Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics a National Science Foundation Math Institute ANNUAL at the University of California, Los Angeles FALL 2017

IPAM NEWSLETTERENABLES “COMPUTATIONAL FOLKLORIST” TO BECOME A LEADER AMONG HUMANISTS IN EMPLOYING QUANTITATIVE METHODS

Timothy Tangherlini had just completed “My first response was to say, ‘You clearly “These stories provided a fascinating a talk at UCLA on Old Norse mythology have the wrong person — you must window into the everyday lives of people when he was approached by Peter Jones, a be trying to reach a mathematician,’ ” in the 19th century, when the economic, mathematics professor at Yale and member Tangherlini recalls. But Green explained political, and technological environments of IPAM’s Science Advisory Board who why he and Jones thought the program happened to be in attendance because of would be productive for Tangherlini. his interest in the topic. “He told me he knew some people who might be able to “It was way out of my comfort zone, help me,” he recalls of the chance meeting, but I agreed,” Tangherlini says. “And which took place in 2006. that long program was probably the most transformative experience of my Tangherlini, a professor in UCLA’s academic career.” Scandinavian Section whose research focuses on Scandinavian folklore, thought The idea that advanced math and nothing of the encounter until he returned computational methods could be integrated to his office and received a call from Mark into his studies wasn’t new to Tangherlini. Green, then-director of IPAM, inviting He grew up interested in stories and him to attend an upcoming program storytelling, but also in computing and called Mathematics of Knowledge and artificial intelligence. After taking a college Tim Tangherlini Search Engines. course in Danish folklore, he was hooked. UCLA (continued on page 7) IPAM WELCOMES DIMA SHLYAKHTENKO AS DIRECTOR

Dimitri (Dima) Shlyakhtenko assumed the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2002. the directorship of IPAM on July 1, 2017. The UCLA department of mathematics Shlyakhtenko has been a member of presented him with the R. Sorgenfrey the faculty at the UCLA department of Distinguished Teaching Award in 2004. mathematics since 1998, and served as He gave an invited talk at the International the department chair from 2012 to 2015. Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad, His research is on operator algebras and India in 2010. includes free probability theory, random matrix theory, as well as von Neumann Outgoing director Russ Caflisch believes algebras and L2-invariants. He received IPAM is in very good hands. “Dima was a his PhD from University of California, superb chair of mathematics, and I am very Berkeley in 1997 at the age of 22. He was the confident IPAM will continue to flourish,” Russ Caflisch (left) and recipient of a Sloan Foundation Fellowship he said. n Dima Shlyakhtenko (right) in 2001 and a Special Project Award from

FEATURES REGULARS OTHER

Chemist Crosses Disciplines 2 Director’s Note 2 Upcoming Programs 6 IPAM Impacts Young Mathematician 3 News and Recognition 4 Call for Proposals 6 Latin@s in Math Conference 8 Frontiers Society 5 Mark Your Calendars 6 NOTE FROM DIRECTOR DIMA SHLYAKHTENKO

As the new director of IPAM, I am leverage and invest in our most important Director’s Fund. We are extremely grateful delighted to have this opportunity to asset – the IPAM community. We rely on it to to our many loyal supporters and friends introduce myself. Over my nearly 20 years propose visionary ideas for our workshops who helped us achieve our fundraising as a faculty member at UCLA, I have had and long programs, and on our scientific goals this year. many opportunities to attend talks at IPAM board to contribute its expertise in selecting and interact with IPAM visitors, as well as and refining these ideas. We rely on our I hope that you will continue to be part of organize a long program. I am thrilled at scientific visitors to contribute to IPAM’s the IPAM community. Participating in a the chance to contribute to IPAM’s long unique research atmosphere. And we count program or workshop, attending a public tradition of excellence as its Director. on our industry partners to inform us about lecture, joining our Frontiers Society, and real-life problems involving mathematics contributing to the Director’s Fund are just I would also like to take this opportunity and to pursue research projects. a few of the ways that you can contribute. n to thank Russ Caflisch, the former IPAM director, whose wise and energetic leadership IPAM’s strong ties with its community are over the last nine years has propelled IPAM to apparent through our recent successes in new heights. Russ is moving to his new role as fundraising. Through the generosity of the the Director of the Courant Institute. He will Schwinger Foundation, IPAM now has an be missed by all of his friends and colleagues endowment to support a series of workshops at UCLA. However, I am confident that he on multiscale physics. The first such will continue to be IPAM’s trusted advisor for workshop will be held this fall. Our ongoing many years to come. campaign to raise an endowment for the IPAM Director’s Fund has already yielded In the next few years, I would like to see over $196,000 including many private IPAM continue to thrive, focusing on its gifts and a $100,000 gift from AMD. In an core mission, which cannot be summarized exceptional show of support, the Dean of better than by its slogan: “Math Changes Physical Sciences is matching the Schwinger Dima Shlyakhtenko Everything!” To do so, we will continue to Foundation gift and all contributions to the IPAM Director

