Moving On

At present, we have settled with one proposal of restructuring of the institutes and hope that we will no longer need to look again too much on the matter. We need to move beyond these uncertainties and do the real work on the ground, the research activities. Our past experience has told us that one can have the most beautiful thing on paper but pragmatically on the ground, all these plans have to be worked out and these are usually much harder. So it is a relief (again) to have this proposal out. To my own staff, they probably know me that I love to do scientific work more than all these managerial and administrative tasks. On the other hand, I do feel compelled to be part of decision-making process to ensure that our past efforts on building our research ecosystems will not go to waste and that whatever changes there will be, these should make us progress better and not the reverse. In a way, all these years in the management make me realise that complaining is easy but to help find (optimal) solutions is the one that is hard and the one that matters.

For now an immediate matter that should be of concern is the new call for proposals for FRGS, TRGS and LRGS research grants by the ministry. I hope our institute members will start writing proposals. I wish to write one too but past experiences have made me to be more cautious about doing one. Certainly some rules of the game have changed and there are now more demands tied up with one's research grant. Having only about four years of service left has also made me to be more careful on what research to be considered for the proposal. Given that I have started several different directions, all of which have open problems that I wish to tackle, I am still uncertain on what to do. Whatever it is, I hope it will be something really good that I can end my university career on. Perhaps even a ground breaking one (I can dream, can I?)

I also entertained an idea of applying for LRGS or TRGS (L stands for long term and T stands for transdisciplinary). The former will need a few other institutions outside one's own, while the latter involves several faculties or institutes within one's institution). Have tried one before but it was shot down at the ministerial committee for being too ambitious (had this comment quite a few times for my other proposals). Well, perhaps now one can entertain it to be one which is less technical. Partly because the themes to be considered are now leaning more towards social issues. They are:

• developing affordable and clean energy system
• health and wellbeing of B40
• health and weelbeing of ageing society
• future education
• quality education provision for vulnerable communities
• sustainable and smart manufacturing in agricultural sector
• migrants and refugees in Malaysian society
• drug abuse
• ethnic harmony

The one area that I'm toying with and considering is future education. While most future education issues tend to centre around how technology has changed the environment for education, I do not think that is the critical issue to focus. Technologies change and they change very frequently; it is the part of human in adapting to these changes that often becomes an issue. As Simon Sinek puts it, if one focuses on what and how of such issue, often the why gets forgotten. In particular my interest is in the spectrum of thinking of a human or an organisation organism with their product in the form of technologies. The finiteness of the human or organisation seem to set some form of inherent limitations in the way thinking is done (this theme is also alluded here in this post) and how to overcome this. Understanding this complex issue may help liberate us into better thinking (and hence better future education). This is also related to some things I have said to my own students: as science progress with exponentially growing body of knowledge, how can the future science student cope as they need to solve more difficult and complex problems. Partial solutions are known but they tend to refer to finite properties of the individual/organisation and prioritisation or contextualisation. 

Honing closer to home are our own cultural inhibitions to technical subjects like mathematics and related subjects like quantum theory. There are many studies (e.g. here) showing that the country's performance in TIMSS has dropped considerably the last few years and my gut feeling is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. So whatever future education issues that one wants to tackle for the country, answering why this is happening will be great.

One may ask why I am getting myself involved with these educational issues, far from my own research interest. Well, it actually began with the idea of getting the country ready for quantum technologies of the future. Letting my imagination runs wild has led me to write the above. Perhaps it is just me entertaining my personal frustration of driving quantum research here. Have been told many times that what I do is typified as 'syok sendiri'. At other times, plenty of discouragement and what bothers me the most is discouraging others as well. Just let them decide for themselves. In the end, one can't be bothered with what people say and just focus on what we can do.

Having mentioned Simon Sinek above, I knew about him much earlier and but recently his newer videos got to be recommended on my YouTube listing. Do listen to these when you have time.

