrial Program. Magnetoencephalography Line Garnero died in July 2009. • Workshop on Signal Processing Methods in Brain Imaging Bernard Goulard (Montréal) June 4, 2008, Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Brain imaging Montréal Frédéric Lesage (Polytechnique Montréal) sponsored by MITACS and PhysNum Conformal theory, integrable systems, inverse prob- Organizers: Mathieu Dehaes (INSERM), Louis lems, optical imaging Gagnon (Harvard-MIT HST), Frédéric Lesage (Poly- Fahima Nekka (Montréal) technique Montréal), Jean-Marc Lina (ÉTS) Fractal analysis, porous systems, wavelets
Members of the laboratory Associate Member Regular members Keith J. Worsley (McGill) Statistics of brain mapping, geometry of random im- Jean-Marc Lina (ÉTS) director ages in medicine and astrophysics Wavelets, statistical modelling and brain imaging, Keith J. Worsley died in February 2009. machine learning Alain Arnéodo (ÉNS Lyon; CNRS) Fractals and wavelets
Statistics
Description and neural networks, survey sampling, analysis of functional data, statistical analysis of images, depen- Statistics is central to many endeavours in society. dence structures, Bayesian analysis, analysis of time Whether it be through surveys from sampling, clin- series and financial data, and resampling methods. ical trials to study various biomedical treatments or experimental designs in agriculture or industry, sta- News and highlights tistical methodology can be found everywhere in sci- ence. Recently, statistics has undergone a revolu- is year was marked by the loss of our colleague, tion in its techniques and approaches. is revo- Keith Worsley (from McGill University), who died of lution has been driven by the need to analyze very cancer at the age of 57. Keith was one of the most fa- large data sets and data with more complex struc- mous members of the laboratory. He was renowned ture, and by the advent of powerful computers. For internationally for his work on the statistical the- example, statistical methodology is now addressing ory of random Gaussian fields and their applications problems whose structure is very complex, such as to human brain mapping. Author of more than 150 the analysis of brain images or genome data, and scientific papers, Keith received numerous distinc- new methodology is being developed for large data tions throughout his career. For instance, he was sets. Data mining is one of the tools used. One of elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2003 the aims of the laboratory is to structure the ébec and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New statistical community so that it take part in this rev- Zealand in 2008; he was awarded the Gold Medal of olution at a time when an important renewal of the Statistical Society of Canada in 2004. His charm the academic personnel is taking place. is struc- and fine mind will be sorely missed by all members ture allows the ébec community to benefit from of the laboratory. a recently created Pan-Canadian program for com- is year the laboratory was pleased to welcome plex data structures (NICDS), organized by the three two new associate members: Geneviève Lefebvre Canadian mathematics institutes. e laboratory (Université du ébec à Montréal) and Juli Ather- consists of the leaders of the ébec school of statis- ton (McGill University). ey were recently hired tics, who work on topics such as statistical learning by their respective universities and will become active members of the laboratory. Let us men-
82 R L tion also that five of our members (Mylène Bédard, ganize workshops on the analysis of directional and David Haziza, Aurélie Labbe, Fabrice Larribe, and spatial data at CRM in 2009 – 2010. Lea Popovic) have obtained New Researchers Start- Students, postdoctoral fellows, visitors up Grants from FQRNT. As always, members of the laboratory are influ- Laboratory members are very much involved in the ential in the statistical community. ey gave invited training of HQP. Indeed, within their respective de- and plenary talks at many international meetings. partments, statisticians are usually among those who For instance, Yoshua Bengio gave the inaugural ad- train the largest number of students. Regular or as- dress at the Uncertainty in Artifical Intelligence Con- sociate laboratory members supervised or cosuper- ference (Montréal, June 2009); he was also invited at vised 103 master’s students, 57 Ph.D. students, and the DARPA Deep Learning Workshop held in Virginia 13 postdoctoral fellows in 2008 – 2009. in September 2008. Mylène Bédard was invited at the Seminars Optimisation of MCMC Methods workshop in War- wick (United Kingdom). Martin Bilodeau and Louis- On a weekly basis the scientific life of the laboratory Paul Rivest gave invited talks at workshops held at revolves around the CRM – ISM – GERAD Statistics the Banff International Research Station; the topics Colloquium in Montréal, the Statistics Seminar at of these workshops were respectively Understanding Université Laval in ébec City, and the Statistics the New Statistics: Expanding Core Statistical eory Seminar at the Université de Sherbrooke in Sher- and Data Analysis using Computational Topology and brooke. In 2008 – 2009 the Statistics Seminar at Uni- Geometric Statistics. versité Laval featured 15 lectures and the Statistics Christian Genest was invited to the 38th ASTIN Seminar at the Université de Sherbrooke featured Conference (Manchester, United Kingdom, July about 10 lectures. e list of lectures of the CRM – 2008) and the Symposium on the Measurement of Low ISM – GERAD Statistics Colloquium may be found at Probability Events (Philadelphia, April 2008). David the end of the section General Program. Haziza was invited to the Journées de méthodologie organized by INSEE (Paris, March 2009) and gave a Workshops, special sessions, and others workshop on the treatment of non-response in Van- e Statistics laboratory organized two scientific couver. Geneviève Lefebvre gave an invited talk to meetings in 2008 – 2009. Detailed reports on these the Population Monte Carlo Working Group within meetings are included in the section General Pro- the framework of the SAMSI Program on Sequential gram. e first of the two meetings took place at the Monte Carlo Methods (North Carolina). Lea Popovic Université de Sherbrooke. gave invited lectures at a workshop on random trees • MCMC: eory and Applications (Oberwolfach, Germany, January 2009) and a work- October 17, 2008, Université de Sherbrooke shop on probabilistic models in evolution biology Organizers: David A. Stephens (McGill), Éric Mar- (Marseille-Luminy, May 2009). chand (Sherbrooke), Louis-Paul Rivest (Laval) Laboratory members are very active within the e Statistics laboratory and the Commiee Canadian statistical community. In 2009 Christian on New Investigators of the Statistical Society of Léger was awarded the Distinguished Service Award Canada organized a (ébec/Ontario) regional meet- by the Statistical Society of Canada, on account of his ing on April 4, 2009. e goal of this meeting was outstanding contribution to the SSC during the last to gather assistant professors, postdoctoral fellows, 25 years. Christian Genest is completing his mandate and graduate students for exchanges on the chal- as Past-President of the SSC. Louis-Paul Rivest was lenges and issues facing young or future researchers appointed director of the Université Laval branch in statistics. of the Centre interuniversitaire québécois de statis- • New Investigators Meeting tiques sociales (CIQSS); CIQSS is a Research Data April 4, 2009, CRM Centre belonging to a network created by Statis- Organizer: Geneviève Lefebvre (UQÀM) tics Canada. David Stephens and other colleagues Speakers: Juli Atherton (McGill), Lilia Leticia from McGill organized a workshop on “Causal In- Ramirez Ramirez (Waterloo), Lajmi Lakhal Chaieb ference in Statistics and the antitative Sciences” (Laval), Taoufik Bouezmarni (Montréal), Azadeh at the Banff International Research Station (May 3 – Moghtaderi (een’s) 8, 2009). Finally, Louis-Paul Rivest and ierry Du- chesne obtained grants from NICDS in order to or-
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Members of the laboratory genetic algorithms, applications in astrophysics and biostatistics Regular members Aurélie Labbe (Laval) Louis-Paul Rivest (Laval) director Biostatistics and statistical genetics Linear models, robustness, directional data, sam- Fabrice Larribe (UQÀM) pling, applications in finance Statistical genetics and biostatistics Belkacem Abdous (Laval) Christian Léger (Montréal) Biostatistics, health research methodology, con- Resampling methods, adaptive estimation, model se- struction and validation of measuring tools in the lection, robustness, applications in data mining health sector Brenda MacGibbon (UQÀM) Jean-François Angers (Montréal) Mathematical statistics, decision theory, biostatistics Decision theory, Bayesian statistics, robustness with Éric Marand (Sherbrooke) respect to prior information, function estimation Statistical inference, Bayesian statistics, multivariate Masoud Asgharian (McGill) analysis, and probability Survival analysis, change-point problems, simulated Alejandro Murua (Montréal) annealing and its variants, optimization Data mining, machine learning, object recognition, Yoshua Bengio (Montréal) signal processing, and various applications of statis- Statistical learning algorithms, neural networks, nu- tics and probability to bioinformatics and the social cleus models, probabilistic models, data mining, ap- and health sciences plications in finance and statistical language mod- François Perron (Montréal) elling Decision theory, multidimensional data analysis, Martin Bilodeau (Montréal) Bayesian statistics Multivariate analysis, decision theory, asymptotic James Ramsay (McGill) methods Functional data analysis, smoothing and nonpara- Yogendra P. Chaubey (Concordia) metric regression, curve registration Sampling, linear models, resampling, survival analy- Bruno Rémillard (HEC Montréal) sis Probability theory, empirical processes, time series, Pierre Duesne (Montréal) nonlinear filtering, applications in finance Time series, sampling, multivariate analysis Ro Roy (Montréal) ierry Duesne (Laval) Time series analysis, predictive methods, applica- Survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis, missing tions in econometrics and epidemiology data, modelling of losses, insurance of catastrophic Arusharka Sen (Concordia) incidents, nonparametric inference, model selection, Statistical inference of truncated data, nonparamet- warranty ric function estimation Charles Dugas (Montréal) Russell Steele (McGill) Actuarial science, finance, learning algorithms, neu- Bayesian approaches to mixing modelling, multiple ral networks, universal approximation, survival imputation analysis David Stephens (McGill) Debbie J. Dupuis (HEC Montréal) Bayesian statistics, Markov Chain Monte Carlo and Extreme values, robustness applications to bioinformatics, statistical genetics, Sorana Froda (UQÀM) and time series analysis Nonparametric methods in function estimation, ap- Wei Sun (Concordia) plications of stochastic modelling in biology and Nonlinear filtering and its applications, stochastic medicine analysis, statistical inference, stochastic modelling Christian Genest (Laval) Jonathan E. Taylor (Montréal) Multidimensional data analysis, dependence mea- Gaussian processes, multiple comparisons, neu- sures, nonparametric statistics, decision theory, ap- roimaging, HIV protein sequence analysis plications in actuarial science, finance, and psychol- ogy Alain C. Vandal (McGill) Biostatistics, nonparametric survival estimation and Nadia Ghazzali (Laval) graph theory, imaging, capture-recapture models Multidimensional data analysis, neural networks and
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David B. Wolfson (McGill) David Haziza (Montréal) Change-point problems, survival analysis, Bayesian Sampling theory, inference with missing data, robust statistics, optimal design, applications in medicine inference Keith J. Worsley (McGill) Lajmi Lakhal Chaïeb (Laval) Statistics of brain mapping, geometry of random im- Multidimensional analysis of survival data, analysis ages in medicine and astrophysics of recurrent events, semi-parametric models and in- Keith J. Worsley died in February 2009. complete data Associate members Geneviève Lefebvre (UQÀM) Bayesian and computational statistics, biostatistics Juli Atherton (McGill) Lea Popovic (Concordia) Biostatistics, optimal Bayesian design, change-point Probability theory and its applications to evolution- problems, survival analysis, applications to genetics ary biology, population genetics, and cell biology Mylène Bédard (Montréal) Optimal scaling, Metropolis – Hastings algorithms José Garrido (Concordia) Risk theory, insurance statistics
85 Publications P
CRM publishes monographs, lecture notes, proceedings, soware, videos and research reports. It T has several collections. e in-house collection “Les Publications CRM” offers titles in both English and French. e CRM also has publishing agreements with the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and Springer. Since 1992, two collections, edited by CRM, have been published and distributed by the AMS. ey are the CRM Monograph Series and the CRM Proceedings and Lecture Notes. Springer publishes the CRM Series in Mathematical Physics and the CRM subseries of the Springer Lecture Notes in Statistics. An asterisk preceding a publication indicates that its author is an Aisenstadt chairholder.