CHEMIST CROSSES DISCIPLINARY BOUNDARIES TO BRING MACHINE LEARNING, OTHER INNOVATIONS TO MATERIALS SCIENCE

adviser at Los Alamos National Lab suggested The interactions with math-minded that Henkelman attend an IPAM workshop colleagues at that meeting and the many on multiscale methods for materials, part of IPAM experiences that followed have the three-month program Bridging Time proved fruitful for Henkelman, whose field and Length Scales in Materials Science and of interest has increasingly incorporated Bio-Physics. mathematical challenges. Henkelman’s group focuses on computational methods “It was exactly the kind of meeting I love — for modeling reaction dynamics that are unlike the big national meetings, there was applied to developing new materials for only one thing happening at once, plenty of time for discussion, and with everyone energy applications, including catalysts and going to the same talks, you had common batteries. A fundamental challenge faced by experiences to talk about,” says Henkelman, Henkelman and his colleagues in these efforts who went on to join the University of Texas is one of modeling over experimentally Graeme Henkelman relevant time scales. Using molecular University of Texas at Austin at Austin faculty, where he is currently an associate professor. “But the main thing was dynamics simulations, for example, can at As a theoretical chemist and materials that you got to step back from your daily work, best achieve a time scale of a nanosecond — scientist, Graeme Henkelman had little where it’s all about the details, and interact too fleeting to have relevance for any question contact with mathematicians and computer with people from other fields in ways that can related to a battery, such as whether it will scientists before 2005, when his postdoctoral lead to new ideas and new directions.” charge in 30 minutes or an hour. (continued on next page) 2 • IPAM Newsletter Fall 2017 IPAM Newsletter Fall 2017 • 3

IPAM PROGRAMS IMPACT CAREER OF YOUNG APPLIED MATHEMATICIAN

Virginie Ehrlacher is a Researcher at École fact that IPAM encourages the speakers to freshly graduated student. The article we des Ponts ParisTech and INRIA. prepare their talks so that they are accessible wrote — “Analysis of Boundary Conditions to researchers belonging to different for Crystal Defect Atomistic Simulations” When my PhD advisors Eric Cancès and communities is in my opinion one of the (ARMA, 2016) — was a direct consequence Tony Lelièvre suggested that I attend the greatest strengths of these programs. of the collaboration we started at IPAM. 2012 long program on materials defects, excitement was my first reaction. As a PhD This first positive experience at IPAM was I am very much looking forward to student, spending three months at IPAM closely followed by a second one: Materials returning to IPAM this fall, five years after sounded like a great opportunity, and the for a Sustainable Energy Future, which took my first IPAM program. I am honored to link between the topic of the program and place a year later. Although I could only be part of the organizing committee of the my research on local defects in crystalline stay for three weeks this time, the talks workshop, Uncertainty Quantification for solids in quantum electronic structure and discussions were very enlightening, Stochastic Systems and Applications. n models was natural. particularly the ones related to solar cell technologies. What I learned at IPAM The workshops in the program focused helped me and my colleagues at CERMICS, on issues related to defects in matter at an applied mathematics lab, write a research different scales: quantum mechanics, grant to the IRDEP. A PhD student who was molecular dynamics, mesoscale and working on mathematical models for solar macroscopic models. The speakers were cells was partially funded by this contract. mathematicians, physicists or chemists, and the program helped me to realize how I had the chance to interact with a lot of enriching such a diverse audience can be. talented researchers during these programs. Even though the dialogue may be difficult In particular, I would like to warmly thank to start, interdisciplinary discussions often Christoph Ortner and Alexander Shapeev Virginie Ehrlacher lead to very interesting research topics. The for sharing their scientific interests with a École des Ponts ParisTech and INRIA

