Returning to My Roots

The past few weeks, my mind was occupied regarding matters of the institute's restructuring to the point I had little time for other things. This is probably reflected in my last few posts. I have to convey my apologies to my guests who are here for our International Seminar on Recent Trends in Mathematical Physics (coorganized by INSPEM and MICEMS) but I did not quite have the time for them. Also, the next few days, I will be spending time with my family for my first son's convocation.

Our proposal for the restructuring has also taken a different turn. The proposal paper has been written and hopefully submitted for consideration. It took into consideration both the wishes of the researchers on the ground and the university administration. Hopefully it will be well-received for otherwise, we will be criticised by both sides.

Given that the proposal paper is done, my wish is that the matter will not be prolonged any further (noting that there are risks). Much time has been spent on this and it has only caused anxieties. In fact, the whole affair made me wonder whether I should stay on as deputy director. Particularly when my guests were around, I found better excitement when discussing with them, exploring new research ideas. Besides quantization, ideas followed by Syed (my visitor), we also stumbled onto the possibility of using some ideas of quantization that can be used for chaotic systems which is the area of research of our research fellow, Santo. That excitement reminded me of my old days and made me realise something. While matters of the institute is important and to ensure the tradition for mathematical sciences established firmly is what I believe in, perhaps I should be best left to research in mathematical physics and should have not gone into administration. Given my term ends on May 31, if I would be given any choice, I prefer to end my administrative days. I prefer to contribute only as a simple researcher and focus in graduating my students.

In my mind, I had different ideas of a mathematical institute than the one we have; one that explores sophisticated mathematics, very much like the famous institutes abroad. One of the things that we found out while writing up the proposal is the fact all these well-known institutes had relatively few publications (much less than us) but the work they produced are highly cited because the depth of ideas they explore. Also another important character of such institutes is that they are based on very strong visitor programs. Such an institute will probably not survived the number-chasing research environment and an administration that is overly concerned about expenses over long-term benefits. The composition of research areas in such institutes is often not dominated by only applied mathematics but at least a good balance of pure mathematics. This will probably helped us better in international recognition (see mathematics rankings of UM and USM). It is however unfortunate that our local mathematicians tend to shy away from such fields. If ever there is any who started off as pure mathematics, it is almost always, they get pressured by circumstances to change their fields. It is for this reason, I get furious when my junior colleagues (ex-students of mine doing theoretical physics) are asked to change fields to a more 'productive' one. One of our speakers at our recent event, Prof. Teo has assembled a team of mathematical scientists at Xiamen University, which I thought is very interesting. I am pretty sure if they ever wanted to be ranked, they will probably be doing well. Such would be my dream of what the mathematical institute would be. Another aspect would be the interdisciplinary character, which again I stress that this includes cross-overs within the mathematics sub-disciplines. Of course, I can only dream.

Having said I prefer not to continue in the new institute's administration, here are my wishes for the future leadership of the institute. I hope the person will be very open to developments of new mathematical fields and be knowledgeable in the general ideas of such fields. Another wish is for him/her to be more open to international outlook. Particularly whenever international guests are present in the institute, the person can strike interesting intellectual discussion with these guests. Such gestures often give a good impression of the institute, being aware of the development of mathematics as a whole.

So for now, I wish to return to my roots in trying my best to contribute in a challenging area of mathematical science.