Recent Titles
e following list of recent titles contains books that American Mathematical Society appeared in 2008 – 2009 or that will be published CRM Proceedings & Lecture Notes soon. P. Robert Kotiuga (ed.), A Celebration of the Mathe- American Mathematical Society matical Legacy of Raoul Bo (to appear). CRM Monograph Series David Avis, David Bremner & Antoine Deza (eds.), Marcelo Aguiar & Swapneel Mahajan, Monoidal Cat- Polyhedral Computation, vol. 48, 2009. egories, Species and Hopf Algebras (to appear) John Harnad & Pavel Winternitz (eds.), Groups and Saugata Ghosh, Skew-Orthogonal Polynomials and Symmetries: From Neolithic Scots to John McKay, Random Matrix eory (to appear). vol. 47, 2009. Olga Kharlampovich & Alexei Myasnikov, Algebraic Geometry for a Free Group (to appear). Springer CRM Series in Mathematical Physics Jean Berstel, Aaron Lauve, Christophe Reutenauer & Franco V. Saliola, Combinatorics on Words: Christoffel John Harnad (ed.), Random Matrices, Random Pro- Words and Repetitions in Words, vol. 27, 2008. cesses and Integrable Systems (to appear).
Previous Titles
American Mathematical Society *Laurent Lafforgue, Chirurgie des grassmanniennes, CRM Monograph Series vol. 19, 2003. Victor Guillemin & Reyer Sjamaar, Convexity Proper- *George Lusztig, Hee Algebras with Unequal Pa- ties of Hamiltonian Group Actions, vol. 26, 2005. rameters, vol. 18, 2003. *Andrew J. Majda, Rafail V. Abramov & Marcus J. Michael Barr, Acyclic Models, vol. 17, 2002. Grote, Information eory and Stoastics for Multi- *Joel Feldman, Horst Knörrer & Eugene Trubowitz, scale Nonlinear Systems, vol. 25, 2005. Fermionic Functional Integrals and the Renormaliza- Dana Schlomiuk, Andrei A. Bolibrukh, Sergei tion Group, vol. 16, 2002. Yakovenko, Vadim Kaloshin & Alexandru Buium, On Jose I. Burgos, e Regulators of Beilinson and Borel, Finiteness in Differential Equations and Diophantine vol. 15, 2002. Geometry, vol. 24, 2005. Eyal Z. Goren, Lectures on Hilbert Modular Varieties Prakash Panangaden & Franck van Breugel (eds.), and Modular Forms, vol. 14, 2002. Mathematical Teniques for Analyzing Concurrent Michael Baake & Robert V. Moody (eds.), Directions and Probabilistic Systems, vol. 23, 2004. in Mathematical asicrystals, vol. 13, 2000. Montserrat Alsina & Pilar Bayer, aternion Orders, Masayoshi Miyanishi, Open Algebraic Surfaces, adratic Forms, and Shimura Curves, vol. 22, 2004. vol. 12, 2001. Andrei Tyurin, antization, Classical and antum Spencer J. Bloch, Higher Regulators, Algebraic K- Field eory and eta Functions, vol. 21, 2003. eory, and Zeta Functions of Elliptic Curves, vol. 11, Joel Feldman, Horst Knörrer & Eugene Trubowitz, 2000. Riemann Surfaces of Infinite Genus, vol. 20, 2003.
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James D. Lewis, A Survey of the Hodge Conjecture, 2e Piergiulio Tempesta, Pavel Winternitz, John Harnad, édition, vol. 10, 1999 (avec un appendice par B. Brent Willard Miller Jr., George Pogosyan & Miguel A. Gordon). Rodriguez (eds.), Superintegrability in Classical and *Yves Meyer, Wavelets, Vibrations and Scaling, vol. 9, antum Systems, vol. 37, 2004. 1997. Hershy Kisilevsky & Eyal Z. Goren (eds.), Number *Ioannis Karatzas, Lectures on Mathematics of Fi- eory, vol. 36, 2004. nance, vol. 8, 1996. H. E. A. Eddy Campbell & David L. Wehlau (eds.), John Milton, Dynamics of Small Neural Populations, Invariant eory in All Characteristics, vol. 35, 2004. vol. 7, 1996. Pavel Winternitz, John Harnad, C.S. Lam & Jiří Patera *Eugene B. Dynkin, An Introduction to Braning (eds.), Symmetry in Physics, vol. 34, 2004. Measure-Valued Processes, vol. 6, 1994. André D. Bandrauk, Michel C. Delfour & Claude Le Andrew M. Bruckner, Differentiation of Real Func- Bris (eds.), antum Control: Mathematical and Nu- tions, vol. 5, 1994. merical Challenges, vol. 33, 2003. *David Ruelle, Dynamical Zeta Functions for Piece- Vadim B. Kuznetsov (ed.), e Kowalevski Property, wise Monotone Maps of the Interval, vol. 4, 1994. vol. 32, 2002. V. Kumar Murty, Introduction to Abelian Varieties, John Harnad & Alexander R. Its (eds.), Isomonodromic vol. 3, 1993. Deformations and Applications in Physics, vol. 31, Maximilian Ya. Antimirov, Andrei A. Kolyshkin 2002. & Rémi Vaillancourt, Applied Integral Transforms, John McKay & Abdellah Sebbar (eds.), Proceedings on vol. 2, 1993. Moonshine and Related Topics, vol. 30, 2001. *Dan V. Voiculescu, Kenneth J. Dykema & Alexandru Alan Coley, Decio Levi, Robert Milson, Colin Rogers Nica, Free Random Variables, vol. 1, 1992. & Pavel Winternitz (eds.), Bälund and Darboux Transformations, vol. 29, 2001. American Mathematical Society John C. Taylor (ed.), Topics in Probability and Lie CRM Proceedings & Lecture Notes Groups: Boundary eory, vol. 28, 2001. Jean-Marie De Koninck, Andrew Granville & Florian Israel M. Sigal & Catherine Sulem (eds.), Nonlinear Luca (eds.), Anatomy of Integers, vol. 46, 2008. Dynamics and Renormalization Group, vol. 27, 2001. Panos M. Pardalos & Pierre Hansen (eds.), Data Min- John Harnad, Gert Sabidussi & Pavel Winternitz ing and Mathematical Programming, vol. 45, 2008. (eds.), Integrable Systems: From Classical to antum, Stanley Alama, Lia Bronsard & Peter Sternberg (eds.), vol. 26, 2000. Singularities in PDE and the Calculus of Variations, Decio Levi & Orlando Ragnisco (eds.), SIDE III – vol. 44, 2007. Symmetry and Integrability of Difference Equations, Andrew Granville, Melvyn B. Nathanson & Jozsef vol. 25, 2000. Solymosi (eds.), Additive Combinatorics, vol. 43, 2007. B. Brent Gordon, James D. Lewis, Stefan Müller- Donald A. Dawson, Vojkan Jakšić & Boris Vainberg Stach, Shuji Saito & Noriko Yui (eds.), e Arithmetic (eds.), Probability and Mathematical Physics: A Vol- and Geometry of Algebraic Cycles, vol. 24, 2000. ume in Honor of Stanislav Molanov, vol. 42, 2007. Pierre Hansen & Odile Marcoe (eds.), Graph Colour- André Bandrauk, Michel C. Delfour & Claude Le Bris ing and Applications, vol. 23, 1999. (eds.), High-Dimensional Partial Differential Equa- Jan Felipe van Diejen & Luc Vinet (eds.), Algebraic tions in Science and Engineering, vol. 41, 2007. Methods and q-Special Functions, vol. 22, 1999. Vestislav Apostolov, Andrew Dancer, Nigel Hitchin Michel Fortin (ed.), Plates and Shells, vol. 21, 1999. & McKenzie Wang (eds.), Perspectives in Comparison, Katie Coughlin (ed.), Semi-Analytic Methods for the Generalized and Special Geometry, vol. 40, 2006. Navier – Stokes Equations, vol. 20, 1999. Pavel Winternitz, David Gomez-Ullate, Arieh Iser- Rajiv Gupta & Kenneth S. Williams (eds.), Number les, Decio Levi, Peter J. Olver, Reinout ispel & eory, vol. 19, 1999. Piergiulio Tempesta (eds.), Group eory and Numer- Serge Dubuc & Gilles Deslauriers (eds.), Spline Func- ical Analysis, vol. 39, 2005. tions and the eory of Wavelets, vol. 18, 1999. Jacques Hurtubise & Eyal Markman (eds.), Algebraic Olga Kharlampovich (ed.), Summer Sool in Group Structures and Moduli Spaces, vol. 38, 2004. eory in Banff, 1996, vol. 17, 1998.