Innovations to Materials Science (continued from page 2) Catalysts present a similar problem. “For an experimentalist, a promising scientific results. “I had barely even heard of machine millisecond is quick, but that’s super slow for us,” Henkelman learning before that meeting, and now it comes up all the time,” says. “We have to take a totally different approach to modeling the Henkelman says. “It’s become an important tool in our toolbox.” dynamics that we care about on these experimental time scales, The growing interest in machine learning is also reflected in many and so it’s extremely useful to collaborate with mathematicians and important national meetings. While 10 years ago there were only a computer scientists to come up with algorithms that work with this few isolated talks describing machine learning techniques at major energy landscape and allow us to predict how materials will function.” meetings such as the annual meeting of the American Physical Society or Materials Research Society, there are now entire multi-day When Henkelman was starting his career in the early 2000s, the state- symposia with many sessions dedicated to these topics. of-the-art approach was to identify a new material or catalyst, then perform calculations and conduct experiments to better understand Henkelman got so much out of the 2011 long program at IPAM it. Now, thanks to advanced algorithms and high-speed computing, that he volunteered to be a key organizer and speaker for Materials Henkelman and his colleagues are approaching the problem inversely for a Sustainable Energy Future, held in 2013, and Complex High- — seeking to purposefully design new and better materials. “Every Dimensional Energy Landscapes, which takes place this fall. catalyst and every battery material that is currently in use was Henkelman sees an important role for IPAM. “The language in designed by trial and error, which is a very slow process,” Henkelman science is so specific,” Henkelman says. “As a chemist, if I want to talk says. “So there is now a great deal of excitement about the possibility to a biochemist it can be hard, so imagine if you’re trying to talk to a of using computers to design materials in a more rational way, in mathematician. IPAM bridges the gap by forcing people from these conjunction with the experimentalists.” different fields to rethink their work and describe it in a way that After going to several one-week workshops, Henkelman attended his other audiences will understand. As a result, you get these incredible first IPAM long program in 2011. The program, Navigating Chemical suggestions that you wouldn’t think about because the people you’re Compound Space, included discussions about the mathematical interacting with have such different perspectives. Every IPAM aspects of designing materials on computers. Henkelman was among experience I’ve had has resulted in some new idea or collaboration that the initiators of an effort to employ machine learning for materials I never would have predicted. And so much of the most exciting work science applications — a dramatically new direction that is yielding in science comes out of these cross-disciplinary collaborations.” n NEWS AND RECOGNITION

