MacTutor
Report on the 2012 Kent BMC
The 2012 BMC was held 16-19 April 2012 at the Canterbury campus of the University of Kent.
There were 148 delegates to BMC 2012. Feedback has been very positive, confirming our impression that the event was a great success.
Details of the programme can be viewed at http://www.kent.ac.uk/smsas/events/160412.html.
BMC 2012 opened the afternoon of Monday April 16 with a plenary lecture by Professor Robert Soare of the University of Chicago on "Mathematics and the Turing Renaissance .
This was followed by a public reception with an Enigma Machine on display and Dr Andrew Hodges's public lecture on The Life and Work of Alan Turing .
The Colloquium closed noon Thursday with a plenary lecture by Professor Martin Lorenz of Temple University on Prime ideals and group actions in noncomutative algebra .
Further plenary lectures were given by Professor Christine Bessenrodt (Hannover) On the combinatorics of quasisymmetric functions , Professor Idun Reiten (Trondheim) Quivers in representation theory and Christiane Tretter (Bern) Operator theory and applications: a fruitful interplay .
Morning speakers included Rachel Camina (Cambridge), David Harel (Weizmann Institute), Ken Brown (Glasgow), Des Evans (Cardiff), Leonid Parnovski (UCL), Sarah Rees (Newcastle), Sue Black (UCL), Anne Taorima (Durham), Joachim von Below (Littoral), Cornelia Drutu (Oxford), Malwina Luczak (Sheffield) and Peter Symonds (Manchester).
There were workshops on Algebraic Transformation Groups, Mathematics Education : Assessment Practices, Mathematical Physics, Noncommutative Geometry, Number Theory & Algebraic Geometry, Operator Theory and Turing's Legacy.
The 56th meeting of the Bristol Leicester Oxford Colloquium (BLOC) took place at the University of Kent on Monday 16 April and operated as a satellite activity of the BMC.
After discussions with the organisers of the Young Researchers in Mathematics conference, it was felt that the planned pre-meeting for postgraduate research students would duplicate the service provided by the YRM. An effort was made to encourage research students to speak in the workshops; five research students took advantage of this opportunity. There were 26 research students registered at BMC 2012.
Financial Report
Expenditure
The small deficit will be covered by the University of Kent's School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science. We note that the School also provided significant administrative support which has not been explicitly billed to the BMC.
The LMS grant was for £12,000. Lower than expected travel costs as well as slightly lower printing and publicity costs, meant that we were able to return £2073.78 to the LMS.
As was the case with BMC2011, we did not apply for funding from the EPSRC. We held some discussions with representatives of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society about a possible application but in the end did not submit an application.
We did not provide IT logins for all participants; the cost per login was quite high and many participants were able to access the wifi network through eduroam.
Kent Hospitality managed the registration process, catering and room bookings. We were charged an event management fee of £35 per registered participant, and a room hire & registration fee of £60 per registered participant. We were paid an 8% commission on all revenue to Kent Hospitality identifiable as coming from BMC participants.
Springer/CUP did not sponsor a reception; the publishers and Kent Hospitality were unable to come to an agreement on corkage charges. The public reception held before the public lecture was meant to partly compensate for the publishers reception. We note that Springer and CUP collectively paid £650 more for their stands at Kent than they did at Leicester.
Peter Fleischmann (Chair) James Shank (Secretary) September 2012
There were 148 delegates to BMC 2012. Feedback has been very positive, confirming our impression that the event was a great success.
Details of the programme can be viewed at http://www.kent.ac.uk/smsas/events/160412.html.
BMC 2012 opened the afternoon of Monday April 16 with a plenary lecture by Professor Robert Soare of the University of Chicago on "Mathematics and the Turing Renaissance .
This was followed by a public reception with an Enigma Machine on display and Dr Andrew Hodges's public lecture on The Life and Work of Alan Turing .
The Colloquium closed noon Thursday with a plenary lecture by Professor Martin Lorenz of Temple University on Prime ideals and group actions in noncomutative algebra .
Further plenary lectures were given by Professor Christine Bessenrodt (Hannover) On the combinatorics of quasisymmetric functions , Professor Idun Reiten (Trondheim) Quivers in representation theory and Christiane Tretter (Bern) Operator theory and applications: a fruitful interplay .
Morning speakers included Rachel Camina (Cambridge), David Harel (Weizmann Institute), Ken Brown (Glasgow), Des Evans (Cardiff), Leonid Parnovski (UCL), Sarah Rees (Newcastle), Sue Black (UCL), Anne Taorima (Durham), Joachim von Below (Littoral), Cornelia Drutu (Oxford), Malwina Luczak (Sheffield) and Peter Symonds (Manchester).
There were workshops on Algebraic Transformation Groups, Mathematics Education : Assessment Practices, Mathematical Physics, Noncommutative Geometry, Number Theory & Algebraic Geometry, Operator Theory and Turing's Legacy.
The 56th meeting of the Bristol Leicester Oxford Colloquium (BLOC) took place at the University of Kent on Monday 16 April and operated as a satellite activity of the BMC.
After discussions with the organisers of the Young Researchers in Mathematics conference, it was felt that the planned pre-meeting for postgraduate research students would duplicate the service provided by the YRM. An effort was made to encourage research students to speak in the workshops; five research students took advantage of this opportunity. There were 26 research students registered at BMC 2012.
Financial Report
Expenditure
| Registration fees for speakers, organisers and LMS representatives | 4485.00 |
| Fares and subsistence for speakers | 4086.66 |
| Support for UK research students (registration fee discount) | 440.00 |
| Printing and publicity | 540.91 |
| IT logins | 40.00 |
| Fares and subsistence for BMC Scientific Committee members | 373.65 |
| Public reception | 937.85 |
| Event management fee | 4935.00 |
| Room hire and registration | 8460.00 |
| Total Expenditure | £24,299.07 |
| Income | |
| London Mathematical Society grant | 9926.22 |
| Delegate fees | 9190.00 |
| Publishers | 2650.00 |
| Kent Hospitality commission | 2386.03 |
| Total Income | £24,152.25 |
| Deficit | £146.82 |
The LMS grant was for £12,000. Lower than expected travel costs as well as slightly lower printing and publicity costs, meant that we were able to return £2073.78 to the LMS.
As was the case with BMC2011, we did not apply for funding from the EPSRC. We held some discussions with representatives of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society about a possible application but in the end did not submit an application.
We did not provide IT logins for all participants; the cost per login was quite high and many participants were able to access the wifi network through eduroam.
Kent Hospitality managed the registration process, catering and room bookings. We were charged an event management fee of £35 per registered participant, and a room hire & registration fee of £60 per registered participant. We were paid an 8% commission on all revenue to Kent Hospitality identifiable as coming from BMC participants.
Springer/CUP did not sponsor a reception; the publishers and Kent Hospitality were unable to come to an agreement on corkage charges. The public reception held before the public lecture was meant to partly compensate for the publishers reception. We note that Springer and CUP collectively paid £650 more for their stands at Kent than they did at Leicester.
Peter Fleischmann (Chair) James Shank (Secretary) September 2012