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Alain Vincent (ed.), Numerical Methods in Fluid Me- Jan Felipe van Diejen & Luc Vinet (eds.), Calogero – anics, vol. 16, 1998. Moser – Sutherland Models, 1999. François Lalonde (ed.), Geometry, Topology and Dy- Robert Conte (ed.), e Painlevé Property, 1999. namics, vol. 15, 1998. Richard MacKenzie, Manu B. Paranjape & Wojciech John Harnad & Alex Kasman (eds.), e Bispectral J. M. Zakrzewski (eds.), Solitons, 1999. Problem, vol. 14, 1998. Luc Vinet & Gordon Semenoff (eds.), Particles and Michel Delfour (ed.), Boundaries, Interfaces and Tran- Fields, 1998. sitions, vol. 13, 1998. Springer Peter G. Greiner, Victor Ivrii, Luis A. Seco & Cather- Lecture Notes in Statistics (subseries CRM) ine Sulem (eds.), Partial Differential Equations and their Applications, vol. 12, 1997. Marc Moore (ed.), Spatial Statistics: Methodological Luc Vinet (ed.), Advances in Mathematical Sciences: Aspects and Applications, 2001. CRM’s 25 Years, vol. 11, 1997. S. Ejaz Ahmed & Nancy Reid (eds.), Empirical Bayes Donald E. Knuth, Stable Marriage and Its Relation to and Likelihood Inference, 2001. Other Combinatorial Problems, vol. 10, 1996. Les Publications CRM Decio Levi, Luc Vinet & Pavel Winternitz (eds.), Laurent Guieu & Claude Roger, L’Algèbre et le Groupe Symmetries and Integrability of Difference Equations, de Virasoro, 2007. vol. 9, 1995. Luc Lapointe, Ge Mo-Lin, Yvan Saint-Aubin & Luc Joel S. Feldman, Richard Froese & Lon M. Rosen Vinet, Proceedings of the Canada – China Meeting on (eds.), Mathematical antum eory II: Srödinger eoretical Physics, 2003. Operator, vol. 8, 1995. Armel Mercier, Fonctions de plusieurs variables : Dif- Joel S. Feldman, Richard Froese & Lon M. Rosen férentiation, 2002. (eds.), Mathematical antum eory I: Field eory and Many-Body eory, vol. 7, 1994. Nadia El-Mabrouk, omas Lengauer & David Sankoff (eds.), Currents in Computational Molecular Guido Mislin (ed.), e Hilton Symposium 1993, vol. 6, Biology, 2001. 1994. James G. Huard & Kenneth S. Williams (eds.), e Donald A. Dawson (ed.), Measure-Valued Processes, Collected Papers of Sarvadaman Chowla. Volume I: Stoastic Partial Differential Equations and Interact- 1925 – 1935; Volume II: 1936 – 1961; Volume III: ing Systems, vol. 5, 1994. 1962 – 1986, 2000. Hershy Kisilevsky & M. Ram Murty (eds.), Elliptic Michael Barr & Charles Wells, Category eory for Curves and Related Topics, vol. 4, 1994. Computing Science, 1999. Andrei L. Smirnov & Rémi Vaillancourt (eds.), Maximilian Ya. Antimirov, Andrei A. Kolyshkin & Asymptotic Methods in Meanics, vol. 3, 1993. Rémi Vaillancourt, Mathematical Models for Eddy Philip D. Loewen, Optimal Control via Nonsmooth Current Testing, 1998. Analysis, vol. 2, 1993. Xavier Fernique, Fonctions aléatoires gaussiennes, vec- M. Ram Murty (ed.), eta Functions, vol. 1, 1993. teurs aléatoires gaussiens, 1997. Springer Faqir Khanna & Luc Vinet (eds.), Field eory, Inte- CRM Series in Mathematical Physics grable Systems and Symmetries, 1997. Marc iriet, Biology and Meanics of Blood Flows, Paul Koosis, Leçons sur le théorème de Beurling et Mal- 2008. liavin, 1996. David Sénéchal, André-Marie Tremblay & Claude David W. Rand, Concorder Version ree, 1996 (so- Bourbonnais (eds.), eoretical Methods for Strongly ware and user guide). Correlated Electrons, 2003. Jacques Gauvin, eory of Nonconvex Programming, *Roman Jackiw, Lectures on Fluid Dynamics, 2002. 1994. Yvan Saint-Aubin & Luc Vinet (eds.), eoretical Decio Levi, Curtis R. Menyuk & Pavel Winternitz Physics at the End of the Twentieth Century, 2001. (eds.), Self-Similarity in Stimulated Raman Scaering, 1994. Yvan Saint-Aubin & Luc Vinet (eds.), Algebraic Meth- ods in Physics, 2000. Rémi Vaillancourt, Compléments de mathématiques pour ingénieurs, 1993.
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Robert P. Langlands & Dinakar Ramakrishnan (eds.), *Yuval Ne′eman, Symétries, jauges et variétés de e Zeta Functions of Picard Modular Surfaces, 1992. groupe, 1979. Florin N. Diacu, Singularities of the N-Body Problem, *R. Tyrrell Rockafellar, La théorie des sous-gradients 1992. et ses applications à l’optimisation, fonctions convexes Jacques Gauvin, éorie de la programmation mathé- et non convexes, 1979. matique non convexe, 1992. *Jacques-Louis Lions, Sur quelques questions d’ana- Pierre Ferland, Claude Tricot & Axel van de Walle, lyse, de mécanique et de contrôle optimal, 1976. Analyse fractale, 1992 (soware and user guide). *Donald E. Knuth, Mariages stables et leurs relations Stéphane Baldo, Introduction à la topologie des en- avec d’autres problèmes combinatoires, 1976. sembles fractals, 1991. *Robert Hermann, Physical Aspects of Lie Group e- Robert Bédard, Groupes linéaires algébriques, 1991. ory, 1974. Rudolf Beran & Gilles R. Ducharme, Asymptotic e- *Mark Kac, elques problèmes mathématiques en ory for Bootstrap Methods in Statistics, 1991. physique statistique, 1974. James D. Lewis, A Survey of the Hodge Conjecture, *Sybreen de Groot, La transformation de Weyl et la 1991. fonction de Wigner : une forme alternative de la méca- David W. Rand & Tatiana Patera, Concorder, 1991 nique quantique, 1974. (soware and user guide). Other Collaborations with Publishers David W. Rand & Tatiana Patera, Le Concordeur, 1991 Marc Moore, Sorana Froda & Christian Léger (eds.), (soware and user guide). Mathematical Statistics and Applications: Festsri Véronique Hussin (ed.), Lie eory, Differential Equa- for Constance van Eeden, Lecture Notes – Monograph tions and Representation eory, 1990. Series, vol. 42, 2003 (a collaboration with the Institute John Harnad & Jerrold E. Marsden (eds.), Hamil- of Mathematical Statistics). tonian Systems, Transformation Groups and Spectral Duong H. Phong, Luc Vinet & Shing-Tung Yau (eds.), Transform Methods, 1990. Mirror Manifolds and Geometry, AMS/IP Studies in M. Ram Murty (ed.), Automorphic Forms and Analytic Advanced Mathematics, vol. 10, 1998 (a collaboration Number eory, 1990. with the AMS and International Press). Wendy G. McKay, Jiří Patera & David W. Rand, Tables Pierre Ferland, Claude Tricot & Axel van de Walle, of Representations of Simple Lie Algebras. Volume I: Fractal Analysis User’s Guide, 1994 (a collaboration Exceptional Simple Lie Algebras, 1990. with the AMS). Anthony W. Knapp, Representations of Real Reductive Hedy Aouch, Jean-Pierre Aubin, Francis Clarke & Groups, 1990. Ivar Ekeland (eds.), Analyse non linéaire, 1989 (a col- Wendy G. McKay, Jiří Patera & David W. Rand, Sim- laboration with Gauthier-Villars). pLie, 1990 (soware and user guide). Videos Francis H. Clarke, Optimization and Nonsmooth Analysis, Montréal, 1989. Efim Zelmanov, Abstract Algebra in the 20th Century, Samuel Zaidman, Une Introduction à la théorie des 1997. équations aux dérivées partielles, 1989. Serge Lang, Les grands courants, 1991. *Yuri I. Manin, antum Groups and Noncommuta- Robert Bédard, Brouiller les cartes, 1991. tive Geometry, 1988. Serge Lang, Les équations diophantiennes, 1991. Lucien Le Cam, Notes on Asymptotic Methods in Sta- Laurent Schwartz, Le mouvement brownien, 1990. tistical Decision eory, 1974. Laurent Schwartz, Une vie de mathématicien, 1989. Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal Chaire Aisenstadt *Laurent Schwartz, Semimartingales and their Stoastic Calculus on Manifolds, 1984.
