Dear Presidents and Representatives of ICIAM member societies,
The world was heavily affected by COVID-19 in 2020. We are very happy to welcome the coming of a brand new year and hope that the epidemic of COVID-19 will be over soon.
Let me wish all of you, your families and your societies, the best for the New Year! As the president of ICIAM, I am sending you my wishes, which include the "standard" New Year's wishes (good health, happiness, and all kinds of success, etc.), and also include the wishes that in the new year our community of applied and industrial mathematicians and our member societies will play even greater roles in the social and economic development of the world. In particular, I hope that in the new year mathematicians and our member societies will make more and greater contributions in the fighting of COVID-19. The virus is the common enemy of the whole of mankind; joint and united efforts from all countries and regions are needed for the prevention, control and treatment of the disease.
Though 2020 was a difficult year, ICIAM has tried its best to keep business going on as usual. Some of ICIAM's activities in 2020 were affected by COVID-19, such as that all the three conferences that ICIAM had approved to support were cancelled, and the initially planned 2020 ICIAM board meeting to be held in Glasgow in May 2020 was first postponed and then was changed to an online meeting on September 26, 2020. At the online ICIAM 2020 board meeting we decided to set up a new ICIAM prize, the ICIAM Industry Prize, in order to recognize the contributions of mathematicians working in Industry. Thus, in the 2023 ICIAM Congress, six ICIAM prizes will be awarded. I will soon send emails to member societies asking for nominations of possible prize winners.
2021 is an important year for ICIAM, since we will elect the next president and decide the site of the ICIAM 2027 congress. All these, and more, will be done at the next ICIAM Board meeting which is tentatively scheduled to be held in Tokyo in October, 2021. I hope that by then the COVID-19 situation will be under control worldwide, and that I will meet many of you in Tokyo.
With my very best wishes for 2021,
Ya-xiang Yuan
ICIAM President
