The European Mathematical Society

 Ari Laptev
 EMS President

1. Mathematics Infrastructure

After some persuasion, Brussels has agreed to acknowledge infrastructures in Mathematics. At the end of July, EU published a €10M call on "Infrastructures for Mathematics and its interfaces with science, technology and society at large" with a deadline on December 3, 2009. On behalf of the EMS, ERCOM and the EMS Applied Math. Committee, a small committee was set up whose members were Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, Mario Primicerio and myself. Later this committee was increased to include Gert-Martin Greuel (Oberwolfach) who will chair the EMS ERCOM committee from January 2010, Maria J. Esteban (President of SMAI) and Thibaut Lery (European Science Foundation).
One of the tasks of this committee was to identify the partners of the project. This was not easy since Brussels had limited the number of European partners allowed to 25.
Ultimately we had to make difficult choices in our effort to find a balance, by taking into consideration complicated geographical, scientific and pure/applied aspects between the different institutions.
Here is the final list of involved centers.

Contractual partners: ESF (France), EMS (Finland), Imperial College London (UK), IHES (France), University of Florence (Italy), FSMP (France), MFO (Germany), IML (Sweden), ICM (Poland), MATHEON (Germany), CRM (Spain), ECMI (Netherlands).
Associate partners: CIRM (France) OCIAM (UK), FKZ Kaiserslautern (Germany), Banach Center (Poland), WIS (Israel), MACSI (Ireland), ARIM (Hungary), ESI (Austria), CIM (Portugal), MASSEE (Greece), USC (Spain), CIAM (Sweden), INDAM (Italy), Newton Institute (UK), IMBM (Turkey), EURANDOM (Netherlands), ICMAT (Spain).
International partners: EIMI (Russia), MITACS (Canada), MSRI (USA), IMA (USA), MCM (China), TIFR (India), IMPA (Brazil), Univ of Tokio (Japan), RIMS Kyoto (Japan), Fudan University (China), Hong Kong UST (Hong Kong), Univ. of Pretoria (South Africa).

The scientific lead of the project will be taken by EMS. The ESF will be responsible for the administrative management. Most of funding will flow through the ESF so that partners will not have to bother with bureaucratic details. Some money will go directly to EMS and MATHEON.
The only difference between contractual partners and associate partners (apart from ESF EMS and MATHEON) is that contractual partners will be responsible for writing reports on projects that are assigned to them. All the partners will be represented on the Governing Board of the project.

Although €10M is not very much, this project is a first step in building European Infrastructure for Mathematics. If this project is successful, there is a hope that future infrastructure funding would be much more substantial.

Our aim is that every member of the European Mathematical community would be able to benefit from this project.

Activities that can be financed are: conferences, research invitations and visits, modelling weeks, workshops, study groups with industry, intensive joint research periods. They can be hosted at the node itself or at any centre of the region. Travel and subsistence costs will be reimbursed directly by ESF to the participants. Organizational costs and other costs carried by centres will be channelled through the ESF.
EMS will set up panels, responsible for advertising and selecting activities.
Substantial funding will go to developing Zentralblatt, European digital Mathematical library and web-pages.
Our International partners will be supporting the project by co-financing it through funding agencies of respective countries.

All that remains now, is that our application will be successful.

On behalf of the EMS I would like to express my gratitude to Thibaut Lery whose invaluable help in submitting the infrastructure proposal is highly appreciated.

2. Math&Industry

EMS is now leading an ESF Forward Look project "Mathematics & Industry". The Chairman of the EMS Applied Math. Committee, Professor Mario Primicerio, has assembled a committee that is working on this project. In April and in June there were two kick-off meetings in Rome and in Berlin, attached to the ESF PESC. During the last meeting in Strasbourg on November 16 -17, two online questionnaires were suggested.
One for Academia Partners and another for Industrial Partners.
For the success of the project, it is very important to understand different aspects of the relationship between Mathematics and Industry.
If you personally or your institution has an Industrial partner, I would be very grateful if both parties would fill in the questionnaire
Here is the link:
http://esf.icm.edu.pl/?hid=71adc6c3b064161bdbfa63b3da767011
You will need to fill in a username and password:
username: questionaire
password: questionaire

3. Meeting of Presidents of National Mathematical Societies.

On May 9-10 there was a meeting of Presidents of all European National Mathematical Societies. We are very grateful to the Banach Centre in Warsaw for kindly offering their facilities for the event. This was the second meeting of this kind. The first one was organized by the French Mathematical Society at the end of April 2008 in Luminy. The EMS EC believes that such meetings establish better contacts with National Societies and give the EMS a better understanding of the needs of European Mathematicians. A report on this meeting can be found here: http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/node/263.
The next meeting will be on 17-18 April 2010 in Bucharest, Romania.

4. EMS Council meeting

The next EMS Council meeting will be in Sofia on July 10-11, 2010. The EMS needs candidates for new Executive Committee members. Please send me possible names.

After the Council meeting, on July 11-12, our Bulgarian colleagues organize a conference on ”Math in Industry”.

The material for the EMS Council will be posted on the web site
http://www.math.ntnu.no/ems/council10/

5. Zentralblatt

I would like to remind every EMS individual member of the possibility of having an individual password in order to gain free access to Zentralblatt. Please use this opportunity. Zentralblatt is continuously developing in order to serve our community in the best possible way. In order to receive a login + password please contact Olaf Teschke (teschke@zblmath.fiz-karlsruhe.de).