Dear ICIAM colleagues and friends,
The New Year has begun, and on behalf of the officers I would like to wish you a very successful, happy and healthy 2025. As you may have seen on various websites, the number 2025 is a very special one from a mathematical point of view. First of all, many of us will not experience another year that is the square of an integer: 2025 = 45 x 45. The next one will be in 2116. Also, 2025 is the sum of the third powers of the numbers 1 up to 9, as well as the sum of all odd integers from 1 to 89. It is also a so-called Harshad number, meaning that it is divisible by the sum of its digits, and a triangular number: 2025 = 63 * (63 + 1)/2. It is always great to see that people are inspired to find such special properties of numbers. Of course, we hope that 2025 will also be a special year for mathematics in general. We are looking forward to a year with many new opportunities to work on our mission to promote industrial and applied mathematics.
Looking back at 2024, we see a lot of activity by our member societies. Many of them organise annual or biennial events, in some cases once every three years such as LACIAM in Latin America, the second conference will take place in January 2026 in Chile. New was the first African Conference on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ACIAM 2024) in Cape Town, where also the organisation ASIAM was launched officially. In December, KSIAM celebrated its 20th anniversary with a nice annual congress in Busan. ECMI will return to conferences in even years, which means that the next conference will be held in 2026, the previous ones were in 2021 and 2023 as a result of COVID-19. SIAM and CAIMS/SCMAI, two of our member societies, will have their third joint conference end of July 2025. It would be good if member societies inform us about the events they are organising, so that we can provide an up-to-date overview on our webpage. Our officers will also be more than happy to attend these events and represent ICIAM officially. And it would be great if representatives of ICIAM member societies would visit conferences organised by other ICIAM member societies, so as to learn from and get better acquainted with each other.
2024 was also the first year that the ICIAM Board meeting was held online. At the Board meeting in 2023, right after the ICIAM Congress in Tokyo, it was decided that there will be online Board meetings in even years, thereby reducing travel and travel costs, as well as enabling more societies to attend. Due to the many time zones associated with our member societies, these online meetings can only last for 1.5 hours at most, meaning that there is a lot of pressure on time, as well as on the topics that can be discussed. In fact, discussions are almost impossible, so important items need to be discussed in the face-to-face Board meetings in the odd years.
Nevertheless, some important decisions were taken in 2024. First of all, a change of the structure concerning the fees to be paid by member societies. Secondly, it was decided that an administrative assistant will be hired to relieve the tasks of the ICIAM Secretary. The additional funding will be used to carry out a number of new activities that we will discuss with member societies in the new year and also at the Board meeting that will be held in Hanoi on September 13, 2025.
An important change has taken place in the editorial board of our newsletter ‘’Dianoia’’, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Barbara Keyfitz for setting up this newsletter, and for all the work she performed. She has been the driving force behind this important communication channel for ICIAM. The name "Dianoia" is derived from the Greek term διανοια, used by Plato to denote a type of thinking, specifically about mathematical and technical subjects. It represents the capacity for, process of, or result of discursive thinking, contrasting with the immediate apprehension characteristic of noesis. ‘’Dianoia’’ was established in 2013, during Barbara’s presidency of ICIAM. Over the years, ‘’Dianoia’’ has served two primary purposes: (1) Conveying information about ICIAM's operations to its member societies; (2) Featuring articles impacting the industrial and applied mathematics community, including reports on the activities of member societies, prizes, achievements, and developments from the International Science Council. Referring to the latter, Barbara has also been an important member of the ICIAM ISC committee. So, let me thank Barbara for all her contributions to ICIAM, as a president, as a member of the ISC committee and as the initiator and editor of ‘’Dianoia’’. And let me wish the new editorial team, led by Jose Alberto Cuminato (also known as ‘’Poti’’) much success in shaping the newsletter! Please stimulate the members in your member societies to subscribe to ‘’Dianoia’’, so as to be kept up to date on activities in the area of industrial and applied mathematics.
2025 will also be an important year for our 2027 ICIAM Congress, to be held in The Hague (The Netherlands) from July 12-16. The organising committee is very busy with the preparations, furthermore the list of keynote speakers has been finalised by the Scientific Program Committee under the leadership of Barbara Wohlmuth and has been approved by the Board. Currently, keynote speakers are being invited, and as soon as they have committed, the list will be published on our website. Also the Prize Committee for the 6 ICIAM prizes has been constituted by now, and this will also be made known to the member societies soon. Currently, the individual prize committees are being formed, and soon a call for nominations will also be sent out by ICIAM. Member societies are invited to think about nominations for these important prizes.
The new year will also feature the election of a new president for ICIAM. We are preparing a call for nominations for the president-elect, and at the Board meeting in Hanoi, candidates will present themselves and the election will take place. We stimulate member societies to think about suitable candidates, and send nominations after the call has been published.
All of the foregoing is important for ICIAM in the year ahead of us. We would also like to further increase the interaction with our member societies. Some officers have taken up the task of taking care of certain regions of the world, and to be in close contact with member societies in these regions. We can learn a lot from each other, and it is good to share these ideas to provide mathematics in industry and applications an even more prominent position. Furthermore, we would like to get to know our member societies even better, learn more about how they are organised, what activities they undertake.
Once again, happy New Year to all of you, and let’s make 2025 a very successful year for ICIAM!
Wil Schilders, president