UBC Mathematics Department
http://www.math.ubc.ca
Mathematics is too big and too fundamental to be limited by the administrative boundaries a modern university's structure apparently entails. At UBC, mathematics is thriving in departments and research centres across campus--often with the direct involvement of researchers in the Mathematics Department itself. In this colloquium, three UBC faculty members involved in stimulating mathematical research across traditional boundaries describe the challenges and opportunities their organizations bring to the mathematical community at UBC and beyond.
Uri Ascher is Director of the Institute of Applied Mathematics, a
multi-disciplinary, inter-departmental, research-oriented centre fostering
various research and teaching activities in computational and applied
mathematics at UBC. The IAM currently has more than 40 faculty members and
about 40 graduate students.
More information: http://www.iam.ubc.ca.
Cindy Greenwood is the coordinator of "Crisis Points and Models for
Decision'', a Thematic Focus for the brand new Peter Wall Institute for
Advanced Studies at UBC. The organizing theme for this two-year,
international research concentration is a family of phenomena which
exhibit "critical" or "crisis" points, at which the character of some
process changes abruptly from one form to another, as some influence
changes gradually.
More information: http://www.pwias.ubc.ca/cpts.html.
Ed Perkins is a member of the Executive of the newly-formed Pacific
Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, a mathematical research institute drawing
together five major universities in western Canada. The stated purpose
of PIms is "to facilitate and promote all aspects of mathematics in
Alberta and British Columbia.''
More information: http://www.pims.math.ca.