Dear ICIAM colleagues and friends,
This second edition of our newsletter Dianoia in 2025 again contains many interesting and important news facts related to industrial and applied mathematics, and our organisation ICIAM. The editors have decided to start a series of interviews with mathematicians that have played an important role in the history of ICIAM. These interviews are leading up to the celebration of 40 years ICIAM which we will celebrate in 2027 during the congress in The Hague. There is news about the 2025 Abel prize and the ISC general assembly meeting, where my fellow countryman Robbert Dijkgraaf was elected as president-elect of the ISC. And there is much more in this newsletter, so I hope you will read it well!
From my side, I would like to draw your attention to a number of important decisions the ICIAM Board will take at its meeting in Hanoi on September 13. We have issued a call for nominations for president-elect of ICIAM, and I hope we will receive high-quality nominations from our member societies! Furthermore, currently site visits are undertaken to the potential locations for the ICIAM 2031 Congress, and in September a decision will be taken by the Board, based upon the site visit reports of the ICIAM Officers and the bid books prepared by the local organisers. At the Board meeting, it will also be decided which publishing company will publish the ICIAM Proceedings in the future for each of the congresses. Last, but absolutely not least, we invited nominations for the six ICIAM Prizes, which recognize outstanding early-career contributions to industrial and applied mathematics (Collatz Prize), impactful mathematical innovation in industry (Industry Prize), a lifetime of exceptional work in applied mathematics (Lagrange Prize), originality in applied mathematics (Maxwell Prize), pioneering applications of mathematics in new scientific or industrial domains (Pioneer Prize), and contributions to mathematics for human development in emerging economies (SuBuchin Prize). I hope that all ICIAM member societies will discuss all of these issues and consider nominations.
For ICIAM 2027, work is in progress and activity is being stepped up. The Local Organising Committee met in The Hague recently, the congress site was visited to discuss details concerning the logistics. Keynote speakers, determined by the Scientific Program Committee, have been invited by the chair of the LOC, and soon we will be able to publish the list of keynote speakers on the ICIAM 2027 website.
Concerning websites, much work is being undertaken right now to make a major overhaul of the ICIAM website, inspired by more modern means of communication. We will update our members in September concerning the precise details of the new website.
We are also very happy that all member societies have agreed to a substantial increase in the membership fees, enabling us to start important new developments. One of these is a booklet on success stories, with successes from all over the world contributed by our member societies. An editorial team has been formed, and will soon start inviting member societies to provide amazing success stories. This booklet can then be used to convince policy makers to invest in mathematics, but it can also be used to show to relatively lay persons the important role that mathematics plays for societal and industrial challenges.
Recently, we also finished the two papers that are jointly written by IMU and ICIAM on predatory publishing and the misuse of bibliometric data. In my October 2024 message, I mentioned a workshop at the Simons Foundation in New York where the papers were discussed in person. Now they are finished, we asked the opinions of our member societies and this has led to some modifications in the papers. Soon the final versions will be available, and the first one has been submitted to the Notices of the AMS and will be published around the summer of 2025.
In May, I will attend the Abel Prize ceremony in Oslo. It would be great if we could also have a prize winner from the applied mathematical community in future, so far only Peter Lax received the prize in this category. Maybe you feel like nominating someone for the Abel Prize?
I truly hope we can continue to count on your support in all that ICIAM undertakes. Please feel free to share your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions with us—there is so much we can learn from one another. By working together, we can strengthen the role of mathematics in applications and industry, and enhance its visibility worldwide. This is a mission we share!
Wil Schilders, president