IPAM BOARD MEMBER of the SIAM journal on Multiscale Modeling of IPAM workshops on multiscale NANCY POTOK NAMED and Simulation. He is an organizer of the physics. Seth Putterman, President of CHIEF STATISTICIAN upcoming long program Complex High- the JSF and a professor of physics at Dimensional Energy Landscapes. UCLA, states that “Julian Schwinger IPAM Board of Trustees member Nancy was fascinated by multiscale issues, and Potok has been appointed chief statistician IPAM ORGANIZERS AND would have enthusiastically supported of the United States. Prior to this prestigious BOARD MEMBERS ELECTED these workshops. IPAM is the perfect appointment, Potok had more than 30 years TO NATIONAL ACADEMIES place for them, because of its history of of public, private, and nonprofit senior promoting the interaction of mathematics management experience. She was Deputy The following IPAM program organizers with physics and other disciplines.” IPAM Director and Chief Operating Officer and Board members have been recognized thanks Putterman and the Board of (COO) of the U.S. Census Bureau, COO in 2017 for their contributions to math, Directors of the Schwinger Foundation, of McManis & Monsalve Associates, and science and engineering. Daniel Spielman as well as Dean Miguel García-Garibay Senior VP and Director of the Economic, (Yale) is a new member of the National (Physical Sciences, UCLA) for their efforts Labor and Population Studies Department Academy of Sciences. The National in building this partnership. at the University of Chicago National Academy of Engineering recently elected Opinion Research Center. Her public Gerbrand Ceder (UC Berkeley), Jason Cong SKIP GARIBALDI NAMED service includes working in the Judicial, (UCLA), Stéphane Mallat (École Normale INCOMING DIRECTOR OF Legislative, and Executive Branches. Potok is Supérieure), Arkadi Nemirovski (Georgia CCR LA JOLLA an adjunct professor at George Washington Tech), and Harry Shum (Microsoft). Finally, University, where she earned her PhD in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences The Center for Communications Research Public Policy and Public Administration, inducted Richard Baraniuk (Rice), Young- (CCR) La Jolla has named Skip Garibaldi and a Fellow of the National Academy of Kee Kim (University of Chicago), and Robert as Incoming Director. Garibaldi was an Public Administration. She has been on Kohn (NYU). IPAM congratulates them. Associate Director at IPAM from 2013 to IPAM’s Board of Trustees since 2014. 2015, having taught at Emory University RUSSEL CAFLISCH APPOINTED as the Winship Distinguished Research COURANT DIRECTOR Professor and at various European institutions. In 2015, he became a Research Former IPAM Director Russ Caflisch has Staff Member at CCR La Jolla. He serves been appointed Director of the Courant on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New and is well known for his work on the York University. He returns to Courant after lottery, which received the Lester R. Ford a lengthy career at UCLA, where he was a Award and is the subject of a chapter in professor of mathematics since 1989 (with a the popular book Brain Trust. Millions joint appointment in Materials Science and of people have seen him talk about his Engineering) and Director of IPAM since work on 20/20, CNN, and Fox & Friends, 2008. He received his master’s and doctoral in addition to a public lecture hosted by degrees from Courant, and later joined IPAM in April 2014. the Courant faculty before moving to Nancy Potok Office of Management & Budget UCLA. He was an Alfred P. Sloan research fellow and an invited lecturer at the 2006 IPAM NAMES FIRST International Congress of Mathematicians, SIMONS PARTICIPANT and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, AMS, and SIAM. In 2016, IPAM was awarded a five-year grant from the Simons Foundation that SCHWINGER FOUNDATION created Simons Participants, designed to GIFTS IPAM $750,000 free senior participants from teaching and other departmental duties so that they can The Julian Schwinger Foundation for fully participate in an IPAM long program. Physics Research (JSF) has gifted IPAM IPAM is pleased to announce that Mitchell $750,000, which will be matched by Luskin will be the first Simons Participant. UCLA’s Division of Physical Sciences, Luskin, a professor of mathematics at the to form an endowment of $1,500,000. University of Minnesota, was an invited Funds generated by this endowment Skip Garibaldi speaker at the ICM in 2002 and is the editor will be used to support an annual series CCR La Jolla

