Wil Schilders

Dear ICIAM colleagues and friends,

On Saturday, September 13, the annual ICIAM Board Meeting was held in Hanoi, Vietnam. It was preceded by a two-day workshop featuring 26 contributions, including presentations from organizations seeking ICIAM membership. Both the workshop and the meeting were excellently organized by our Vietnamese hosts, VIASM and VMS. On Wednesday, September 10, I had the honour of giving a public lecture at the Hanoi University of Science, a highly regarded institution with many students who have distinguished themselves with IMO gold, silver, and bronze medals.

The workshop...

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...

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...

Dear ICIAM colleagues and friends,

This is the last issue of Dianoia this year, which also means that we will be saying goodbye to the founder and first editor-in-chief of Dianoia, Barbara Keyfitz. With much help from Sean Bohun, Barbara created the quarterly newsletter during her presidency (2011-2015), and since then has been extremely active to make it a success. Being an editor-in-chief is not easy, it often means chasing people for contributions, thinking also yourself about potential contributions or events that are important for the ICIAM community. By now, the newsletter is very well...

Dear ICIAM colleagues and friends,

The year 2024 is progressing, colleagues in the northern hemisphere are enjoying summer holidays whereas the southern hemisphere is looking forward to spring. July/August is often a quiet period, also for ICIAM. Nevertheless, this issue of Dianoia contains many interesting articles, but also some sad news. On June 28, 2024, Rolf Jeltsch passed away in the age of 78. Rolf was president of ICIAM from 2007 till 2011. An obituary is contained in this issue of ‘’Dianoia’’, and a more extensive obituary will be published by the European Mathematical Society of which...

Dear ICIAM colleagues and friends,

2024 is well underway, and since my New Year’s message quite a few things have happened. First and foremost, the organisers of our next ICIAM Congress in The Hague, July 12-17, 2027 (note the dates in your agenda!), are doing very well with regards to the preparations for this important event. They are also benefitting from the experiences of past organisers, most prominently Valencia and Tokyo. We have great confidence in the team, including also the Scientific Program Committee, and I hope we will have another successful congress attracting many thousands of...

Dear Presidents and Representatives of Member Societies of ICIAM,

Following current rules, the online 2024 ICIAM Board meeting will be the place to present and discuss the pre-bids for ICIAM 2031. Only pre-bids approved by the Board will be allowed to present a complete bid, to be discussed in the 2025 Board meeting, where the final decision will be made about who will organize ICIAM 2031.

If your society plans to bid for ICIAM 2031, please read the following document describing how to prepare a bid. Note that in a pre-bid details have to be given to the Board about location, organising group...

Dear ICIAM colleagues and friends,

A New Year has begun, and on behalf of all officers I would like to wish you a very successful, happy and healthy 2024. We are looking forward to a new year with many new opportunities to work on our mission to promote industrial and applied mathematics. But we are also looking backward to a very successful year 2023.

Most prominently we look back at the ICIAM 2023 congress which was held in Tokyo, and which was organised very well: the location at Waseda University was great, the distance between the various buildings was minimal and there were many...

Wil Schilders became ICIAM's tenth president in October, 2023. He writes ...

As the incoming president, I would first like to thank Ya-xiang Yuan very much for all the work he performed in the past 4 years being the president of ICIAM. ICIAM is alive and kicking, as can be seen from the successful ICIAM 2023 congress with nearly 5500 participants. It is a huge success, and means that ICIAM is doing the right things. Mathematics is everywhere, in many applications, in all sciences, in all branches of industry. It is great to see so many colleagues at the ICIAM Congress, all working hard on these...

On May 10-12, the midterm meeting of the ISC was held in Paris. The ISC wishes to become "the global voice of science" in the multilateral system. Some 300 delegates from all over the world were present, ICIAM was represented by Maria J. Esteban and Wil Schilders. The ISC has 220 members, of which some 140+ are national academies of science. There is a president (Peter Gluckman), a CEO (Salvatore Aricò), some Officers and an office with almost 25 employees. The ISC is setting up an office in New York close to the UN, and the staff is planned to grow to 40+.

Among the concrete goals presented in...