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CRM Preprints
[CRM-3258] M. C. Delfour, A. Garon, New equations [CRM-3270] H. Yagoub, T. Nguyen-Ba, R. Vail- for the dose under pulsative/periodic conditions in the lancourt, Variable-step 7-stage Hermite – Birkhoff – design of coated stents, Computer Methods in Biome- Taylor DDE solver of order 8, in Scientific Proceedings chanics and Biomedical Engineering, 13:1 (February of Riga Technical University. Series 5. Computer Sci- 2010), 19 – 34. ence, accepted. [CRM-3259] M. C. Delfour, Representations of hyper- [CRM-3271] J. Merleau, J.-F. Angers, L. Perreault, A.- surfaces and minimal smoothness of the midsurface C. Favre, Modelling the average behaviour of a sample in the theory of shells, Control and Cybernetics 37:4 of curves with Bayesian regression splines, December (2008), 879 – 911. 2008. [CRM-3260] M. A. Rodríguez, P. Tempesta, P. Win- [CRM-3272] J. Harnad, A. Y. Orlov, Convolution sym- ternitz, Reduction of superintegrable systems: e metries of integrable hieraries, matrix models and anisotropic oscillator, Physical Review E. Statisti- τ-functions, December 2008. cal, Nonlinear, and So Maer Physics, 78:4 (2008), [CRM-3273] T. Nguyen-Ba, H. Yagoub, R. Vail- 046608, 6 pages. lancourt, One-step 9-stage Hermite – Birkhoff – Taylor [CRM-3261] F. Balogh, J. Harnad, Superharmonic per- DAE solver of order 11, in Scientific Proceedings of turbations of a Gaussian potential, equilibrium mea- Riga Technical University. Series 5. Computer Sci- sures and orthogonal polynomials, Complex Analysis ence, volume 50, Riga; Riga Technical University, and Operator eory, 3:2 (May 2009), 333 – 360. 2008. [CRM-3262] P. Tempesta, L-series and Hurwitz zeta [CRM-3274] E. Kengne, R. Vaillancourt, B. A. Mal- functions associated with the universal formal group, omed, Modulational instability and exact soliton and Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. periodic solutions for two weakly coupled effectively Classe di Scienze. Serie V, accepted. 1D condensates trapped in a double-well potential, In- [CRM-3263] P. Tempesta, Integrable field theories and ternational Journal of Modern Physics B. Condensed hieraries of dynamical systems on the laice, August Maer Physics. Statistical Physics. Applied Physics, 2008. accepted. [CRM-3265] E. Kengne, R. Vaillancourt, Integrability [CRM-3275] E. Kengne, C. Tadmon, T. Nguyen-Ba, conditions for two-component Bose-Einstein conden- R. Vaillancourt, Higher order bright solitons and sho sates in periodic potentials, in Scientific Proceedings signals in nonlinear transmission lines, Chinese Jour- of Riga Technical University. Series 5. Computer nal of Physics, 47:5 (October 2009), 697 – 702. Science, volume 50, Riga; Riga Technical University, [CRM-3277] O. Marcoe (ed.), Deuxième atelier de ré- 2008. solution de problèmes industriels de Montréal, 2009. [CRM-3266] D. Schlomiuk, E. Naidenova, On the clas- [CRM-3278] T. Nguyen-Ba, H. Hao, H. Yagoub, sification of the Lotka – Volterra systems, September R. Vaillancourt, One-step 5-stage Hermite – Birkhoff – 2008. Taylor ODE solver of order 12, Applied Mathematics [CRM-3267] T. Nguyen-Ba, H. Yagoub, Y. Zhuang, and Computation, 211:2 (May 2009), 313 – 328. R. Vaillancourt, Variable-step variable-order 2-stage [CRM-3279] E. Kengne, R. Vaillancourt, 2D Hermite-Birkhoff-Obrekoff ODE solver of order 3 to Ginzburg – Landau system of complex modulation for 14, in Scientific Proceedings of Riga Technical Uni- coupled nonlinear transmission lines, Journal of In- versity. Series 5. Computer Science, volume 50, Riga; frared, Millimeter and Terahertz Waves, 30:7 (July Riga Technical University, 2008. 2009), 679 – 699. [CRM-3268] E. Kengne, R. Vaillancourt, B. A. Mal- [CRM-3280] M. Bertola, A. Prats-Ferrer, Topological omed, Bose – Einstein condensates in optical laices: expansion for the Cauy two-matrix model, March e cubic-quintic nonlinear Srödinger equation with 2009. a periodic potential, Journal of Physics B. Atomic, [CRM-3281] R. Ashino, T. Nguyen-Ba, R. Vaillan- Molecular & Optical Physics, 41:20 (October 2008), court, Decoding low-dimensional linear codes by lin- 205202, 9 pages. ear programming, Canadian Applied Mathematics [CRM-3269] T. Nguyen-Ba, V. Bozic, E. Kengne, aterly, 16:3 (2008), 241 – 254. R. Vaillancourt, One-step 9-stage Hermite – Birkhoff – Taylor ODE solver of order 10, Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computing, accepted.
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CRM Members in 2008 – 2009
In contrast with most other mathematics institutes around the world, the CRM can count on the solid founda- tion of regular, associate, and invited members. Each regular member is also a professor at one of the partner institutions: Université de Montréal, Concordia University, McGill University, Université du ébec à Mont- réal, Université Laval, Université de Sherbrooke, and University of Oawa. Other members are researchers affiliated with the CRM in 2008 – 2009 as part of exchange agreements with neighbouring universities and industry or are long-term visitors from Canadian and foreign institutions. e presence at the CRM of such an active group of researchers has brought many benefits to the Centre. In particular, the CRM’s national pro- gram is greatly facilitated by having on hand a large reserve of willing organizers, who have even contributed financially to the organization of activities. e largest partnership is with the Université de Montréal, which grants the equivalent of five full-time teaching positions in release time to the CRM. Release agreements with the other Montréal area universities afford the equivalent of two more full-time positions. Facilities are also provided to researchers affiliated with junior colleges. Several members are affiliated to the CRM through industrial agreements.
