BMC Scientific Committee March 2026

British Mathematical Colloquium Scientific Committee

Minutes of the meeting on Tuesday 31st March 2026,
1230-1320 GMT in hybrid format.

Introductions including update on the Committee Chair role

Present
Jan Grabowski (Chair),
Murat Akman (Essex),
Scott Balchin (Belfast),
Maud de Visscher (City St George's),
Simon Edwards (LMS),
Elizabeth Fisher (LMS),
Simon Goodwin (Birmingham),
Timothy Logvinenko (Cardiff),
Jason Lotay (Oxford, LMS rep),
Markus Szymik (Sheffield, LMS rep)

Apologies
Ed Brambley (Warwick),
Sophie Huczynska (St Andrew's, EMS rep)
Adam Thomas (Warwick)

The Chair welcomed those present and noted apologies. Maud de Visscher was introduced to the Committee as the next Chair, following a process led by the previous Chair Sarah Rees, as a result of the forthcoming end of the term of office of the current Chair.
Minutes of last Scientific Committee meeting
held online on 24th September 2025, were approved.

Matters arising:
BMC mailing list
The Chair reported that a mailing list had been set up via the JISCMail service, with co-owners the Chair, Elizabeth Fisher and Timothy Logvinenko. The latter will be replaced by an organiser from Birmingham at the end of the Cardiff BMC. The list will be advertised to participants at the AGM.
Report on the 2026 BMC in Cardiff.

A preliminary report was given by Timothy Logvinenko, with comments invited from the rest of the Scientific Committee. A full report will be presented at the autumn meeting.

The Committee was reminded of Cardiff's organisational structure, which they felt had served them well. So far, all aspects of the BMC were running smoothly, with positive informal feedback to Committee members present.

Registrations had closed at 197, which was a healthy number and sufficient for financial purposes. Any surplus funds will be disbursed to workshop speakers to supplement the limited support that had been originally agreed.

The approximate grant amounts from each funder were given; a detailed financial report will be presented in the autumn. Thanks were offered to all the funding bodies but particularly to the LMS, who had agreed to raise their contribution in the light of recent inflationary pressures. Simon Edwards confirmed this and commented that the LMS was grateful for the public acknowledgment made in the opening remarks.
Update on plans for Birmingham 2027
to be held June-July 2027.

Simon Goodwin updated the Committee with the following:

Dates are 28th June-1st July 2027, adjusted from previous communications to avoid clashing with religious festivals at that time.

The plenary speakers will be
– Noga Alon (Princeton, Tel Aviv)
– Emmanuel Breuillard (Oxford)
– Kevin Buzzard (Imperial)
– Laure Saint-Raymond (IHES)
– Hong Wang (IHES, New York)

One further plenary speaker and the morning speakers will be identified shortly.

The public lecture will be given on 29th June (speaker to be announced) and the conference dinner on 30th June.
The workshops will be in Algebra, Analysis, Combinatorics, Geometry and Mathematical Physics, Partial Differential Equations and AI & Mathematics.
Room hire costs will be handled internally, so that these do not have to be dealt with in the BMC budget.
A skeleton website has been constructed.
Future BMCs with updates and discussion on future hosts.

Essex 2028:
Murat Akman updated the Committee on the organisational structure decided upon by Essex. The university conference service is supporting, at a small cost per participant; no room hire will be payable. Essex will liaise with Birmingham about the latter's speaker invitation list and also wait to see the announcements of the Fields Medals in the summer, before compiling its lists. It is expected that the BMC will take place in late June or early July 2028. Some information was presented about current institutional-level restructuring at Essex and plans to mitigate any negative effects of this on the BMC were presented, discussed and felt to be appropriate by the Committee.

Belfast 2029:
Scott Balchin invited the BMC to come to Belfast in 2029, which was warmly received by the Committee and Scott and colleagues thereby invited to join the Committee from this point onwards. The importance of geographical diversity among BMC hosts was noted.

Warwick 2030:
Ed Brambley provided the following written update: "We're about to sign the booking agreement with Warwick Conferences, and the department have agreed to underwrite the conference booking. Otherwise, we've been negotiating with Warwick conferences about reducing the cost, and while we've made some progress in that area (e.g. not paying an external company to handle the bookings for us, but doing it ourselves), but we'll keep trying."
Date of next committee meeting
online in September 2026; exact date to be confirmed.
Any other business

New Committee member Markus Szymik relayed some questions on behalf of the LMS Research Grants Committee. These included the scale of the LMS contribution, minimum numbers for financial viability of the event and timing. Another member asked about the possibility of a day rate for those wishing to only attend the Society Meeting. The Chair and others responded, noting that each BMC applied sepa- rately to the LMS for funding and that the LMS had been sympathetic to rising costs (as noted above), and there was agreement that approximately 150 participants was the current break-even point. Timing was discussed: although the BMC had traditionally been held at Easter, academic calendars, availability of rooms, caring responsibilities of participants and other factors have all contributed to a gradual shift towards early summer instead. This ultimately remains the decision of each organising committee, to enable them to take into account local circumstances, but the Committee aims to inform them about the implications of all these issues to support them in their decision-making. Birmingham would consider trialling a day rate option.

The meeting closed at approximately 1320.

Jan Grabowski
2nd March 2026