Letter to Presidents of ICIAM members Nr. 1 : 2007_10_03
Todays topics:
- THANKS
- MY PRESIDENCY
- SUPPORT OF MEMBER SOCIETIES
- MEMBER SOCIETIES SUPPORTING ICIAM
- EXPANDING ICIAM
- ICIAM PRIZES
- E-MAIL SYSTEM
- ICIAM 2011
- BID ICIAM 2015
- BOARD MEETING 2008
Dear President, dear Representative of a Member Society!
THANKS
On behalf of the ICIAM community and of course also on my behalf
I would like to thank our former President, Ian Sloan, for all he
has done for ICIAM; starting with the difficult job as chair of
the Scientific Program Committee for the excellent Sydney congress
but even more importantly for his dedication as president during
the last four years. He has been able to motivate many societies
to become members so that by now we count 31 member and associate
member societies. Thanks for introducing the system to financially
support about one to two conferences each year in developing countries. This has only been possible due to the generous gift the organiser of
ICIAM 2003 in Sydney, Noel Barton, gave us. In addition on several important moments where persons or one of our member society needed political support he sharpened his pencil to generously provide
this help. This was the case when women in mathematics needed support
or our colleagues in Australia and New Zealand, or when incorrect
things happened at the university of Uppsala.
I am looking forward to continue to work together with Ian Sloan,
now in he positon as Past President, in the next two years.
Secondly we need to thank Alain Damlamian for his devotion to the
job of secretary for eight years. This work has been extremely
important as he has been the first person in the new organisation
on this job. We needed his guidance not only in adhering to the
statutes but also in the creation and further development of our
statutes and regulations.
Let me welcome our two new officers, Alistair Fitt as new secretary
and Mario Primicerio as second member at large. I look forward to work
together with both of them. Ofcourse it is also nice to continue to collaborate with Barbara Keyfitz, treasurer, and Li Tatsien, member
at large.
Before moving on to the future of ICIAM I really need to give a
hearty thank to Ross Moore. He constantly works in the back ground
as the web master of our web page. He is the guru of modern
information technology. He had dedicated his sabbatical to create the program and abstract book for ICIAM07. Thanks to him ICIAM is at the forefront of using for IT solutions. This is needed as our congresses attracts more and more speakers, about 2800 in Zurich, and this means
one need modern technology to make decisions on which talk to attend.
MY PRESIDENCY
- SUPPORT OF MEMBER SOCIETIES
Now what lies in my presidency? First of all I would like to be
supportive for all our member societies. I am willing, if needed,
to write letters and visit your country or meeting to support
industrial and applied mathematics on a global level.
- MEMBER SOCIETIES SUPPORTING ICIAM
However, I need also your support. Hence if you have good ideas
and projects just let me know it.
- EXPANDING ICIAM
For our society, it is important to acknowledge the global presence
we have reached already, thanks to all former presidents. However we
have to continue on this path. In Africa we have no member so far and
in Latin America just one. Even on other continents there are still some white spots.
- ICIAM PRIZES
I will be working on lifting the level of funding of these prizes.
From the point of view of winners, the prizes have high prestige. However
the prize money is rather low. Another problem is that the prizes are
attached to the founding societies and the other societies do not get
any visibility. To change this is a difficult political process an I
am open to suggestions.
- E-MAIL SYSTEM
You may have noticed that delegates of ICIAM07 have received some
e-mail concerning events of member societies. As one of the tasks
of ICIAM is to support our member societies, I have decided to run
an e-mail service until the next board meeting in Vancouver. Our list
of e-mail addresses is NOT given to anybody, but we are willing
to send out e-mails for our members. However we shall do this only for important information, mostly of meetings, and for each member
society we shall restrict ourselves to 1 - 2 messages annually.
Even with this restriction this means sending out an e-mail
once a week. If you want to send such an e-mail contact my secretary
Dominique Ballarin, ballarin [at] math.ethz.ch (ballarin[at]math[dot]ethz[dot]ch). We shall discuss this
item at our board meeting.
- ICIAM 2011
I have a good feeling about the next Congress in Vancouver because
it is in the hand of very competent persons, Arvind Gupta, Jerry
Marsden and Ivar Ekeland and their co-workers. I am convinced that
this congress will surpass the one in Zurich and this is good!
- BID ICIAM 2015
Let me remind you that a preliminary bid for ICIAM 2015 has to be
made at the ICIAM board in Vancouver, 12 April, 9 am - 6 pm. The final
bid has to be in by 31 December 2008.
- BOARD MEETING 2008
The board meeting will be held in Vancouver, 12 April, 9 am - 6 pm.
Details will be given to you by the local organizers.
Clearly our support of conferences in developing countries will
continue. As we have now 20 years of ICIAM congresses, the frist
one was in 1987 in Paris I have invited the former presidents to
discuss the future. We shall meet in Zurich on Friday, 16 November.
On Sunday, 18 November and Monday 19 November we have a face to face meeting with the officers.
Let me close this long e-mail. I look forward to an exciting period
of co-operation with you all and the officers for an excellent cause.
Best Rolf Jeltsch
but I will continue to work on