Regular Members Pierre Duesne, Montréal ierry Duesne, Laval Syed Twareque Ali, Concordia Nadia El-Mabrouk, Montréal Jean-François Angers, Montréal André Fortin, Laval Vestislav Apostolov, UQÀM Riard Fournier, Dawson Paul Arminjon, Montréal Marlène Frigon, Montréal André D. Bandrauk, Sherbrooke André Garon, Polytechnique Montréal Line Baribeau, Laval Paul M. Gauthier, Montréal Peter Bartello, McGill Christian Genest, Laval Robert Bédard, UQÀM Eyal Z. Goren, McGill Jacques Bélair, Montréal Bernard Goulard, Montréal Habib Benali, UPMC Andrew Granville, Montréal Yoshua Bengio, Montréal Alfred Miel Grundland, UQTR François Bergeron, UQÀM Pengfei Guan, McGill Marco Bertola, Concordia Gena Hahn, Montréal Yves Bourgault, Oawa Riard L. Hall, Concordia Anne Bourlioux, Montréal Sylvie Hamel, Montréal Steven Boyer, UQÀM John Harnad, Concordia Gilles Brassard, Montréal Tony R. Humphries, McGill Srečko Brlek, UQÀM Jacques Hurtubise, McGill Abraham Broer, Montréal Véronique Hussin, Montréal Robert C. Brunet, Montréal Adrian Iovita, Concordia David Bryant, McGill Dmitry Jakobson, McGill Cédric Chauve, Simon Fraser Vojkan Jaksic, McGill Vašek Chvátal, Concordia André Joyal, UQÀM Francis H. Clarke, Lyon 1 Tomasz Kaczynski, Sherbrooke Olivier Collin, UQÀM Niky Kamran, McGill Octavian Cornea, Montréal Olga Kharlampovi, McGill Miklós Csűrös, Montréal Hershy Kisilevsky, Concordia Chris Cummins, Concordia Paul Koosis, McGill Galia Dafni, Concordia Dmitry Korotkin, Concordia Henri Darmon, McGill Gilbert Labelle, UQÀM Chantal David, Concordia John Labute, McGill Jean-Marie De Konin, Laval François Lalonde, Montréal Miel C. Delfour, Montréal Benoît Larose, Champlain St-Lambert & Concordia Eusebius J. Doedel, Concordia Christian Léger, Montréal Raida Dssouli, Concordia Frédéric Lesage, Polytechnique Montréal
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Sabin Lessard, Montréal Paul F. Tupper, Simon Fraser Jean LeTourneux, Montréal Lennaert van Veen, Concordia Claude Levesque, Laval Luc Vinet, Montréal Jean-Marc Lina, ÉTS Timothy R.S. Walsh, UQÀM Steven Lu, UQÀM omas P. Wihler, Bern Brenda MacGibbon, UQÀM Pavel Winternitz, Montréal Miael C. Maey, McGill Daniel T. Wise, McGill Vladimir Makarenkov, UQÀM Keith J. Worsley, McGill Miael Makkai, McGill Xiaowen Zhou, Concordia Javad Mashreghi, Laval Sherwin A. Maslowe, McGill Associate Members Pierre Mathieu, Laval Nantel Bergeron, York John McKay, Concordia Robert Conte, CEA/Saclay Alexei G. Miasnikov, McGill Stéphane Durand, Édouard-Montpetit M. Ram Murty, een’s Martin J. Gander, Genève Fahima Nekka, Montréal Line Garnero, UPMC Nilima Nigam, McGill Decio Levi, Roma Tre Robert G. Owens, Montréal Jun Li, Pharsight Manu Paranjape, Montréal Emmanuel Lorin de la Grandmaison, Carleton Jíři Patera, Montréal Yiannis N. Petridis, UC London François Perron, Montréal Elisa Shahbazian, Lockheed Martin Canada Iosif Polterovi, Montréal Marc iriet, INRIA Rocquencourt Lea Popovic, Concordia Pierre Valin, RDDC Valcartier James O. Ramsay, McGill Carolyne M. Van Vliet, Miami omas J. Ransford, Laval Jean-Paul Zolésio, INRIA Sophia Antipolis Bruno Rémillard, HEC Montréal Christophe Reutenauer, UQÀM Invited Members Louis-Paul Rivest, Laval Ivo G. Rosenberg, Montréal Mylène Bédard, Montréal Christiane Rousseau, Montréal Louis G. Doray, Montréal Damien Roy, Oawa Charles Dugas, Montréal Ro Roy, Montréal David Haziza, Montréal Peter Russell, McGill Jorge Jiménez Urroz, UPC Yvan Saint-Aubin, Montréal Manuel Morales, Montréal David Sankoff, Oawa Alejandro Murua, Montréal Dana Slomiuk, Montréal Anatol Odzijewicz, Białystok Alexander Shnirelman, Concordia Martin Pinsonnault, Western Ontario Alina Stancu, Concordia Philip Scott, Oawa Ron J. Stern, Concordia Jie Shen, Purdue Francisco aine, Concordia Zora omova, SUNYIT John A. Toth, McGill Alexei Zhedanov, Donetsk IPE
Postdoctoral Fellows
Each year the CRM plays host to a great number of postdoctoral fellows. eir funding is provided by the NSERC and FQRNT postdoctoral programs, the NATO international program administered by NSERC, the CRM (usually in collaboration with the ISM), the CRM’s research laboratories, and individual research grants from CRM members. e list below includes postdoctoral fellows in residence at the CRM and those cofunded by the CRM. Some of the fellows were in residence at the CRM for only part of the year. e affiliation given is the institution where the doctorate was obtained.
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Nadine Badr, Paris-Sud 11 Jun-Fang Li, Oklahoma Robert Buingham, Duke Paweł Lorek, Wrocław Bryden Cais, Michigan Jason Bryan Lucier, Waterloo Felix Carbonell, La Habana Claude Mangoubi Pigier, HUJI Arnaud Chadozeau, Bordeaux 1 Dan Mangoubi, Technion Emmanuel Delsinne, Caen Elena Naidenova, US Moldova Sara Derivière, Rouen Ismaila Ndiaye, EPFL Norman Nam Van Do, Melbourne Jeehoon Park, Boston Xander Faber, Columbia Aleix Prats-Ferrer, Barcelona Gerard Freixas i Montplet, Paris-Sud 11 Abderrazak Ramadane, Laval Stefan Friedl, Brandeis Marie-Odette St-Hilaire, Montréal Denis G. Gaydashev, UT Austin Matthieu Voorons, Sherbrooke Amy Glen, Adelaide Dong Wang, Brandeis Başak Gürel, UC Santa Cruz Igor Wigman, Tel Aviv Alexander J. Hariton, Montréal Xiangjin Xu, Johns Hopkins Jíři Hrivnak, TU Prague Zhenbin Yan, McMaster Mohammad Jafari Jozani, Shahid Beheshti Benjamin Young, UBC Nathan Conrad Jones, UCLA Ismet Yurdusen, ODTÜ Seung-Yeop Lee, Chicago
Visitors
Each year the CRM hosts a large number of visitors. e majority come to the Centre to participate in scientific activities organized or co-organized by the CRM. Most of these activities take place at the CRM itself or on the campus of the Université de Montréal. In the year 2008 – 2009, 626 such participants registered in the thematic program workshops, 775 in activities of the general program (to which one must add 312 registered participants for the 2nd Canadian Discrete and Algorithmic Mathematics Conference), and 264 in activities of the industrial and multidisciplinary program.
Long-term Visitors Jie Shen, Purdue Libor Snobl, TU Prague e following list includes only the visitors who were Agnieszka Tereszkiewicz, Białystok in residence for at least four weeks. Marc iriet, INRIA Rocquencourt Yuri Bilu, Bordeaux 1 Zora omova, SUNYIT Paul Biran, Tel Aviv Alexander Turbiner, UNAM Pavel M. Bleher,IUPUI Nicolae Vulpe, Inst. de Matematică şi Informatică Alexei Borodin, Caltech Yuan Yuan, Memorial Walter Craig, McMaster Eduardo Santillan Zeron, Cinvestav Noureddine Daili, Ferhat Abbas Yuanli Zhang, independent researcher Vladimir Dorodnitsyn, Keldysh Inst. Alexei Zhedanov, Donetsk IPE Amine El Gradei, Artois Jean-Paul Zolésio, INRIA Sophia Antipolis Isidore Fleiser, independent researcher Alexandre Girouard, Neuchâtel Short-term Visitors Ilya Gruzberg, Chicago e following visitors were in residence for less than Artemiy Kiselev, Montréal four weeks. Gregory Lawler, Chicago Omer Angel, UBC Decio Levi, Roma Tre Joan Carles Artés, Alabama at Birmingham Liety, Karl,IUPUI Jinho Baik, Michigan Nicolai Makarov, Caltech Márton Balázs, BUTE Kenneth McLaughlin, Arizona Estelle Basor, AIM Stéphane Nonnenmaer, CEA/Saclay Liliane Beaulieu, Vieux-Montréal Petr Novotny, TU Prague Vasile Brînzanescu, Inst. Simion Stoilow Alexander Orlov, Shirshov Inst.
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John Cardy, Oxford Maryna Nesterenko, Mathematics, UAS Goce Chadzitaskos, Doppler Inst. Charles M. Newman, Courant Inst. Robert Coquereaux, CPT Jason Newport, UNC-Chapel Hill Hubert de Guise, Lakehead Anatol Odzijewicz, Białystok Luc Devroye, McGill Andrei Okounkov, Princeton Benjamin Doyon, Durham Severin Posta, TU Prague Bertrand Eynard, CEA/Saclay Jeremy astel, Toronto Pablo Augusto Ferrari, Buenos Aires Robert Roussarie, Bourgogne Georges Griso, UPMC Timo Seppäläinen, Wisconsin – Madison Nicola Guglielmi, Aquila Jan Philip Solovej, Copenhagen Alexander E. Holroyd, UBC Herbert Spohn, TU München Alexander R. Its,IUPUI Răzvan Teodorescu, Los Alamos Antal Járai, Bath Bálint Tóth, BUTE Konstantin Khanin, Toronto Craig A. Tracy, UC Davis Karol Kozlowski, ÉNS Lyon Sébastien Tremblay, UQTR Vladislav Kravenko, Cinvestav Alexander Turbiner, UNAM Pierre Lafaye de Mieaux, Pierre Mendès France Wendelin Werner, Paris-Sud 11 Jacques Laskar, Observatoire de Paris Nicolas Wier, Strasbourg Joel L. Lebowitz, Rutgers Paul Wiegmann, Chicago Xiaodan Leng-Shatford, Pasadena City Sergey Yakovenko, Weizmann Inst. Jean-Miel Maillet, ÉNS Lyon Jakob Yngvason, Wien James Martin, Oxford Anton Zabrodin, ITEP Barry McCoy, Stony Brook Valentin Zagrebnov, CPT Robert V. Moody, Alberta Hongmei Zhu, York
96 List of Students Having Graduated in 2008 – 2009 C
CRM members supervise a large number of graduate students. In this section we give information T on the students supervised by CRM members who graduated in 2008–2009 (note that this information might not be exhaustive). e name of the student is followed by the name of his or her supervisor (or names of his or her supervisors), his or her institution, and his or her program.
