Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
institute funded by the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
. The initial funding for the institute was approved in May 1999 and it was inaugurated in August, 2000.
IPAM is located on the UCLA
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
campus, in close proximity to UCLA's Department of Mathematics. The building currently housing the institute was designed in 1973 by world-renowned Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
.
Mission
The mission of the institute is to make connections between a broad spectrum of mathematicians and scientists, to launch new collaborations, to better inform mathematicians and scientists about interdisciplinary problems, and to broaden the range of applications in which mathematics is used.IPAM seeks to bring the full range of mathematical techniques to bear on the great scientific challenges of our time, to stimulate exciting new mathematics via new problems motivated by other sciences, and to train the people who will do this.
Background
IPAM is currently one of eight NSF Mathematical Sciences Institutes in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The initial five year grant was renewed in 2005, and this grant was once again renewed in 2010, for an additional five years.
The institute was co-founded by Tony F. Chan
Tony F. Chan
Tony Fan-Cheong Chan is a Hong Kong-born mathematician and President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology since 1 September 2009.He succeeded Chu Ching-wu who retired from HKUST in August 2009....
, Mark Green, and Eitan Tadmor; Russ Caflisch is its current director. Christian Ratsch and Amber Puha are its current associate directors. Stanley Osher
Stanley Osher
Stanley Osher is an American mathematician, known for his many contributions in shock capturing, level set methods, and PDE-based methods in computer vision and image processing...
is its current special projects director.
Programs
Every year IPAM offers two three-month scientific programs, or long programs. These programs bring together senior and junior mathematicians and scientists and engineers from the scientific disciplines related to the program. In addition, IPAM supports graduate students, post-doctoral scholars and young academics to encourage their participation in long programs.The programs consist of three phases: Tutorials from both streams are offered at the beginning. These are followed by four five-day workshops focusing on particular topics related to the overall theme of the program. The programs culminate with a 1 week Oberwolfach
Oberwolfach
Oberwolfach is a town in the district of Ortenau in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is the site of the Mathematical Research Institute of Oberwolfach, or Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach.- Geographical situation :...
-like workshop at the UCLA at Lake Arrowhead, California
Lake Arrowhead, California
Lake Arrowhead is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place in the San Bernardino Mountains of San Bernardino County, California, within the San Bernardino National Forest, adjacent to Lake Arrowhead Reservoir...
.
Between the long programs, IPAM sponsors independent five-day workshops on a broad range of scientific themes. During the summer IPAM holds a research program for undergraduates (RIPS) focusing on industrial problems as well as a summer school for graduate students. The graduate student summer school is dedicated to an important scientific theme involving problems of mathematical interest.