INSPEM 16th Anniversary and Institutes Elsewhere

I thought I should reblog on this special day. It is the 16th anniversary of Institute for Mathematical Research in Universiti Putra Malaysia (INSPEM, UPM). It was on this day in 2002 that INSPEM was officially formed though the groundwork went much earlier than that. Rather than talk about the past, I would like to dwell on the future. At the age of 16, the institute will now enter its fourth phase and if things go as planned, we would be much at the international stage. In some way, we have established cooperation with our Italian partner, Politecnico di Torino by having an office for  Malaysia-Italy Centre of Excellence for Mathematical Sciences (MICEMS) right in INSPEM building. Indeed Politecnico is planning to deploy an Italian researcher and staff here in the near future.

Having said this, the last few years also saw budget cuts for the public universities. As a result, the institute has reduced the number of staff over the period, with some senior professors leaving. So the near future will be ever more challenging. More so, as an institute for mathematical research, we will not be as visible as other institutes given the nature of our research and hence the need to make our institute ever more relevant.

Perhaps one should also observe what is happening in other countries with respect to research institutes in mathematical sciences. Certainly, one can see more institutes are being established (not the other way round) showing the (long-term) need for a research ecosystem rooted in highly advanced mathematics given the more complex problems of science and technology. One could try to justify the instituteby throwing in buzzwords like artificial intelligence, big data and quantum technology whose foundations in mathematics are known. To some mathematical researchers, sometimes one feel uncomfortable justifying our research this way since for most of the time the practical applications of mathematical discoveries are often unknown or are very distant in the future. Suffice for us just to demonstrate its international sense of importance through the list of growing mathematics institutes in technological advanced countries. Here are some (not exhaustive):

