Third Annual Meeting of the Prairie Network for Research in Mathematical Sciences

The mandate of the Prairie Network for Research in the Mathematical Sciences (PNRMS) is to encourage and advance research in the mathematical sciences in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The primary objective of this meeting is to build research connections between faculty and students in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, in the context of the Third Annual Meeting of the PNRMS. The themes of the meeting include four broad areas: pure mathematics, applied mathematics & mathematical physics, statistics, and industrial & computational mathematics.

The first two days of the meeting will feature invited plenary talks in the four theme areas. We plan to have four plenary talks (one in each of the theme areas) with four parallel streams of contributed talks. Researchers representing pure as well as applied directions will brush elbows with industry experts (including some of our plenary speakers). The meeting will help create an atmosphere conducive to interdisciplinary collaborations, and it will contribute to the goal of promoting interdisciplinary research and forging collaboration with industry.

The third day will feature a student workshop, with the dual aims of giving graduate and senior undergraduate students a clear sense of the nature of mathematical research, as well as encouraging them to pursue a career in the mathematical sciences. Students will be exposed to the wide array of possibilities for applying their mathematical skills to pure and applied research in both academia and industry. The workshop will follow the model of the successful GRACE Workshop held at the Second PNRMS Annual Meeting in Brandon in 2008. The topics of the student workshop will be aligned with the four theme areas of the meeting and will cover a diverse array of research pursued by faculty at the two member institutions of the PNRMS in Saskatchewan and the three member institutions of the PNRMS in Manitoba.

The conference will be centered around a series of talks in several broad theme areas of particular interest to U of S faculty members with the goal to enhance and encourage interactions and collaborations between the U of S, the U of R, and the three universities in Manitoba. Contributions will also be welcome from researchers from other areas, as well as from postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and senior undergraduates. Plenary speakers will be chosen to complement the theme areas. By highlighting theme areas and by attracting top plenary speakers, we expect that participation in the Saskatoon meeting will be increased over the previous meetings. Last year's meeting attracted over 40 participants.

The conference will highlight the following topics:

• Pure Mathematics: Mathematics of Computer Algebra; Applications of Algebra to Cryptography; Lie Algebras and Representation Theory; Real Algebraic Geometry and Applications
• Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Physics; Classical and Quantum System Modeling; Signal Processing; Partial Differential Equations and their Applications; Integrable Systems and Solitons; Quantum and Classical Information; Inverse Problems; Optimization
• Statistics: Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Biomedical Statistics; Information Processing;
• Communication Networks Modeling; Statistical Mechanics Models of Complex Chemical, Physical, and Biological Systems
• Industrial and Computational Mathematics: Programming and Numerical Algorithms for High-Performance Computing; Rational Design of Catalytic Converters for Carbon Sequestration; Oil Reservoir Simulation

The Student Workshop is aimed at senior undergraduate and graduate students, with the dual aims of giving the students a clear sense of the nature of mathematical research, as well as encouraging them to pursue a career in the mathematical sciences. The topics covered in the Workshop represent a diverse array of mathematical research pursued by mathematicians at the five member institutions. The goal of the student workshop is to expose students to an array of research areas, and to give them a feel for what contemporary research in the mathematical sciences is like. We expect there to be four research talks of an introductory nature given by a mixture of junior and senior faculty, followed by an informal panel Q&A session that is career oriented. Feedback from students at the previous meetings suggests that they particularly appreciate the Q&A session. The topics of the faculty presentations will mirror the themes of the conference. For the area of pure mathematics, M. Bremner will deliver an introductory lecture on lattice basis reduction and applications to cryptography. For the area of applied mathematics and theoretical physics, we plan to invite an industrial scientist to discuss the demand for applied mathematics research in a high-tech start-up environment. For the area of statistics, we hope to have a faculty member from the School of Public Health deliver an introductory lecture about biostatistics. For the area of industrial and computational mathematics, R. Spiteri will give a presentation on MITACS and its programs, and the similarities and differences between academia and industry.