A Different Turn

Two days ago, I was at a university up north attending a viva examination as an external examiner. It was for an area that only a handful of us know in the country, an area for which essentially my PhD supervisor Richard Ward is in (my PhD was on a different topic than this). The examination turned out to be good and one has the elated feeling of duty fulfillment, overseeing progress made in such area locally. However this 'joy' was cut short. As I was waiting for the plane to return home, received a whatsapp message regarding the restructuring of the institute. A new change.

The restructuring of the institute has occupied our minds ever since middle of last year. Plenty of discussions were made to see what is best for the institute and finally agreed upon some niche areas that could have given the institute a unique identity (see here). We even come up with a clever name for the institute to highlight our niche area, namely on disruptive science & technology. Initially we would like to keep this name a secret until we are sure that it is properly endorsed by the university. It was Mathematical Institute for Natural and Disruptive Sciences (MINDS). Unfortunately, this name will not see the light of the day. The meeting yesterday informed us that the restructuring will now take a different turn, which I will not reveal here as yet.

My immediate feeling after the meeting is betrayal; both betrayed and betraying. Our efforts thus far have gone back to naught and sincerely wished that we knew this much earlier. But much more damaging for me is that this happens under my watch. In a way, I felt that I have betrayed the original cause of our institute. Something that I have to bear for the rest of my life. In a way, I have been here before; plenty of disappointments in life. At this stage, I do not know what will happen next. For now, I try to comfort myself by saying that come what may, we (as in theoretical physics group) will continue to do the things we do; things that not many may have the courage to take up. I will just leave it at that.

Nuff Said

I think I have said too much yesterday at the risk of possibly affecting whatever cohesion we have. Do note that I value very much our existing cohesion and the trust that we have built. This is particularly critical when we are at the verge of restructuring the institute. But matters arising compelled me to say what I think is right and the opinions that I have held long dearly (science over other secondary matters). Having said that, I do entertain the possibility of oneself is wrong, which I expect the same of any other scientists. More so in matters of human affairs; more often than not, one does not have a single unique solution but probably multiple solutions with different strength and weaknesses (see here). Ultimately, one particular solution has to be picked out and this is normally done by the 'leader'. As such, being in the deputy position for quite some time (and being in the institute for so long), I worry that I am developing blindspots. It is usually wise to make sure that one is not in the position of power too long. For the record, I am not power crazy and will be willing to leave to make place for those who are more capable.

For now, I hope everyone refrain from aggravating whatever problems we are facing, and work more towards finding solutions. Finding faults is easy (because everyone has a weakness) but finding solutions needs more grey matter and creativity. Let us focus on rebuilding the institute according to what the university plans to have.

Pre-Restructuring Thoughts

This is my first post in 2019 and I will write about the institute's future and niche area.

It is perhaps an open secret that the institute will be undergoing restructuring process along with the rest of the university. One of the task given to us is to carve out niche areas perhaps unique to the institute itself, avoiding redundancies with say the Mathematics Department in the Faculty. Redundancy in itself is not necessarily bad and in fact is key to many technologies with critical components. Whether this is the case for our mathematical research perhaps is not clear. I certainly want to think that the institute has helped in many ways mathematical research in the university. Perhaps finding a unique identity to the institute is something that one should aim for after many years.

Each of us has one's own research passion and it is quite easy to be blinded into thinking that one's own research is more important or more fundamental or more difficult than another. To be able to objectively compare between fields, it is necessary to be actively involved in the research areas that one wants to compare. To master one particular research area already requires incredible feat; to be able to do more would probably take a few lifetimes. Comparing different fields is not our goal; more importantly is to ensure that such different fields synergize with each other. One hopes to have different groups working together for some common goals, which I hope will be realised in the future version of the institute. Another desirable thing to have is to get the right mix of birds and frogs (alluding to Dyson's categorization of researchers in his article in Notices of the AMS). Birds bring diverse ideas together and frogs do intricate details within one area. I would like to imagine myself as a bird, not a high-flying one but one that is close to the ground. I get very fascinated by mathematical topics that find their ways to physics in rather surprising ways. Each weekend I will normally scan the arXiv to see what new ideas are brewing; those that caught my eye are link-dumped at Equatorial Frequencies. Most of these will be left unread of course. Such scanning has helped me get some form of bird-eye's view of progress made in mathematical sciences. I hope this will be of use in looking for possible new directions for the institute.

