2014-12-94

Research Centres“Operads andConfigurationsSpaces” conferenceOn the roofs ofTunisof pure and applied mathematics. This year’s conferencewas in memory of Mohamed Salah Baouendi, one ofthe most renowned complex geometers of the 20th century.Conference proceedings will appear with Springerin 2015. The next conference will be a joint event with aCIMPA 1 research school taking place in Tunis on 20–29March 2015 on the theme of Nonlinear Partial DifferentialEquations arising from Geometry and Physics. It ispossible to register for conferences and to subscribe tothe institute newsletter through the MIMS website.GGTM-MIMS Conference”in memoryof M. S. Baouendi:visit to the BardoMuseum.A geometry and topology conference is also held annuallyat the institute. The choice of this theme is motivated bythe observation that geometry at large is one of the weakerlinks in mathematical education in the Maghreb. MIMSpartners with the Grouping for the development of Geometryand Topology in Maghreb (GGTM) to try to remedythis situation. The GGTM made its debut in 2003 in Marrakechand helped in training and advising several graduatestudents in fields related to geometry and topology.The applied side of MIMS research activities is ensuredthrough collaboration with the Laboratory ofNumerical and Mathematical Modelling in EngineeringSciences at the largest engineering school in the country,ENIT; the latest conference there was held on the field ofdata mining and machine learning.Still in connection with its research activities, MIMSsponsors mathematical events around the Maghreb, eitherby participating in scientific committees or by providingfinancial support. This year alone, MIMS has sponsoredhalf a dozen conferences in Tunisia and a school in Rabat,Morocco, in memory of Bill Thurston. By playing the roleof a regional, albeit modest, sponsor, MIMS gets its inspirationfrom CIMPA, whose major role is to stimulate andfund mathematical activities in the developing world.1Centre International des Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées(Nice, France).Mathematical EducationMIMS organises summer lectures series for Master’slevel students. A month-long course was given by AbbèsBahri (Rutgers University) in 2013, which was thencomplemented by a two-month course at the Tunis PolytechnicSchool in February and March 2014. In Summer2014, Nader Masmoudi (Courant Institute) gave lecturesat the Faculté des Sciences de Tunis.The MIMS summer lectures are now being expandedcollaboratively with CIMPA and AMU 2 to a fully fledgedtwo-week school, held once a year, in turn between thethree main countries of the Maghreb. The AMU andCIMPA have supported for many years the organisationof thematic schools at the Master’s level in sub-SaharanAfrica. MIMS will work on expanding this concept toNorthern Africa and to promoting collaboration betweenmathematicians on both sides of the Sahara divide.MIMS organises general public conferences aimedprimarily at early university students, teachers and mathematicallyoriented minds. These conferences are generallywell-attended (key speakers were José Luis Rodriguezin 2013, Jean-Paul Delahaye in 2014 and some mathematiciansfrom MIMS; Marie-Francoise Roy and AhmadDjebbar are soon to visit MIMS in 2015). Another regularevent run by MIMS is the Journée des Doctorants (JDD)held every year in September. Its purpose is to give a forumfor students to present their thesis work and to trainthem on giving their first public talks. The first two JDDswere held in Tunis and the third this year took place at theFaculté des Sciences in Monastir, Tunisia.MIMS educational outreach is expanding as moreprojects line up. The institute is launching a new onlinejournal of a special kind. This is The Graduate StudentMathematical Diary (GSMD), a journal that intends topublish writings and notes of graduate or postgraduatestudents on topics of interest or on current research.Nowadays, bright students have webpages and blogs.They often post very interesting accounts of materialthey have learnt or records of talks they have given. TheGSMD offers to polish these notes or papers and havethem refereed and published. In so doing, it also serves asa pedagogical tool whereby students learn to publish theirfirst papers. The GSMD takes its inspiration from a similarjournal that was discontinued in 2000: the Journal desElèves de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. The firstissue of this online journal will appear in Spring 2015.2African Mathematical Union.52 EMS Newsletter December 2014