23 Jul 2021

In September my five year term as Scientific Director of ICMS comes to an end. This has not been the final year I would have wished for; we have all experienced personal challenges and extra professional demands. For ICMS it has been impossible to facilitate the face-to-face interactions that spark new ideas and new collaborations which are so much a part of the infrastructure we provide for the mathematical sciences community both nationally internationally.

This does not mean that ICMS has stopped working. I am immensely proud of the way in which staff have adapted to facilitate online seminars and workshops. We have more participants at ICMS facilitated events than ever before, and I hope these researchers will continue to work with and at ICMS in the future. Our involvement with the first Black Heroes of Mathematics conference was a particular highlight for me, and the creation, with the Newton Institute and other partners, of the Virtual Forum for Knowledge Exchange in Mathematical Sciences (V-KEMS) has shown how online engagement within and beyond academia is possible.

Over the past year we have had a successful mid-term review of our core EPSRC grant and received an extra £5M grant as part of the Additional Funding for the Mathematical Sciences initiative. This funding will make it possible to do more of what we do well, to add new initiatives and to both serve and lead the community. It is an exciting time as we build closer relationships in the UK and beyond to deliver distributed activity.

I will be sad not to be part of these new opportunities, but ICMS will remain a beacon of research in mathematics and its applications within a supportive and inclusive environment. Responsibility for the delivery of these opportunities now passes to the new Director of ICMS, Prof Minhyong Kim, but the benefits obtained for mathematics and society more broadly will be realized by you, the researchers who attend, engage and create at ICMS events. Please make the most of the connections we can provide.

Best wishes,

Paul Glendinning, Scientific Director, ICMS