15.5 Million Dollar New NSF-Funded Math Institute -- First in New England

Brown University has officially announced that it has been awarded $15.5 million dollars from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a math institute, one of eight, and the only one in New England! Dr. Jill Pipher, the chair of Brown's Math Department, will be heading the institute, which will be known as the Institute for Computational and Experimental Mathematics (ICERM).

This is fantastic news and I have already congratulated Dr. Pipher. The scientific board that will be advising the new institute is outstanding and includes Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM, who is well-known to the INFORMS operations research communities. The Chair of the scientific board is Dr. Andrea Bertozzi of UCLA.

Dr. Pipher invited me to speak at the Brown University Symposium for Undergraduates in Mathematical Sciences (SUMS) back in 2007 and asked me to speak on operations research. My talk was titled "Operations Research and the Captivating Study of Networks and Complex Decision-Making."

I wish the institute much success as it develops its programs, with some preliminary ideas already posted on IRCEM's new website. I am certain that it will not only promote research but also diversity and undergraduate and graduate student experiences. As a recipient of 3 degrees in Applied Mathematics from Brown University, this is news that deserves a lot of celebrating!