Table of contents A Word from the Director................................................................................................................2 CRM's 30th Anniversary ...................................................................................................................4 Presenting the CRM.........................................................................................................................6 Personnel..........................................................................................................................................7 Scientific Personnel..........................................................................................................................8 Members 8 Postdoctoral Fellows 9 Visitors 10 Management................................................................................................................................... 12 Bureau 12 Advisory Committee 12 Computer Facilities 13 Scientific Activities........................................................................................................................ 14 Theme Year 1999-2000: Mathematical Physics 14 Aisenstadt Chair 24 General Programme 27 CRM Prizes 34 Members’ Seminars & Special Events 37 CRM-ISM Colloquium 41 World Mathematical Year ............................................................................................................. 42 Coming Events ............................................................................................................................... 44 Theme Year 2000-2001: Mathematical Methods in Biology and Medicine 44 General Programme 2000-2001 48 Theme Year 2001-2002: Groups and Geometry 51 General Programme 2001-2002 55 Theme Year 2002-2003: Mathematical Methods of Computer Science 57 Research Programmes.................................................................................................................... 58 Collaborations ............................................................................................................................... 74 Industrial Mathematics................................................................................................................. 76 Awards, Distinctions, and Landmarks.......................................................................................... 79 Publications................................................................................................................................... 81 Recent Titles 81 Previous Titles 82 Research Reports 85 Financial Report ............................................................................................................................ 88 Financial statements Erreur ! Signet non défini. CRM Annual Report 1999-2000 1 A Word from the Director The years follow each other all too rapidly, and be reported on next year was the three week it seems like only yesterday that I was writing a short programme on asymptotic series, similar page for last year’s report. differential algebra and finiteness problems in non-linear dynamical systems, run by Dana It has been a busy year at the CRM. The centre of Schlomiuk and Luc Bélair. The activity had some our scientific programme for the year was our courses for students, new interactions between thematic programme in Mathematical Physics. mathematicians from different areas, and most The year began with a remarkable Summer importantly, time for that interaction to happen. School, held at the Banff Centre for Conferences. A final thing to make a director happy is that a The theme was “Theoretical Physics at the end of book will be coming out of the workshop, and the Twentieth Century”, and it covered a will be published in a CRM series. remarkably wide variety of interesting areas of theoretical physics, with a range of topics going Speaking of which, our publication section saw a from quantum field theory to quantum major change this year with the departure of computing and protein folding. The very Martin Goldstein as deputy director in charge of breadth of the coverage brought an additional publications. Martin saw the programme bonus, in that the lecturers could not assume develop almost from scratch and his diligence that everybody had intimate knowledge of the and careful encouragement of authors material being presented, allowing relative contributed greatly to its development. amateurs like myself to take in the remarkable Fortunately, Jean Letourneux has agreed to take panorama being presented. The summer school his place, and the programme continues to do also saw what I believe to be a first for a CRM well, with 6 monographs and conference activity, in that two of the participants got proceedings appearing last year. One married during the event. The happy couple noteworthy feature was the purchase by Panjab shared a cake with the participants, and took the University of 200 copies of our edition of rest of the day off. While the more prosaically Sarvadaman Chowla’s collected works for minded might say that this is linked to the distribution throughout India. My thanks also go atmosphere of Banff, I prefer to think that the to the other three deputy directors who helped marriage is mostly due to the extraordinarily me do the work: Jacques Bélair, Yoshua Bengio, stimulating effect of a CRM summer school. and Steven Boyer. With such a beginning, the rest of the year could On the industrial front, the Network for only go well, and indeed it did. My thanks are Computation and Mathematical Modelling due to the organisers of the year: Philippe Di (ncm2) to which the CRM belongs, launched a Francesco, Lisa Jeffrey, André LeClair, Yvan major call for proposals, to which the Saint-Aubin, and Luc Vinet. There were three membership has responded with enthusiasm. series of Aisenstadt lectures, by R. Jackiw, J. Twelve new projects are now being financed, Feldman, and D.H. Phong, as well as 14 and we are starting to see the true cross- workshops. The year closed with a remarkable disciplinary collaboration that is allowed by the two month concentration period on classical and network. One project that summarises much of quantum integrability, organised in a masterful the new interactions is one in “Nowcasting”, fashion by André Leclair. There were two talks which involves not only meteorologists but also per day, and a lot of work and discussion during experts in operations research and economists. the rest of the day, to a point where I have never The cross Canada MITACS network also seen such a “research buzz” at the CRM. finished its first year and a half of operation, and is progressing well, with the first annual general In our general programme, we hosted 4 meeting held in Toronto last May. The CRM is conferences, and contributed to 24 others, the host centre for this year's meeting in including 11 funded through the National Montréal. Programme which is run jointly through the three Canadian Mathematics Institutes. One One of the most striking features over the last particularly successful CRM activity which will year of all of these activities has been the arrival 2 Annual Report 1999-2000 CRM A w o r d f r o m t h e D i r e c t o r of new faces. Considerable changes are awaiting was hired after a postdoctoral fellowship during us over the next few years, as a significant a theme year at the CRM; not being one to do proportion of the Canadian mathematical things by halves, he will be publishing a book professorate retires and is replaced by new with the CRM next spring. I hope this will be faculty. In Montréal alone, the turnover will be repeated, and often. of the order of fifty percent. My own department has hired six new faculty members in the last two years. I am pleased to say that one of them Jacques Hurtubise CRM Annual Report 1999-2000 3 CRM's 30th Anniversary The beginnings coordinate graduate studies in mathematics and The first steps to establish a research centre in statistics and to facilitate student exchanges. mathematics at Université de Montréal were Since then, many research and training activities, undertaken in 1968. As was previously done in such as the funding of postdoctoral fellows, and many other countries, Canada was looking for a a weekly colloquium, are jointly organized by way to develop a research infrastructure that CRM and ISM. would allow researchers throughout Canada and the rest of the world to meet to create new New Initiatives mathematics. The visionary leadership of its Luc Vinet followed as director during a critical founders, a start-up grant from the National period when NSERC's programme funding Research Council (NRC), and the generosity of CRM and Fields Institute was to be cancelled. Université de Montréal led to the founding of Under his leadership, CRM not only survived, CRM, the first research centre in mathematics in but it grew considerably. Along with the other Canada. research centres in mathematical sciences of the CRM owes much of its success to the scientific Montréal area, CRM created the Network for and leadership qualities of its Directors. Maurice Computing and Mathematical Modelling (ncm2). L'Abbé was the first Director. The Salon where Also, CRM, Fields Institute, and PIms joined most of the CRM receptions take place is named forces to create the MITACS Network of Centres in his honour. Because of his numerous other of Excellence. All these initiatives offer responsibilities, he was soon followed by tremendous new possibilities for all researchers Jacques St-Pierre. Over the years, they were in the mathematical