4 • IPAM Newsletter Fall 2017 IPAM Newsletter Fall 2017 • 5

CONTINUED FRONTIERS SOCIETY MEMBERS 2016-17 TREVISAN, LIN JOIN IPAM'S series per year. The 2018 Green Family IPAM wishes to thank the following individuals Lecturers will be Fields Medalist Vaughan SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD who joined the Frontiers Society in the past Jones and Facebook’s AI expert Yann year, and all others who donated to IPAM: IPAM welcomes Luca Trevisan and LeCun (see “Mark Your Calendars”). Xihong Lin to the Science Advisory Mark Green is a co-founder and former CHAMPIONS ($1000+) Board. Trevisan is a professor of electrical director of IPAM. engineering and computer sciences and Tanya Beder and Joseph H. Bretton of mathematics at UC Berkeley and a JEANNETTE WING TO Mark L. and Kathryn Kert Green senior scientist at the Simons Institute for LEAD COLUMBIA’S DATA Alfred W. and Virginia D. Hales the Theory of Computing. His research SCIENCE INSTITUTE Sallie Keller and William Safron, Jr. is in theoretical computer science. Lin is Maria P. McGee a professor of biostatistics in Harvard’s IPAM Board of Trustees member Carol Meylan School of Public Health. Lin applies Jeannette Wing was recently appointed Marco and Maria Carmela Sammartino statistical and computational methods the Avanessians Director of Columbia’s to analyze high-throughput genetic Data Science Institute and Professor of Ronald J. and Sharon S. Stern and genomic data in epidemiological, Computer Science. Wing will lead the Sallie Seaver Walecka environmental and clinical studies. University’s research, scholarship, and Leland Wilkinson and Marilyn Vogel teaching in data science, which involves GREEN FAMILY MAKES more than 200 affiliated faculty members VISIONARIES ($500-$999) across Columbia’s campuses. She served SECOND GIFT TO Robert Baker LECTURESHIP ENDOWMENT as corporate vice president of Microsoft Research from 2013 to 2017. She has James C. and Diana K. Fraser Mark L. Green and Kathryn Kert Green been a member of IPAM’s Board of John B. and Dolores Garnett have made a generous $75,000 gift that Trustees since 2016. Valerie Hajdik will be matched by the Dean of Physical Michael J. Hathaway Sciences, to augment the existing Green John W. and Jody A. Jacobs Family Lectureship Endowment. “This Susana V. Salazar is a wonderful lecture series, and we could not be happier with how it has INNOVATORS ($100-$499) worked out,” Green says. Since 2012, the endowment has supported highly Allen and Joanie Clement distinguished lectures at IPAM, including Lillian L. Cook Walter Kohn, Wendelin Werner, Avi Robert A. DiStasio, Jr. and Laura Rutherford Wigderson, Andrew W. Lo, Ingrid Karina M. Edmonds Daubechies, and Edward Witten. This Jeannette Wing Tina Eliassi-Rad and Branden Fitelson gift will enable IPAM to host two lecture Columbia University Madison B. and Kristen L. Gray Eilish and Daniel Hathaway Daniel Karrell GIVE TO THE IPAM DIRECTOR’S Tye Lidman Tom and Lolita V. Nykiel ENDOWMENT FUND Nancy A. Potok As many of you know, the Dean of Physical Sciences will match all gifts and Tatiana Toro and Daniel Pollack multi-year pledges of at least $500 made to the IPAM Director’s Endowment Giang T. T. Tran Fund this year. A special thanks to all of you who have contributed Stephen Wright already. We have raised $196,500 towards this fund so far, including a $100,000 gift from AMD, arranged by IPAM Trustee Alan Lee, and many IPAM also received gifts from AMD, The Aerospace Corporation, Los Alamos National other commitments from our long-standing supporters who recognize the Lab, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Air important role of IPAM in the scientific community and value our innovative Force Research Lab, Google, GumGum, programs. It’s not too late! If you wish to be part of this campaign, please and Microsoft. Foundation support this year contact Sharon Chang at 310-206-6347 or at [email protected]. included Julian Schwinger Foundation, Simons Remember, gifts can be pledged over five years. Foundation, the LAPD Foundation, and the Berland Foundation. Finally, grants from To read about IPAM’s other fundraising priorities and the Frontiers the NSF Office of International Science and Society, and to make a contribution under $500 to IPAM, please go to Engineering and the Office of Naval Research ipam.ucla.edu/donate/. supported specific IPAM programs. CALL FOR PROPOSALS UPCOMING PROGRAMS LONG PROGRAMS IPAM seeks proposals from the LONG PROGRAMS mathematical, statistical, and scientific Complex High-Dimensional communities for long programs, winter Long Programs generally have Energy Landscapes workshops, summer programs, and two complementary streams: one September 11 - December 15, 2017 exploratory workshops. Proposals mathematical and one (or more) from are reviewed by IPAM’s Science other related scientific disciplines where Quantitative Linear Algebra Advisory Board (SAB) at its annual there is the potential for a fruitful and March 19 - June 15, 2018 meeting in November. To receive exciting interaction. Alternatively, this full consideration, please send your might be an interaction between two Science at Extreme Scales: Where Big program idea to the IPAM Director at disparate branches of mathematics. Data Meets Large-Scale Computing [email protected] by October 1. A long program opens with tutorials, September 12 - December 14, 2018 followed by three or four one-week WINTER WORKSHOPS workshops and a culminating workshop. Geometry and Learning from Data in The proposal should include a brief 3D and Beyond Winter workshops are typically five days description of the topic, names of March 11 - June 14, 2019 in length, with 20-25 presentations. The proposal should include a short individuals to serve on the organizing description of the mathematical and committee, and a preliminary list of WORKSHOPS scientific content, names of individuals faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and to serve on the organizing committee, representatives of industry and government Algorithmic Challenges in Protecting and names of individuals that you would you would like to invite. A long program Privacy for Biomedical Data like to invite as speakers or participants. proposal template is available online. January 10 - 12, 2018 The SAB will consider proposals for Proposals for academic year 2019-2020 winter 2019 at its upcoming meeting. will be reviewed at the next SAB meeting. New Methods for Zimmer’s Conjecture January 22 - 26, 2018 SUMMER SCHOOLS EXPLORATORY WORKSHOPS New Deep Learning Techniques Summer schools are one to three weeks Exploratory Workshops address urgent February 5 - 9, 2018 in length and incorporate both tutorials problems that mathematics may help (a series of 3-4 talks) and research solve. They are two or three days long, OTHER PROGRAMS talks illustrating applications. They are and can be organized in less than a year. directed toward graduate students and The proposal should follow the guidelines The Calculus of Comedy: Math in postdocs. The requirements for summer for winter workshops, above, and will be The Simpsons, Futurama, and The school proposals are comparable to those considered at any time. Big Bang Theory for winter workshops. October 25, 2017

