Wil Schilders was elected President of ICIAM in September 2021. His term as ICIAM President-Elect started on October 1, 2021; will serve two years as President-Elect, before taking over as President on October 1, 2023.
Who is Wil Schilders? Currently, Wil is Full Professor and Chair of Scientific Computing in Industry in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Technical University Eindhoven. Wil earned his BSc and MSc at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and defended his PhD thesis in 1980 at Trinity College Dublin. He started at Philips CFT (Centre for Industrial Technology) as a researcher in the Mathematical Software Group. In 1991 he moved to Philips Research and became Senior Researcher in the Applied Mathematics Group. Later he worked there as Principal Researcher, IC Design. In 2006 this part of Philips became NXP Semiconductors. Wil was promoted to both Principal Senior, Systems and Circuits and Leader of the mathematics cluster within NXP. Wil started in 1999 as part-time professor at the Technical University Eindhoven. From 2010 he has held two jobs: Full Professor in Eindhoven and Executive Director of the Dutch Mathematics Platform (PWN).
Besides his regular jobs, Wil has been very active in various networks. In 2010-2011 he was ECMI President; then he was founder, board member, treasurer (2013-2015), and President (2016-2020) of EU-MATHS-IN (European Service Network of Mathematics for Industry and Innovation). He is a member of the following International Advisory Boards: Matheon/MATH+ Berlin (2015-), CeMEAI Brasil (2017-), IMI (Fukuoka) (2015-); Member of the Standing Committee SCEE (treasurer; 2018-). Furthermore, he was Officer-at-Large of ICIAM from 2019 until 2021. Wil has organized many international conferences and written numerous applied mathematics papers in renowned international journals.
His current research consists of two main topics: Model Order Reduction for linear, non-linear, coupled and parameterized systems; and combining scientific computing methods with machine learning/neural networks.
What are the plans of Wil, when he becomes President of ICIAM? Please find below his vision and some of his aspirations:
- He likes to stick to a rigorous time schedule for the officers and the board for the organization of the ICIAM Congress.
- He plans to produce a handbook with clear guidelines and timings to help the organizing committees to organize the ICIAM congress in a smooth and efficient way.
- ICIAM has built up relations with the ISC (International Science Council) and has become a member of ISC. For Wil it is essential that we retain good contacts with ISC and make use of their excellent network to also promote industrial and applied mathematics. This can also help to increase the contact with International Mathematical Union (IMU).
- Wil foresees a larger involvement of member societies in tasks defined during board meetings.
- Finally, he likes to stress the Industrial involvement of ICIAM and have more PR for mathematics in applications: "Maths Inside" and "Mathware".
