Scientific Committee Meeting Minutes for September 2014

Minutes of Meeting held on Wednesday 24 September 2014, De Morgan House

Present: David Jordan (Chair), John Hunton (LMS rep), Sarah Rees (LMS rep), Elizabeth Fisher (LMS), Richard Pinch (AGM delegate), Rachel Camina (Cambridge), Andrew Lobb (Durham), Lynne Walling (Bristol), Stuart White (EdMS rep, by telephone).

Apologies: Tom Fisher (Cambridge), Behrang Noohi (QMUL), Ivan Tomašić (QMUL), Phil Rippon (LMS rep), Tim Dokchitser (Bristol), Alexander Stasinski (Durham).
  • The minutes of the previous meeting, held on 10th April 2014 at QMUL, were approved.
  • The minutes of the BMC AGM, held on 9th April 2014 at QMUL, were noted. The committee echoed the comments of then chair, Charles Goldie, that taking the BMC to London had been a great success. The committee hoped the BMC, or maybe a joint BMC- BAMC could be held in London in the not too distant future.
  • The committee welcomed the report from the BMC 2014 organisers. SR noted a small discrepancy in the budget, DJ to enquire. It was noted that the BMC 2014 did not have a reduced registration fee for PhD students, but provided bursaries for 19 students funded by a grant from Google and a further 16 students benefited from fee waivers funded by the general BMC budget. The committee commented favourably on this set-up. The committee noted that a briefer version of the report might be more suitable for the St Andrews website.
  • RC reported on arrangements for the joint BMC-BAMC meeting to be held in Cambridge, 30th March - 2nd April, 2015. Lectures will be held in the Centre of Mathematical Sciences, the Isaac Newton Institute and Lady Mitchell Hall. The following invited speakers have been confirmed: Jacques Dumais, Peter Kronheimer, Wendelin Werner, Ingrid Daubechies, Phil Hall, Sylvia Sefarty, Robert Calderbank and Andrew Wiles. The latter two will speak on Wednesday 1st April, the day that has been chosen to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the LMS.

    Stephen Hawking and Michael Green will jointly give a public lecture on the Tuesday evening. It is anticipated that this lecture will be very popular with the citizens of Cambridge, for whom 350 tickets will be available, 150 tickets will be reserved for conference delegates.

    Eleven of the anticipated twelve BMC morning speakers have also been confirmed: Arend Bayer, Tim Browning, Eugenia Cheng, Adrian Constantin, Yaroslav Kurylev, Brita Nucinkis, Neil O'Connell, Dmitriy Rumynin, Richard Thomas, Ye Tian and Ulrike Tillmann. It is worth noting that the BAMC have very few invited speakers, with the majority of the talks coming from delegates.

    In line with the LMS's wishes Scheme 3 grant holders have been invited to host work- shops and six such schemes have agreed to do so. We hope to host them all on the special Wednesday and they will all have an additional session on another day.

    The conference dinner will be held at Churchill College on the Wednesday evening. The location was chosen primarily due to its large capacity. Philip Nelson, the Chief Executive of the EPSRC will give the after dinner speech (this is a BAMC tradition).

    Additional events include a poster session, an opening reception on Monday evening, an LMS reception on Wednesday evening, a reception for women delegates hosted by CUP (held at the CUP bookshop), a panel discussion on collaboration hosted by Ursula Martin and hopefully a lunch or reception for students and plenary speakers, giving them a chance to mingle.

    The conference will be capped at 500 delegates, accommodation has been booked for approximately 270, mostly at Robinson College, the hope being that this can be amended upwards if needs be. Lunch will be included in the registration fee and will be at Robinson.

    A website with pre-registration is online, delegates will be able to register fully from 1st Dec 2014. There will an early bird registration fee. There will be no reduced fee for students, but the organisers are hoping to source funding to provide bursaries for some students.

    RC asked for advice regarding alternative funding streams, a useful discussion followed.
  • LW provided a list of confirmed speakers for the BMC 2016 to be held in Bristol: Alex Lubotzky, Luigi Ambrosio, Maria Chudnovsky, Amy Wilkinson and Robert Adler. Workshop organisers for workshops in Algebra, Analysis, Combinatorics, Ergodic Theory, Number Theory and Probability have been identified. Accommodation will be organised by delegates in local hotels with help provided by the organisers.
  • AL reported that the BMC in Durham in 2017 would be held within the week 3rd-7th April. Lecture and seminar rooms have been booked and accommodation in Collingwood College organised.
  • The committee were happy to accept the offer from the University of St Andrews to host the BMC in 2018. It was noted that the University of St Andrews intended to host the BMC in June instead of the usual Easter time, the committee felt this was worth trying and noted the present issues with the Easter timing, i.e. lack of accommodation and different term breaks at different universities.
  • Charles Goldie had provide DJ with a list of UK Maths departments with a pure maths presence that had never hosted the BMC. After consideration of this list and a brief dis- cussion it was agreed that DJ should approach the departments of the Open University, Loughborough and Lancaster to see if any had an interest in hosting the BMC in 2019 or later.
  • That the 2015 Young Researchers in Mathematics meeting will be held in the summer in Oxford was noted.
  • RC to determine when/where next meeting to be held in Cambridge.
Rachel Camina, 29/09/2014