Latin@s in the Mathematical Sciences Conference March 8 - 10, 2018 Mark Your Calendars

Research in Industrial Projects December 1, 2017. Edward Witten, Fields Medalist and professor of for Students mathematical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, will give his • Los Angeles, June 25 - August 24, 2018 second Green Family Lecture, rescheduled from last spring. • Hong Kong, June 11 - August 10, 2018 February 5, 2018. Yann LeCun, Director of Artificial Intelligence Research • Berlin, July 2 - August 24, 2018 at Facebook and NYU professor, will present two public lectures this week Computational Genomics as part of the 2018 Green Family Lecture Series. Summer Institute February 12, 2018. Application deadline for IPAM’s Research in Industrial July 16 - 20, 2018 Projects for Students (RIPS) Program in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and Berlin. Stay Connected April 30, 2018. This week, Fields Medalist and Vanderbilt mathematics professor Vaughan Jones will give the second set of Green Family Lectures.

More information will be available at www.ipam.ucla.edu.

6 • IPAM Newsletter FallFall 2017 2017 IPAM Newsletter Fall 2017 • 7 Computational Folklorist (continued from page 1) were changing rapidly,” Tangherlini says. particular technique, I could always find Tangherlini has forged productive people to explain it to me — and as I became collaborations from his IPAM interactions, As he delved further into the topic in graduate more confident, to collaborate with me.” including an ongoing partnership with a school in the early 1990s, Tangherlini began UCLA electrical engineering professor, to see a need for better statistical measures. Tangherlini has become a singular Vwani Roychowdhury, to explore at the “We had thousands of stories, and no way to presence at IPAM since the 2007 search internet scale the narrative frameworks remember them,” he says. For his doctoral engines program. He organized the highly that drive certain discussions. As an dissertation, Tangherlini introduced a successful digital humanities summer example, Tangherlini and Roychowdhury statistical approach to determining what school Networks and Network Analysis for have studied how vaccine skepticism and was “trending” in storytelling in late-19th- the Humanities (2010) and a follow-up hesitancy can be understood through social century Denmark. “Methodologically that conference (2011). He was also the lead media posts. was different,” he says. “But it was probably organizer of the Culture Analytics program too simple on the statistics side, and too in 2016, which brought a vibrant mix “Without IPAM, there is no way I would unusual on the folklore side, so there wasn’t of mathematicians, computer scientists, have met 150 leading data scientists in all a lot of uptake.” social scientists, humanists, and artists to sorts of different fields,” Tangherlini says. IPAM to explore new ways to collaborate “But more than just meeting them, IPAM Some 15 years later, when Tangherlini on questions of how cultures form and gives you a framework for working together. attended that first IPAM program, the change, and what aspects can be measured. I would never have met people who do landscape had changed. With advances AI at Facebook and other social media in computing, the idea of developing Along the way, Tangherlini has become companies, or are the leading scholars computational techniques for analyzing a leader among humanists in employing in machine learning, had it not been for folklore and other humanities subjects didn’t quantitative methods, often referring to IPAM. And I hope those individuals feel the seem so unusual, and Tangherlini found the himself as a computational folklorist. same way — that they are fortunate to have applied mathematicians, computer scientists “People use stories as a way of understanding gotten to know me as well as others like me, and statisticians he met through IPAM to be the environment around them, and as a way because it has helped them look at certain more than willing to work with him. “The of shaping that environment, and we want problems differently.”n humanities can be almost monastic in its to know what the relationships are between approach, where you might work 15 years people, their everyday environments, and creating a single-authored monograph,” the stories they tell,” Tangherlini says. “When Tangherlini says. “The culture at IPAM was you have tens of thousands of stories told by one of collaboration and experimentation, thousands of people from a particular time which I found quite liberating. As long and place, computational methods allow as I had an idea, and a question about a you to work at so many different scales.”

