Maple-Leaf Math

The US and Canada, with joint government grants totaling nearly $5 million, have created an international mathematical research facility in Banff, Alberta. The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) will host workshops, collaborative research efforts, and training sessions in both pure and applied mathematical sciences.

The facility is being funded for the next four years with $1.27 million from the US NSF, about $1.1 million from the Alberta Science Research Authority, and about $952‥000 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Robert Moody of the University of Alberta has been selected as the first scientific director of BIRS.

Activities and projects at the center will be supported by Canada’s Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences and, in the US by the Berkeley-based Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.

“This is tangible proof of the growing importance of mathematics in all of science,” said NSF Director Rita Colwell. “This will be important for the study of mathematics in cosmology, particle physics, quantum phenomena, meteorology and medicine,” as well as a host of other fields, she said.