One of the directions that could have been taken is to move to interdisciplinary research as I have raised many times (I'm also including areas within mathematics themselves). But what areas would be most natural for mathematicians to work with? The best way to answer is to see what available data there are on mathematical research publications. Some researchers have taken the time to look at this by constructing a map of mathematics. One map would be based on the paper submissions on the arXiv (see figure below):

The blue ones are those considered to be traditionally in mathematics. The purple ones are coming from physics. The red ones are computer science and also engineering. The green ones are statistics (but we will not consider this as distinct from mathematics for simplification). Physics has always been closed to mathematics and should have interacted more with mathematics. Reality on the ground is that most of our physics staff do very little theoretical work. Hence we should source more interactions from the other closely associated areas of computer science and engineering. In fact, I would have loved to see more computer scientists (particularly theoretical ones) to be more active in our institute. Engineering would be another but they are not quite well represented in the above map since arXiv is much biased on those areas that have established preprint culture and perhaps engineering has yet to be one. Another map that will show the engineering representation better is perhaps the map constructed from Zentralblatt data (see figure below).

The mathematical areas that are close to engineering are those in partial differential equations and numerical analysis. Note the heavy weighted lines from PDE and numerical analysis to fluid mechanics, thermodynamics and heat transfer, systems theory and control. Thus, engineering would be another source of interaction that the institute could place hope for. Having said that readiness and willingness of researchers (mathematicians, computer scientists and engineers) is a complex matter to deal with and we hope that we can overcome this challenge.

Back to carving niche areas, cryptography was one of the identified niche areas of the institute even before the current restructuring process takes place. This would however be too restrictive for the institute to base on and will exclude many other important established areas of the institute. To generalize this, one of us suggested disruptive technologies (see here and here) which will include further things like internet of things, data science and others often quoted for IR 4.0 (see for instance these examples). This would make the institute heavily based on (available) technologies (note most technologies are disruptive in nature). To be more far-sighted, one should also include the sciences that drive them. One particular area whose technology is expected to change the IT landscape is quantum sciences, an area which I dream of establishing firmly in UPM (time is running out since I will be retiring in a few years time). In fact, the idea was there when I joined ITMA last time and we suggested the field of study on Quantum Science and Technology (way back in 2002 - see figure below).

This initiative (experimental side) stopped just after I left ITMA. Today, the term Quantum Science and Technology is already a common term. IOP for instance has created a journal with such name. Here is a relatively recent interview on Japan initiatives in quantum science and technology.

Now, quantum information science fits well in the niche area of science that drives near-future disruptive technology. It actually took about 70-80 years from the beginning of quantum science to reach the point of precise manipulation of single quantum particles. Today there are many available technologies of doing so. However technologically we are far away from doing this in our labs (though there is a possibility of accessing such technology with external help, which we are considering). The best option for us is to take the theoretical (or mathematical) options for quantum information science research which I think we are able to do (provided support and enough manpower).

Having said this, it is not about serving my own interests in doing the institute's restructuring exercise. We have to take into account for what is natural and what serves the institute better. For instance, mathematical physics which is an important area that connects physics and mathematics (see map of mathematics in the figures above) will now take a back seat in favour of mathematical engineering. This is to attract more engineers to the institute (which I do hope will happen). An area that seems to fall out of favour in this action will be our work on hyperbolic spaces and cusp forms. Unless of course if we can still relocate such research by making it into something applicable like quantum money.

Another area that I hope the institute can pursue is the area of data science, which the institute had already eyed on before this. Now while most people are imagining the data explosion, my concern is actually more on some inherent (human or otherwise) limitations of obtaining useful finite information and that contextualization is probably needed (see here). On the other hand, we need new inventive ways to produce useful information. One such tool is the idea of complex networks (an area that I hope the institute pursue), which has already show many applications and some may even be counter-intuitive (see e.g. here).

All these ideas are ambitious of course. Ideas will remain ideas unless they are worked on by our researchers. It is here that we wish that we get all the support that we can to make our institute stronger and sustainable.