Ph.D. Students
Zaky Adam Clément Hyvrier David Sankoff Lalonde, François University of Oawa Université de Montréal Mathematics Mathematics (pure mathematics option) Gabriel Chênevert Majid Jaberi Douraki Eyal Z. Goren Javad Mashreghi & omas J. Ransford McGill University Université Laval Mathematics Mathematics Mathieu Dehaes Amel Kaoue Frédéric Lesage & Michel Delfour Christophe Reutenauer & Gilbert Labelle École Polytechnique de Montréal Université du ébec à Montréal Biomedical Engineering Mathematics Abdoulaye Baniré Diallo Yulia Kloko Mathieu Blanchee & Vladimir Makarenkov Marco Bertola Université du ébec à Montréal Concordia University Computer Science Mathematics Tamara Diaz Chang Evgenij Kritevski Véronique Hussin & Syed Twareque Ali Vojkan Jakšić & Dmitry Jakobson Université de Montréal McGill University Mathematics (pure mathematics option) Mathematics Martin Duarme Annie Lacasse Gilbert Labelle & Pierre Leroux Srečko Brlek & Gilbert Labelle Université du ébec à Montréal Université du ébec à Montréal Mathematics Mathematics Remy Magloire Dieudonné Etoua Hugo Laroelle Christiane Rousseau Yoshua Bengio Université de Montréal Université de Montréal Mathematics (applied mathematics option) Computer Science Catherine Foley Sylvain Lavallée Michael C. Mackey Christophe Reutenauer McGill University Université du ébec à Montréal Mathematics Mathematics Mélisande Fortin-Boisvert n Li Niky Kamran Pengfei Guan McGill University McGill University Mathematics Mathematics Sébastien Gambs Baisen Liu Gilles Brassard & Esma Aïmeur Alain C. Vandal Université de Montréal McGill University Computer Science Statistics Sardouana Hamadou Florence Laure Magnifo Kahou John Mullins & Srečko Brlek Ivo G. Rosenberg École Polytechnique de Montréal Université de Montréal Computer Science Mathematics (pure mathematics option)
98 L S H G 2008 – 2009
Ian Marquette Innocent Tamptsé Pavel Winternitz Paul M. Gauthier Université de Montréal Université de Montréal Physics Mathematics (pure mathematics option) Éric Olivier Paquette Dennis e Michel Boyer & Gilles Brassard Niky Kamran Université de Montréal McGill University Computer Science Mathematics Geneviève Paquin Sidney Trudeau Christophe Reutenauer & Srečko Brlek Ivo Klemes Université du ébec à Montréal McGill University Mathematics Mathematics Juan Manuel Perez-Abarca Eugen Ursu Donald A. Dawson Pierre Duchesne & Louis G. Doray McGill University Université de Montréal Mathematics Statistics Xavier Provençal Carlos Vinuesa del Río Srečko Brlek Javier Cilleruelo & Andrew Granville Université du ébec à Montréal Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Mathematics Mathematics William Saer Liam Watson Peter Bartello Steven Boyer & André Joyal McGill University Université du ébec à Montréal Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Mathematics Ivo Shahab Shahabi Dmitrij Zelo Henri Darmon Damien Roy McGill University University of Oawa Mathematics Mathematics Alexandru Stanculescu Chunfang Zheng Michael Makkai & André Joyal David Sankoff McGill University University of Oawa Mathematics Mathematics
M.Sc. Students
Adil Abkari Louis Beaudet Bruno Rémillard Claude Levesque HEC Montréal Université Laval Finance Mathematics Isabelle Ascah-Coallier Simon Belzile Abraham Broer René Ferland & Steven Shin-Yi Lu Université de Montréal Université du ébec à Montréal Mathematics (pure mathematics option) Mathematics Maciej Augustyniak Nicolas Brieu Louis G. Doray Frédéric Lesage Université de Montréal École Polytechnique de Montréal Statistics Biomedical Engineering Jitendra Bajpai Aurélie Brugallé Daniel T. Wise Frédéric Lesage McGill University École Polytechnique de Montréal Mathematics Biomedical Engineering
99 C
Bernard Caron Ararat Hurutyunyan Louis-Paul Rivest Dmitry Jakobson Université Laval McGill University Statistics Mathematics Raphaël Clouâtre Maiko Ishii Paul M. Gauthier Syed Twareque Ali Université de Montréal Concordia University Mathematics (pure mathematics option) Mathematics Marc Conti Walid Jbili Robert G. Owens ierry Duchesne Université de Montréal Université Laval Mathematics Statistics Kevin Davis Marilyse Julien Michael C. Mackey Russell Steele McGill University McGill University Mathematics Statistics Jean-François Delorme Sébastien Kerkhoff Frédéric Lesage Ivo G. Rosenberg École Polytechnique de Montréal Université de Montréal Electrical Engineering Mathematics (pure mathematics option) Élie Elkhal Timothy Kusalik Nicolas Papageorgiou & Bruno Rémillard Michael Makkai HEC Montréal McGill University Finance (financial engineering option) Mathematics Sylvain Éon Sébastien Labbé Yvan Saint-Aubin Srečko Brlek Université de Montréal Université du ébec à Montréal Mathematics (applied mathematics option) Mathematics Sara Froehli Philippe Lahaie Niky Kamran Sabin Lessard McGill University Université de Montréal Mathematics Mathematics (applied mathematics option) Louis Gagnon David Lasalle Ialongo Frédéric Lesage Sabin Lessard École Polytechnique de Montréal Université de Montréal Biomedical Engineering Mathematics (applied mathematics option) Olga Gordynska Pierre-Luc Lavertu Aurélie Labbe Pierre Mathieu Université Laval Université Laval Statistics Physics Arthur Goussanou Alexandra Lemus Rodriguez Louis-Paul Rivest Richard L. Hall Université Laval Concordia University Statistics Mathematics Mark Hagen Annie Letarte Dmitry Jakobson François Bergeron & Gilbert Labelle McGill University Université du ébec à Montréal Mathematics Mathematics Seyed Ahmad Hosseini Lavasani Jun Li Chantal David Yogendra P. Chaubey Concordia University Concordia University Mathematics Statistics
100 L S H G 2008 – 2009
Marie Luneau Maggy Pouliot Frédéric Lesage omas J. Ransford & Jérémie Rostand École Polytechnique de Montréal Université Laval Biomedical Engineering Mathematics Mostafa Mae Nicolas Pradier omas J. Ransford Frédéric Lesage Université Laval École Polytechnique de Montréal Mathematics Biomedical Engineering Davood Malekzadeh Ronan elever Frédéric Gourdeau & omas J. Ransford Frédéric Lesage Université Laval École Polytechnique de Montréal Mathematics Biomedical Engineering Nancy Manzerolle James Requeima ierry Duchesne Daniel T. Wise Université Laval McGill University Statistics Mathematics Hugues Massé Adolfo Rodriguez Fabrice Larribe François Bergeron & Pierre Leroux Université du ébec à Montréal Université du ébec à Montréal Mathematics (statistics concentration) Mathematics Merlin Mbuembue Njoya Salim Sader Louis-Paul Rivest Véronique Hussin Université Laval Université de Montréal Statistics Physics Matt McCamus Élodie Samson Christian Léger ierry Duchesne Université de Montréal Université Laval Statistics Statistics Steven Miscione Alexandre St-Pierre Jacques Hurtubise Octav Cornea McGill University Université de Montréal Mathematics Mathematics (pure mathematics option) Francis Moreau Kim Oanh Tang Jíři Patera & Hugues Demers Louis G. Doray Université de Montréal Université de Montréal Mathematics (applied mathematics option) Mathematics (actuarial science option) Isabel Moreau Patrice Tremblay Aurélie Labbe Jérémie Rostand Université Laval Université Laval Statistics Mathematics Dario Morrone Yannic Vargas Lozada Masoud Asgharian François Bergeron & Christophe Hohlweg McGill University Université du ébec à Montréal Statistics Mathematics Jérôme Paré Luc Villandré François Bergeron Sabin Lessard Université du ébec à Montréal Université de Montréal Mathematics Statistics Mathieu Poissant Bocar Amadou Wane Jean-François Angers & Alain Desgagné Robert Guénee Université de Montréal Université Laval Statistics Mathematics
101 C
Alisha Wissanji Xiangwen Zhang Véronique Hussin Pengfei Guan Université de Montréal McGill University Physics Mathematics Shu Zhang Foued Zitouni Wei Sun Richard Fournier Concordia University Université de Montréal Mathematics Mathematics (pure mathematics option)
102 Governance and Scientific Guidance C
2008 – 2009 the structure of the CRM was modified in order to enhance the role of the CRM institu- I tional partners (i.e., universities) in the governance of the centre. e CRM structure consists of a Board of Directors, an Assembly of Members, an International Scientific Advisory Commiee, a Local Scientific Commiee, an Executive Commiee, and a Commiee of Directors of Laboratories. In 2008 – 2009, the members of the Local Scientific Commiee were Andrew Granville (Université de Montréal), Jacques Hur- tubise (McGill University), and Dmitry Jakobson (McGill University). e Executive Commiee consists of the CRM Director and the Deputy Directors. For more information, the reader may consult the web site http://crm.math.ca/apropos/CRM_structure_an.shtml.