BOARD OF TRUSTEES SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD IPAM DIRECTORS

David Balaban, Amgen Alexei Borodin, MIT Dima Shlyakhtenko, Director Tanya Beder, SBCC Group Inc. Michael Brenner, Harvard Jorge Balbás, Associate Director Tony Chan, Hong Kong University Emery Brown, MIT Stanley Osher, Director of Special Projects of Science and Technology Robert Calderbank, Duke University Christian Ratsch, Associate Director Bill Coughran, Sequoia Capital Emmanuel Candès, Stanford University Susana Serna, RIPS Director Karina Edmonds, Google Cecilia Clemente, Rice University Mark Green, UCLA Cynthia Dwork, Harvard University Alfred Hales, CCR La Jolla Jordan Ellenberg, University of Wisconsin NEWSLETTER Sallie Keller, Virginia Tech University Peter W. Jones, Yale University Stacy Orozco, Editor/Designer Steven Koonin, New York University Michael Kearns, University of Pennsylvania Stacey Beggs, Virginie Ehrlacher and Alan Lee, AMD Yann LeCun, Facebook and NYU Dan Gordon, Contributors Monique Miller, Wilshire Funds Management David Levermore (Chair), Univ. of Maryland Nancy Potok, Office of Management & Budget Xihong Lin, Harvard University Ronald Stern (Chair), UC Irvine Assaf Naor, Princeton University Tatiana Toro, University of Washington Pablo Parrilo, MIT Leland Wilkinson, H2O.ai Terence Tao, UCLA Jeannette Wing, Columbia University Luca Trevisan, UC Berkeley Amie Wilkinson, University of Chicago Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics a National Science Foundation Math Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles

405 Hilgard Avenue Box 957121, 460 Portola Plaza Los Angeles, CA 90095 p: 310-825-4755 f: 310-825-4756 www.ipam.ucla.edu

LATIN@S IN THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES CONFERENCE

IPAM is proud to host the second Latin@s in the Mathematical Sciences Conference on March 8-10, 2018. The first one, held at UCLA in 2015, brought over 150 mathematicians and statisticians together to celebrate the contributions of Latino/as to mathematical research and laid the groundwork for a vibrant, active community. Tatiana Toro (University of Washington), Federico Ardila (UCSF), Mariel Vazquez (UC Davis), and Ricardo Cortez (Tulane University) will serve as organizers for the 2018 conference, with many others serving in other capacities. The planning is underway, including the selection of seven plenary speakers who represent some of the best Latino/a researchers in their fields. Sponsors of the conference include IPAM, UCLA, the Mathematical Sciences Institutes Diversity Initiative, and Facebook, with more to come.

Undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, faculty at all levels, math teachers, and professionals are invited to attend the conference. Students and recent PhDs may apply for travel support, due January 8, 2018, and to present their research. Please consult www.ipam.ucla.edu/lat2018 for more information. ¡Nos vemos en Los Angeles! n