Dear ICIAM colleagues and friends,
While some parts of the world are enjoying their summer vacations, others may still have to wait for a well-deserved holiday. I am writing this message after just having come back from Cape Town, attending the Mega Maths Festival. A very dynamic event with ample attention from politicians, please see the message later in this edition of Dianoia.
Because of the holidays in my part of the world, I will keep this message brief. I am looking forward to the ICIAM Board meeting in Hanoi, a face to face meeting with Board members, to take some important decisions and have important discussions. 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, site visits have been undertaken to the potential locations for the ICIAM 2031 Congress, and a decision will be taken 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. We also 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 (Su Buchin Prize). I hope that all ICIAM member societies will discuss all of these issues and consider nominations. Finally, several societies have expressed an interest to join ICIAM, and this will also be discussed during the Board meeting.
We hope that, during the Board meeting, we will also be able to announce the date when our new website will go online. 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. This newsletter also mentions the passing away of Mario Primicerio, who has been extremely important for mathematics in Europe and beyond. We were very sad to hear this news. Below is an obituary, we will miss Mario’s great wisdom.
As announced in the April newsletter, we also finished two papers that are jointly written by IMU and ICIAM on predatory publishing and the misuse of bibliometric data. Soon the final versions will be available, please see the text in this newsletter.
I hope we will meet many of our member societies at the Board meeting in September. It is an opportunity 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