SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES - Fields Institute - University of Toronto

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In Memory of Jerrold E. Marsden We are deeply saddened by the death of Jerry Marsden, September 21 at his home in Pasadena, after a battle with cancer. Jerry was a founder and true friend of the Fields Institute. He served as our first Director from 1992 to 1994, and organized several of our major programs over the years. Our prestigious Marsden Postdoctoral Fellowship is named in his honour. Jerry Marsden was a friend and mentor of many people in the Canadian mathematics community and around the world. His ideas and inspiration will live on in his mathematical works and those of his students and colleagues. A press release about Jerry and information about making donations in his memory can be found at www.cds.caltech.edu/~marsden/remembrances Modelling, Understanding, and Managing River Ecosystems RIVERS AND THEIR ASSOCIATED ECOSYSTEMS are in danger from human use and alterations, despite their essential contribution to human society—namely freshwater and food supply, hydroelectric energy, transportation, and recreation. Effective and efficient management of these systems requires deep understanding and sophisticated models. Complex hydrological models that feature little or no biological mechanisms have long dominated river management. Recently, the biological dynamics of river ecosystems under simplified hydrological and geomorphological assumptions have become a focus of attention in spatial ecology modelling. The workshop on Modelling, Understanding, and Managing River Ecosystems brought together, for the first time, experts and young researchers from different areas—hydrologists, engineers, ecologists, mathematicians, and managers—and provided an opportunity for participants to discuss recent advances in all related fields as well as future integration of different approaches. The theme of the first morning session was Biology and Data. Donald Baird (Canadian River Institute) spoke about available and non-available Canadian river data in his talk, Down by data: Data poverty in Canadian river ecosystem research, and how and why we can enrich it. The second invited speaker, Les Stanfield (Ministry of Natural Resources, Canada), spoke about Challenges and opportunities for quantifying the cumulative effects to stream conditions. Stanfield focused particularly on fish habitat and the impact of new 2 FIELDSNOTES | FIELDS INSTITUTE Research in Mathematical Sciences housing developments. The afternoon topic, Transport and Flow, concentrated more on the geophysical aspects of rivers. Peter Steffler (Alberta) presented elaborate software for 2D computation and visualization of realistic flows and biological mechanisms in his talk entitled Computational modelling of stream hydrodynamics and ecological processes. Rob Runkel (U.S. Geological Survey) presented his work in Characterizing metal transport using OTEQ, an equilibriumbased model for streams and rivers. The second day morning session was devoted to the topic of Population Dynamics. It began with a presentation by Frank Hilker (Bath), Predator-prey systems in streams and rivers. The afternoon focused on Synthesis and Policy. Roger Nisbet (UCSB) gave a presentation on Population response length: theory and applications; Shannon O’Connor (Montreal) talked on NSERC’s new HydroNet, a national research network to promote sustainable hydropower and healthy aquatic ecosystems, and Ed McCauley (NCEAS) closed the workshop with his outlook and future research directions, entitled Big problems—Productive solutions: Insight from a broad range of modelling approaches. The workshop schedule allowed for many informal discussions, over lunch and during the evening reception, that participants enjoyed as much as the lectures. Students and postdoctoral fellows were excited to meet some of the leading researchers in the field, who in turn were inspired by the younger generation and their enthusiasm. Frithjof Lutscher (Ottawa)
This summer, 20 undergraduate students spent eight weeks at the Fields Institute carrying out research on applied mathematics projects. Topics ranged from placenta growth and dysfunction detection methods to high dimensional combinatorial games. FIELDS-MITACS UNDERGRADUATE SUMMER RESEARCH PROGRAM Group supervisors came from the principle sponsoring universities and affiliates of the Fields Institute. The students found the program to be a unique experience, and many have developed new research interests as a result. Compiled by Richard Cerezo FIELDS INSTITUTE Research in Mathematical Sciences | FIELDSNOTES 3
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Page 5 and 6: Combinatorial Games Group #2 Matthe
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Page 9 and 10: Extended Workshop on Groups and Gro
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SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES - Fields Institute - University of Toronto

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