• ·       African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cape Town, South Africa (https://aims.ac.za/)
  ·       Alfred Renyi Institute of Mathematics, Budapest, Hungary (https://www.renyi.hu/hu)
  ·        American Institute of Mathematics, Palo Alto, USA (https://aimath.org/)
  ·        Bhaskaracharya Pratishthana, Pune, India (https://www.bprim.org/)
  ·        Centre de recherches mathématiques, Montreal, Canada (http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/en/)
  ·        Centre for Mathematical Research, CERCA Institute, Barcelona, Spain (http://cerca.cat/en/c/centre-for-mathematical-research/)
  ·        Centrum Wiskunde & Infomatica, Amsterdam, Netherlands (https://www.cwi.nl/)
  ·        Chennai Mathematical Institute Chennai, India (https://www.cmi.ac.in/)
  ·        Clay Mathematics Institute, Peterborough USA (http://www.claymath.org/)
  ·        Courant Institute of Mathematics, New York University, USA (https://cims.nyu.edu/)
  ·        C.R. Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, Hyderabad, India (http://www.crraoaimscs.org/)
  ·        Einstein Institute of Mathematics, Heberew University of Jerusalem, Israel (http://mathematics.huji.ac.il/)
  ·        Emmy Noether Mathematical Institute, Bar-Ilan University, Israel (http://u.cs.biu.ac.il/~eni/)
  ·        Erwin Schroedinger International Institute for Mathematics and Physics, Vienna, Austria (https://www.esi.ac.at/)
  ·        Euler International Mathematical Institute, St Petersburg, Russia (http://www.pdmi.ras.ru/EIMI/)
  ·        Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, University of Toronto, Canada  (http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/)
  ·        Hamiltonian Mathematics Institute, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland (https://www.tcd.ie/Hamilton/)
  ·        Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad, India (http://www.hri.res.in/)
  ·        Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research, Bristol, UK (https://heilbronn.ac.uk/)
  ·        Institut de recherche en mathématique et physique, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium (https://uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/irmp)
  ·        Indian Statistical Institute, India (https://www.isical.ac.in/)
  ·        Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Universite Paris-Saclay, France (https://www.ihes.fr/)
  ·        Institut Mittag-Leffler, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (http://www.mittag-leffler.se/)
  ·        Institute for Advanced Mathematical Research, Universite de Strasbourg, France (http://www.en.unistra.fr/index.php?id=21956)
  ·        Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics, Brown University, , USA (https://icerm.brown.edu/home/index.php)
  ·        Institute for Mathematical Research, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland (https://www.math.ethz.ch/fim)
  ·        Institute for Mathematical Sciences, National University of Singapore (https://ims.nus.edu.sg/)
  ·        Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics, Radboud University, Netherlands (http://www.ru.nl/imapp/)
  ·        Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, University of Minnesota, USA (https://www.ima.umn.edu/)
  ·        Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, University of Wollongong, Australia (https://imia.uow.edu.au/index.html)
  ·        Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, UCLA, Los Angeles, USA (http://www.ipam.ucla.edu/)
  ·        Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences, Tehran, Iran (http://www.ipm.ac.ir/)
  ·        Institute of Mathematical Research, Hong Kong University (http://www.math.hku.hk/imr/)
  ·        Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India (https://www.imsc.res.in/)
  ·        Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU, Shanghai, China (https://research.shanghai.nyu.edu/math)
  ·        Institute of Mathematics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Praha, Czech Republic (http://www.math.cas.cz/)
  ·        Institute of Mathematics, Freie Universitym Berlin, Germany (http://www.fu-berlin.de/en/einrichtungen/fachbereiche/fb/mathe-inf/mat/index.html)
  ·        Institute of Mathematics, National Academy of Sciences, RA, Armenia (http://math.sci.am/)
  ·        Institute of Mathematics, National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine (https://www.imath.kiev.ua/?lang=en)
  ·        Institute of Mathematics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland (https://www.impan.pl/en)
  ·        Institute of Mathematics, Universitat Leipzig, Germany (https://www.math.uni-leipzig.de/cms/en/startseite/)
  ·        Institute of Mathematics, Vietnam Academy of Sciences, Hanoi, Vietnam (http://www.vast.ac.vn/en/about-vast/organization-chart/institutes/institutes-established-by-the-government/1005-institute-of-mathematics)
  ·        Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, Essex, UK (https://ima.org.uk/)
  ·        Institute of Mathematics for Industry, Kyushu University, Kyushu, Japan (http://www.imi.kyushu-u.ac.jp/eng/)
  ·        Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Tachikawa, Japan (http://www.ism.ac.jp/index_e.html)
  ·        Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, UK (https://www.newton.ac.uk/)
  ·        Johann Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Groningen, Netherlands (https://www.rug.nl/research/jbi/)
  ·        Mathematical Institute, Leiden University, Netherlands (https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/science/mathematics)
  ·        Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK (https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/)
  ·        Mathematical Institute of Utrecht University,Utrecht, Netherlands (https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/mathematical-institute)
  ·        Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley, USA (http://www.msri.org/web/cms)
  ·        Mathematics Research Centre, University of Warwick, UK (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/maths/research/mrc/)
  ·        Mathematics Research Institute, Ohia State University, USA (https://math.osu.edu/mri)
  ·        Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, Bonn, Germany (http://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/)
  ·        Maxwell Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Edinburgh, Scotland (http://www.maxwell.ac.uk/)
  ·        National Institute for Mathematical Sciences and Their Interactions, Paris, France (http://en.insmi.math.cnrs.fr/)
  ·        New Zealand Mathematics Research Institute, Auckland, New Zealand (http://www.nzmri.org/)
  ·        Nikolai Lobachevsky Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics, Kazan University, Russsia (https://kpfu.ru/eng/academic-units/physics-mathematics-and-it/limm)
  ·        Oberwolfach Research Institute for Mathematics, Germany (http://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/)
  ·        Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, British Columbia, Canada (https://www.pims.math.ca/)
  ·        Park City Mathematics Institute, Princeton, USA (https://pcmi.ias.edu/)
  ·        Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, University of Kyoto, Japan (http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/index.html)
  ·        Research Institute for Mathematics, Maine, USA (http://researchinstituteformathematics.edu/)
  ·        Steklov Mathematical Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences (http://www.mi.ras.ru/index.php?c=&l=1)
  ·        Thomas Stieltjes Institute for Mathematics, Leiden University, Netherlands (http://websites.math.leidenuniv.nl/stieltjes/)
  ·        TIFR Centre for Applicable Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India (https://www.math.tifrbng.res.in/)
  ·        Toulouse Institute in Mathematics, Toulouse Capitol University 1, France (http://www.ut-capitole.fr/research/teams-and-structures/toulouse-institute-in-mathematics-research-centre-in-mathematics-imt-ceremath--364945.kjsp)
  ·        Tutte Institute for Mathematics and Computing, Ottawa, Canada (https://www.cse-cst.gc.ca/en/tutte-institute)
  ·        Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics, Hanoi, Vietnam (http://viasm.edu.vn/en/home/) 

Despite my near-retirement, I sincerely wish INSPEM continue to grow strong and be a successful internationally respected research institute.