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The 2003 - 04 annual program at the IMA is on "Probability and Statistics in Complex Systems: Genomics, Networks, and Financial Engineering." The program has three components: Mathematical & Statistical Problems in Genome Sciences (September-December 2003), Communication Networks (January - March 2004), and Quantitative Modeling in Finance and Econometrics (April-June 2004). For details about the annual program please consult the IMA website http://www.ima.umn.edu/ Every year several department faculty members, in addition to the IMA administrators, participate in the annual program. Currently these include Professors Greg Anderson, Maury Bramson, Naresh Jain, Richard McGehee, Arnd Scheel and Ofer Zeitouni. Several of these faculty members also serve as mentors of the IMA's postdoctoral researchers. Other current mentors include Professors Nicolai Krylov, Andrew Odlyzko and Victor Reiner as well as Professors Emeriti Don Aronson and Hans Weinberger. Professor Thomas G. Kurtz (University of Wisconsin, Madison) who is a Distinguished Ordway Visitor at the department, chairs the Organizing Committee of the 2003 - 04 annual program. Another member of the Organizing Committee, Professor Marco Avellaneda (Courant Institute, NYU) who is one of the world's leading experts in the area of financial mathematics, is a 1985 Ph.D. graduate of our department. Summer 2003 saw the 20th anniversary of the founding of the IMA. The occasion was celebrated by a conference "The IMA at 20: Mathematics and its Impact", held June 6-7, 2003. The speakers at the conference included the following leading mathematicians who work in fields of mathematics and applications where the IMA has played a major role: Bjorn Engquist, Princeton U., Nancy Kopell, Boston U., Graeme Milton, U. of Utah, Andrew Odlyzko, U. of Minnesota, George Papanicolaou, Stanford U., Takis Souganidis, U. of Texas, Wim Sweldens, Bell Labs, Margaret Wright, Courant Institute, and Lai-Sang Young, Courant Institute. The talks were aimed at a broad mathematical audience. In addition, Charles Peskin, Courant Institute, delivered a lecture for the general public entitled "Secrets of the Heart Revealed--by Mathematics and Computer Simulation". The IMA Public Lectures, co-sponsored with the IT Alumni Society, are an important part of the IMA outreach. During the 2003-04 academic year the Lectures include: Leroy Hood, After the Human Genome Project: Systems Biology and Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine (September 15, 2003); Richard A. Tapia, Math at Top Speed: Breaking Myths in the Drag Racing Folklore (November 20, 2003); Steven H. Strogatz, Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order (January 7, 2004); and Stephen Ross, Behavioral Finance - The Closed End Fund Puzzle (March 30, 2004). The speakers at the IMA Public Lectures Series are world's leading experts in their areas and the lectures are always very informative as well as great entertainment, often including attractive videos, and engendering lively discussion. Large audiences at these presentations are drawn not just from the University community, but typically include a strong component of intellectually curious public, many of whom clearly consider these events high points of their intellectual and entertainment calendars. Tapia's lecture, for example, attracted a substantial audience of drag racing enthusiasts. Strogatz's engaging presentation, with its beautiful video of thousands of fireflies flashing in synchrony along a Malaysian river, as well as other interesting videos, likewise found a very receptive audience packing a large lecture hall, the semester break notwithstanding.
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