Annual Report 2005 - Fields Institute - University of Toronto

Scientific Advisory Panel 2004–2005
The Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) provides the scientific
leadership of the Institute. The SAP, which is chaired by
the Director, includes the Deputy Director and a rotating
membership of at least seven distinguished mathematicians
from Canada and abroad. The panel makes recommendations
to the Board of Directors on the selection of thematic
programs and other major activity
JENNIFER CHAYES is Manager of the Theory Group at
Microsoft Research. The group includes mathematicians,
physicists and theoretical computer scientists working on
problems at the interface of these three fields. In addition
to managing the Theory Group at Microsoft, Chayes has
been Professor of Mathematics at UCLA and is Affiliate
Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of
Washington. She has been Vice-President of the American
Mathematical Society. Chayes has also served on numerous
other boards and advisory committees. Chayes received
her BA in biology and physics from Wesleyan University,
where she graduated first in her class. She received her PhD
in mathematical physics from Princeton University. She
was a postdoctoral fellow in the Physics and Mathematics
departments at Harvard University, and at the Laboratory
of Atomic and Solid State Physics and the Army Mathematics
Center at Cornell University. Chayes was awarded a
National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in
Mathematics and a Sloan Foundation Fellowship. She has
also won several teaching awards including the Distinguished
Teaching Award in Mathematics at UCLA. She has
twice been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton. Chayes is the author of over sixty-five papers in
mathematics and physics. She is one of the world’s experts
on phase transitions, particularly on the probabilistic and
stochastic geometric approach to statistical physics. Since
joining Microsoft in 1997, Chayes has begun to apply
methods from mathematics and physics to problems in
theoretical computer science, networking, and information
technology.
WALTER CRAIG received his MS and PhD from the Courant
Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University.
His research focuses on the theory of nonlinear partial
differential equations and Hamiltonian dynamical systems,
and their applications. He has taught at Caltech,
Stanford University, and Brown University, and is currently
Professor of Mathematics and Canada Research Chair
at McMaster University. He has lectured extensively at
G o v e r n a n c e
conferences and institutes around the world, including
the Tata Institute, the ICMS Edinburgh, the ETH, the INI,
and IHES. He is currently on the Council of the AMS, and
is a member of the editorial boards of the SIAM Journal
on Mathematical Analysis, the AMS Graduate Studies,
the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the Canadian Journal
of Mathematics, and the Mathematical Physics Electronic
Journal. He helped organize the Institute’s 2003 thematic
program in Partial Differential Equations.
HENRI DARMON received his BSc in Mathematics and
Computer Science from McGill University in 1987 and his
PhD in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1991. He
is currently Professor in the Department of Mathematics
at McGill University. Prior to his present appointment he
taught at Princeton University. He has received a Sloan
Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan
Research Award, the G. De B. Robinson Award, the Coxeter-James
Prize of the Canadian Mathematical Society,
the CRM’s André Aisenstadt Prize, NSERC’s E.W.R. Steacie
Memorial Fellowship, and the Ribenboim Prize of the
Canadian Number Theory Association. He was elected a
fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2003. Darmon is
currently editor-in-chief (with Niky Kamran) of the Canadian
Journal of Mathematics and has served on the editorial
boards of the International Journal of Number Theory,
Commentari Mathematici Helvetici, the Journal of Number
Theory, and the Annales des Sciences Mathématiques du
Quebec. He is a member of NSERC’s Grant Selection Committee
and of the CMS prize committee. His main research
interests are in p-adic analysis and the theory of automorphic
forms with special emphasis on elliptic curves and
explicit class field theory.
KENNETH R. DAVIDSON received his undergraduate degree
at the University of Waterloo in 1972 and his PhD from the
University of California at Berkeley in 1976. He was a C.L.E.
Moore instructor at M.I.T. for two years before moving to
the University of Waterloo in 1978. His research interests
are in operator theory and operator algebras, and he won
the Israel Halperin prize in this area in 1985. He was an
E.W.R. Steacie fellow 1988-90 and a Killam Research Fellow
1995-97. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of
Canada in 1992. He has been on the editorial boards of various
journals including the CMS journals and is an editor
of the Journal of Operator Theory. He has served the CMS
in various capacities including Vice-President (Ontario) in
1995-97. He sat on the NSERC mathematics GSC in 1990-
Fields Institute 2005 ANNUAL REPORT 125