Board of Directors e Board of Directors is composed of: • e Director (ex officio); • e Vice-Principal, Research, of each of the main • A member of the Executive Commiee nominated partner universities of CRM, or his representative; by the Board for a two-year mandate; • A Vice-Principal, Research, of one of the other • Two regular members nominated by the Assem- partner universities of CRM, chosen by these uni- bly for a three-year mandate, which may be renewed versities on a rotating basis for a two-year mandate. once; • A Laboratory director, nominated by the Commit- tee of Directors of Laboratories for a two-year man- date, which may be renewed once; Here are the members of the Board of Directors for 2008 – 2009. Syed Twareque Ali Véronique Hussin Concordia University Université de Montréal Yoshua Bengio Niky Kamran Université de Montréal McGill University Guy Berthiaume, Vice-Rector (Research) Javad Mashreghi Université du ébec à Montréal Université Laval Louise Dandurand, Vice-President (Research) Christiane Rousseau Concordia University Université de Montréal Miel Delfour Denis érien, Vice-Principal (Research) Université de Montréal McGill University Joseph Hubert, Vice-Rector (Research) Université de Montréal Chantal David (Concordia University), Andrew Granville (Université de Montréal), and Odile Marcotte (Université du ébec à Montréal), all Deputy Directors of CRM, were invited members.
International Scientific Advisory Commiee
e International Scientific Advisory Commiee consists of distinguished researchers from Canada and abroad. Its members are either mathematicians or scientists with close ties to the mathematical sciences. e Advisory Commiee is kept informed regularly of the activities of the Centre through the Director. e Commiee makes recommendations about the general scientific orientations of the CRM and gives advice about proposed scientific activities. James Berger is the Arts and Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell University in Sciences Professor of Statis- 1974 and is a past recipient of the Guggenheim and tics at the Institute of Statis- Sloan Fellowships. He was elected to the National tics and Decision Sciences of Academy of Sciences in 2003. His research has Duke University and Director primarily been in Bayesian statistics, foundations of the Statistical and Applied of statistics, statistical decision theory, simulation, Mathematical Sciences Insti- model selection, and various interdisciplinary areas tute (SAMSI). He received a of science and industry. He has supervised 30 Ph.D.
104 G S G dissertations, published over 140 articles, and writ- sity in 1991, is a member of the Applied Mathemat- ten or edited 13 books or special volumes. ics Laboratory, and was CRM Interim Director from June to August 2008. e main research area of Anne Jerry Bona is a Professor at Bourlioux is the numerical modelling of turbulent the Department of Mathemat- combustion, and its application to the prediction of ics, Statistics and Computer Sci- NOx formation in internal combustion engines. ence at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received a B.Sc. Mark Goresky has been a degree from Washington Uni- member of the Institute for versity in St. Louis (1966) and Advanced Study in Princeton a Ph.D. from Harvard University since 1994. He received his (1971). His research experience is vast. His research B.Sc. from the University of interests include fluid mechanics, partial differential British Columbia in 1971 and equations, computational mathematics and the as- a Ph.D. from Brown Univer- sociated numerical analysis, oceanography, coastal sity in 1976. In 1986, he was engineering, and mathematical economics. He is an elected to the Royal Society Elected Fellow of the American Association for the of Canada. He was awarded Advancement of Science and a member of the edito- the Jeffery-Williams Prize of the Canadian Mathe- rial boards of twenty-five scientific journals and of matical Society in 1996 and the Steele Prize of the several academic commiees and panels. Jerry Bona American Mathematical Society in 2002 (jointly with is a co-organizer of the Mathematicians and Educa- R. MacPherson). He was a member of the editorial tional Reform Network. board of the Canadian Journal of Mathematics from 1997 to 2000 and is currently a member of the edi- Jean-Pierre Bourguignon received torial board of the Bulletin of the American Mathe- an engineering degree from the matical Society. He is a world expert in geometric École Polytechnique and a Ph.D. representation theory. in mathematics. A differential ge- ometer by training, he has also Alice Guionnet is direc- worked on the mathematical as- trice de reere at the pects of physical theories: Dirac op- CNRS and teaches at the erators and spins, general relativity. École normale supérieure His areas of specialty are the geometrical estimation de Lyon. She received of eigenvalues of Laplace – Beltrami operators, Käh- a Ph.D. from Université lerian geometry, and, more recently, Finslerian ge- Paris-Sud 11 in 1995. In ometry. Jean-Pierre Bourguignon is a research leader 1999 she was awarded the at the highest echelon of the Centre national de la Oberwolfach Prize (for a young European mathe- recherche scientifique (CNRS). He is currently the matician under 35 years old) and in 2009 she received Director of the Institut des Hautes Études Scienti- the Loève Prize in Probability. She was an invited fiques at Bures-sur-Yvee and Professor of Mathe- speaker at ICIAM 2003 and ICM 2006. She is a mem- matics at the École Polytechnique. From 1990 to ber of the editorial board of Stoastic Processes and 1992, he served as President of the Société mathé- their Applications and editor-in-chief of the Annales matique de France, and from 1995 to 1998, as Pres- de l’Institut Henri Poincaré. Her research interests fo- ident of the European Mathematical Society. He is cus mainly on probability theory in relation to math- a member of several scientific advisory commiees ematical physics. in Europe. He has been a member of Academia Eu- ropaea since 1996 and a foreign associate of the Real Anthony To-Ming Lau is a Pro- Academia Española since 2002. fessor in the Department of Mathematics of the University Anne Bourlioux is a of Alberta and President of the Professor in the De- Canadian Mathematical Society. partment of Mathemat- He holds an undergraduate de- ics and Statistics of the gree from the University of Cal- Université de Montréal. ifornia, Berkeley and a Ph.D. She obtained her Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of British from Princeton Univer- Columbia. His research is in functional analysis and
105 C harmonic analysis. He is a member of the edito- Prize by the Canadian Mathematical Society. Her re- rial board of Scientiae Mathematicae Japonicae, the search interests are in nonlinear partial differential Journal of Nonlinear and Convex Analysis, and Fixed equations arising in physics: nonlinear partial dif- Point eory and Applications. He was awarded many ferential equations, nonlinear Schrödinger equations prizes and honours, among which the Killam Annual and related systems, the water wave problem, the Professorship and the Rutherford Award for Excel- Boltzmann equation, and computational fluid me- lence in Undergraduate Teaching. chanics. Since 2000, she has been an Associate Ed- Christiane Rousseau is a Profes- itor of the SIAM Journal of Mathematical Analysis. sor in the Department of Mathe- From 1999 to 2005, she was an Associate Editor of matics and Statistics of the Uni- the Canadian Journal of Mathematics. versité de Montréal. She is a Mary F. Wheeler holds the Ernest regular member of the Mathe- and Virginia Cockrell Chair in En- matical Analysis Laboratory and gineering at the University of Texas was CRM Interim Director from at Austin where she is also Profes- September 2008 to May 2009. She sor at the Department of Mathe- obtained her Ph.D. from the Université de Montréal matics. In addition, she is Director in 1977 and her research is in dynamical systems. of the Center for Subsurface Model- Professor Rousseau was President of the Canadian ing of the Texas Institute for Com- Mathematical Society from 2002 to 2004, was the co- putational and Applied Mathematics (TICAM) at the ordinator of the Métro 2000 campaign during the same university. She obtained her Ph.D. from Rice World Mathematical Year 2000, and organized the University. She is currently an editor of six jour- Canadian participation in the Premier congrès de nals and is Managing Editor of Computational Geo- mathématiques Canada-France in Toulouse in 2004. sciences. In 1998, she was elected to the National With her colleague Yvan Saint-Aubin, she wrote a Academy of Engineering. Her research interests in- textbook entitled Mathematics and Tenology that clude parallel computation and numerical solution of won two prizes (the Prize for the best textbook, partial differential systems with applications to the awarded by the Université de Montréal, and the modelling of subsurface and surface flows. Adrien-Pouliot Prize of the Association Mathéma- tique du ébec). Professor Rousseau was awarded Jean-Christophe Yoccoz is the 2009 Graham Wright Award for Distinguished Professor at the Collège Service by the Canadian Mathematical Society. de France where he holds Catherine Sulem is a Professor a Chair in Mathematics in the Department of Mathemat- (Differential Equations and ics of the University of Toronto. Dynamical Systems). He She received a doctorat d’État obtained a doctorat d’État from the Université Paris 13 in in 1985. He was awarded 1983. She was Keynote Speaker the Fields medal in 1994 and is a member of the at IMACS2003 (International As- Académie des sciences (France), a chevalier de la Lé- sociation for Mathematics and gion d’honneur (1995), and an Officer of the Ordre Computers in Simulation) and an invited speaker at national du Mérite (2000). His research work con- a meeting of the American Mathematical Society in cerns the theory of dynamical systems and the Julia 1999. In 1998, she was awarded the Krieger-Nelson and Mandelbrot sets. Joseph Hubert, Vice-Rector (Research), Université de Montréal, is an ex-officio member of the Advisory Commiee. Chantal David (Concordia University), Andrew Granville (Université de Montréal), and Odile Marcotte (Université du ébec à Montréal), all Deputy Directors of CRM, are invited members of the Com- miee.
