Dear Colleagues,

This "summer newsletter" includes information on the outcome of the second AARMS PDF support competition, on recent workshops supported by AARMS, on the 4th AARMS Summer School that has just started at Dalhousie University, on two related workshops at Dalhousie University in August, and on two special AARMS sessions at this year's APICS meeting at Acadia University in October.

I. Board of Directors of AARMS:

The newly constituted Board of Directors is chaired by Mr. Evan Kipnis (Vice President, Legal Services and Associate Counsel General, Aliant, St. John's, NL), and its vice-chair is Mr. Rod Nolan (Neill and Gunter, Design and Consulting Engineers, Fredericton, NB). The list of members (which includes the directors of CRM, Fields, and PIMS) can be found on the AARMS website.

The Board held its inaugural (teleconference) meeting on March 29, 2005.

II. AARMS postdoctoral fellowship support (2005-2006+):

The second competition for AARMS PDF support was announced in November 2004 (see AARMS Newsletter of November 2004). AARMS received 13 strong applications; in early March of this year, the Scientific Review Panel (SRP) of AARMS (see www.math.mun.ca for its membership) faced the difficult task of selecting the winners. They are:

• Dr. Sigbjorn Hervik (support for one year).
  Supervisor: Dr. Alan Coley, Dalhousie University.
• Dr. Oliver Winkler (support for one year).
  Supervisors: Dr. Viqar Husain and Dr. Jack Gegenberg, University of New Brunswick at Fredericton
• Dr. Kia Dalili (support for two years).
  Supervisors: Drs. Sara Fahidi and Dorette Pronk, Dalhousie University.

AARMS will contribute $16,000 per year to each PDF, with the remaining part of the PDF salary coming from the supervisor(s) and the host department/university.

The next AARMS PDF support competition will be announced in November 2005.

III. Recent AARMS workshops and conferences:

• East Coast Combinatorics Conference 2005: (University of New Brunswick, Fredericton)
  Organized by Hugh Tomas (Mathematics, UNB) and David Bremner (Computer Science, UNB), this event attracted some 25 researchers and graduate students who heard talks by invited speakers from Dalhousie University, McGill University, MIT, and University of California at Davis.
• Quantum Gravity Workshop: (University of New Brunswick, Fredricton)
  The organizers of this workshop (held in conjunction with the annual one-day Atlantic Relativity Mini-Conference) were Arundhati Gupta, Jack Gegenberg and Viqar Husain (UNB). It included six plenary (90-minute) talks and was attended by about 25 researchers and graduate students.
• Sixth Annual Bluenose Numerical Analysis Day: (Cape Breton University, Sydney, Nova Scotia)
  This successful meeting was held for the first time outside the traditional settings of Halifax and Wolfville, thanks to Dr. George (Shaohua) Chen (CBU) and co-organizers Pat Keast (Dalhousie), Paul Muir (St. Mary's), Ronald Haynes, Richard Karsten and Holger Teisman (Acadia). Its kenote speaker was Dr. Steve Ruuth (Simon Fraser University).

IV. Fourth AARMS Summer School (July 17 - August 14, 2005):

As I indicated in the AARMS Newsletter of November 2004, the AARMS Summer School has now moved to Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It is most ably directed by Dr. Tony Thompson (Dalhousie University) and Dr. Renzo Piccinini (University of Milan and Dalhousie University). The opening reception was held at Howe Hall on July 17. Some 30 enthusiastic and highly motivated graduate students from all over the world were greeted by Tony and given a warm welcome by Dr. Sam Scully (Vice-President (Academic) and Provost of Dalhousie University) and Dr. Hermann Brunner (Director of AARMS).

The following courses are being offered this year:

• Convexity and Fixed Point Algorithms in Hilbert Space (Heinz Bauschke, University of Guelph)
• Integral Geometry of Convex Bodies and Polyhedra (Daniel Klain, University of Massachusetts, Lovell)
• The Mathematics of Finance (Wolfgang Runggaldier, University of Padova, Italy)
• Mathematical Statistics (Bruce Smith, Dalhousie University).

For more information see the school's website.

V. COPAL, University of New Brunswick:

Following a recent decision by UNB at Fredericton to approve the Centre for Research in Operator Algebras (COPAL) and contribute funds for graduate students, AARMS is pleased to provide partial support to this regional research centre. Its founding director is Dr. Dan Kucerovsky, and it is guided by an international advisory board.

VI. Upcoming AARMS Events:

• Symposium in Honour of Dr. Chris Field (Dalhousie University, August 15, 2005)
  Organizer: David Hamilton (Dalhousie University)
• NPCDS Workshop on Spatial/Temporal Modeling for Marine Ecological Systems: (Dalhousie University, August 17-19, 2005)
  Organizers: Michael Dowd, Chris Field, Joanna Mills Fleming (Dalhousie), and Rick Routledge (Simon Fraser).

Details on these two events can be found at www.mathstat.dal.ca ("Special Events").

• APICS 2005: AARMS Symposium and Workshop: (Acadia University, October 21-23, 2005)
  • Symposium on Graph Theory and Combinatorics
    Organizer: Nancy Clarke (Acadia)
  • Workshop on Robust and Computationally Intensive Statistical Models
    Organizer: Hugh Chipman (Acadia).