106 CRM Administrative and Support Staff C
The Director’s Office
Anne Bourlioux Chantal David Interim Director Deputy Director, Publications and Le Bulletin du (June 1st, 2008 until August 31, 2008) CRM
Christiane Rousseau Andrew Granville Interim Director Deputy Director, CRM Prizes (September 22, 2008 until May 31, 2009) Odile Marcotte Deputy Director, Annual Report and Coordination with Related Fields
Administration
Vincent Masciotra Guillermo Martinez-Zalce Head of Administration Research Laboratories Administrative Coordinator
Muriel Pasqualetti Diane Brulé-De Filippis Administrative Assistant Assistant
Scientific Activities
Louis Pelletier Sakina Benhima Coordinator Project Manager
Josée Laferrière Louise Letendre Assistant Assistant
Computer Services
Daniel Ouimet André Montpetit Systems Administrator Office Systems Manager (half-time)
Publications
André Montpetit Louise Letendre TEX Expert (half-time) Technician
Communications
Suzette Paradis Communications Officer and Webmaster
108 Statement of Revenue and Expenditures for the Fiscal Year Ending on May 31, 2009 C ) 500 500 015 464 295 295 508 299 000 000 800 000 399 000 959 000 047 000 718 000
7 9
79 12 17 38 22 30 66 90 32 88
149 144 260 100 150 102 315 805
3 1
TOTAL
Continued on next page ( ------
006 959 047
32
135 102
Other Sources
------
500 500 015 464 295 508 299 581
7
79 12 17 22
149 144 432
Partners &
Researchers ------
718 718
88 88
From Funds
Endowment ------
000 000 800 000 800 000 000
9
30 66 90
445 100 150
Partner
Universities ------
295 295 000
28
343 315
Université
de Montréal ------
000 000 000
10
615 605
FQRNT
------
000 000
200 200
1 1
NSERC
Matching fund for postdoctoral fellowships ISM contribution for joint postdoctoral fellowships Other contributions (Conferences and workshops) Other contributions (Conferences Contributions of ISM and GERAD (Colloquia series) Ministère du Développement économique, Innovation et Exportation (Québec) Ministère Other grants MITACS contributions MITACS National Science Foundation (USA) grants Université de Sherbrooke grant Université de Sherbrooke University of Ottawa grant REVENUE Université Laval grant McGill University grant TOTAL REVENUE TOTAL Concordia University grant Concordia Publications' revenue Université du Québec à Montréal grant Registrations Université de Montréal grant Revenue from Aisenstadt and Bissonnette endowments Revenue from Operating and infrastructure grants Operating and infrastructure
110 S R E F Y E M 31, 2009 271) 838 487 487 433 109 000 534 076 135 446 581 433 284 750 500 496 957 823 418 932 126 047 500 999 589 655 000 000 792 004 361 979 420 420 988 084
5 5 8 5 6 8 4
17 74 93 98 76 30 17 17 21 14 89 58
(29
711 117
318 418 315 121 334 121 134 123 196 684 108 944 315 315 403
2
TOTAL
------
903) 155 155 497 497 813 040 077 077 200 088 288 266 281 312 729 277 644 277 018
6 6 7 7 2 2 2 2 4 1 6 1 9 9 (7
69 27
125 145 147
Other Sources
------
42 42 372) 372) 950) 153 153 385 749 000 295 330 624 539 620 713
7 2 9 (2 (2 (1
89 89 83 23 19 17
229 432
Partners & Partners
Researchers
------
311 690) 232 399 399 767 767 443 131 131 000 500 650 150 201 517 406 517
4 4 7 1 (7
24 10 19 49 39 80 39
112
From Funds
Endowment Endowment ------
064) 000 500 526 378 976 918 438 736 736 064 064
30 76 14 55 58 45 29 29 (29
135 386 416
Partner
Universities
------
265) 368) 810 207 405 743 805 000 954 881 295 634 254 128 298 651 644 254 644
1 6 2 7 1 (5
11 18 20 46 80 15 19 27 19
(52
169 323
Université Université
de Montréal de
------
294) 884) 685 685 368 368 990 652 298 042 500 494 986 847 500 000 347 159 919 935 095 905 061 905 083
7 7 4 4 7 8 (1
15 14 53 45 57 61 14 30 20 14 53 83
231 154 479 135 135 (105
FQRNT
------
(87) 979) 859 859 349 109 000 226 684 949 949 596 789 750 329 000 242 530 042 000 572 406 365 816 971 317 971 309 029
7 7 5 8 4 9 1 4
74 85 85 71 75 12 16 14 26 81 30 81 49 (62
118 223 310 121 386
1
NSERC
EXPENDITURES SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM - CENTRE evolution equations and semester: Dynamical systems Thematic schools and Workshops 2008 semester: winter-spring - Thematic Total mathematical physics in methods yearThematic on Probabilistic Chairs Aisenstadt researchers Visiting fellows Postdoctoral schools and Workshops year - Thematic 2008-2009 Total probability in perspectives and Challenges PIMS: Joint semester with thematic Chair Aisenstadt schools and Workshops 2009 semester: winter-spring - Thematic Total General program program multidisciplinary and Industrial students Postdoctoral fellows and SCIENTIFIC LABORATORIES PROGRAM - RESEARCH releases Course researchers Visiting travel and seminars Workshops, fellows Postdoctoral Students support technical and Administrative laboratories - Research Total expenses Other scientific projects research college Community releases Course posters and report Annual Bulletin, CRM Accromath, Institute Collaboration with Tata site visit Joint Math Institutes2009 / ICM2014 Open House /AMQ SMAC/AQJM 2009 Forum Education Mathematics Canadian expenses - Other scientific Total laboratories) research excluding (non-academic; Personnel management, International advisory Academic committee, networking costs computing Operating and EXPENDITURES TOTAL BALANCE 2008-2009 YEAR-END avalailableJune 1, 2008 on Amount payables and Change in receivables balance Year-end 2008-2009 available on May Amount 31, 2009
111 Mandate of the CRM M CRM
Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM) stitutes sponsor the Annual Meetings of the Math- T was created in 1969 by the Université de Mon- ematical Sciences Societies (CMS, SSC, CAIMS), the tréal through a special grant from the National Re- development of the mathematical sciences in the At- search Council of Canada (NRC). It became a Natural lantic provinces through AARMS, and other activ- Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) ities organized outside the three institutes. ey national research centre in 1984. It is currently also participate in the National Institute for Complex funded by NSERC, by the Government of ébec Data Structures jointly with the Canadian statistical through the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la community. nature et les technologies (FQRNT), by the Univer- is national mandate is complemented by, and sité de Montréal, as well as McGill University, Uni- indeed supported by, a long-standing vocation of versité du ébec à Montréal, Concordia University, promoting research in the mathematical sciences in University of Oawa, Université Laval, Université de ébec. For instance, Sherbrooke and by private donations. e mission of • the CRM supports research through its ten re- the CRM is to support research in mathematics and search laboratories spanning most of the important closely related disciplines and to provide leadership areas of the mathematical sciences, in the development of the mathematical sciences in • it supports, through partnership agreements, a Canada. group of local researchers chosen mainly from de- e CRM carries on its mission and national partments of mathematics and statistics, but also mandate in several ways: computer science, physics, economics, engineering, • it organizes each year a series of scientific events etc., on a specific theme (high-profile lectures, work- • it organizes series of regular seminars and lecture shops, summer schools, etc.), courses on different areas of the mathematical sci- • its general program and its multidisciplinary and ences, industrial program provide funding for conferences • it sponsors joint activities with the Institut des and special events at the CRM and across the coun- sciences mathématiques (ISM) including the weekly try, CRM – ISM colloquia, graduate courses offered by • each year it invites, through the Aisenstadt Chair, distinguished visitors, and a program of postdoctoral one or more distinguished mathematicians, to give fellowships, advanced courses as part of its thematic program, • it works actively at developing contacts with in- • it awards four prizes yearly: the CRM – Fields – dustry. Its joint activities with liaison and research PIMS Prize recognizing major contributions to math- centres (CIRANO, CRIM, and MITACS) and research ematics, the André-Aisenstadt Prize given for out- centres doing applied research (CIRRELT, GERAD, standing work carried out by a young Canadian INRS-EMT, and INSERM) led to the creation of in- mathematician, the CAP – CRM Prize for excep- dustrial networks. e most recent ones involved, tional achievement in theoretical and mathematical in 2004 – 2005, Bombardier Aerospace and the Brain physics, and the CRM – SSC Prize for exceptional Imaging Unit CRM – IUGM – INSERM. contributions to statistics in early career, e CRM fulfils its national mission by involv- • it publishes technical reports and about ten books ing the largest possible number of Canadian mathe- per year (and some of its collections are published maticians in its scientific programs, both as partici- jointly with the AMS and with Springer), pants and as organizers. It also supports many events • it has an extensive postdoctoral fellowship pro- taking place outside Montréal and the Province of gram, with more than thirty postdoctoral fellows on ébec. It is recognized worldwide as one of the ma- site, funded in partnership with other organizations jor institutes in the mathematical sciences. and researchers, e director of the CRM is assisted by two man- • it informs the community of its activities through agerial structures: the Board of Directors and the its newsleer, Le Bulletin du CRM, and its web site at International Scientific Advisory Commiee. e http://crm.math.ca/, Advisory Commiee is a group of internationally • it participates, with the other two Canadian insti- renowned mathematicians from Canada and abroad, tutes, in groundbreaking national initiatives, for in- who approve scientific programs and thematic years, stance the MITACS network (Mathematics of Infor- choose recipients of the André-Aisenstadt Prize, and mation Technology and Complex Systems). e in- suggest new scientific avenues to explore.
113