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September 06, 2005
Dr. Douglas Arnold, Director, Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, University of Minnesota, 8/31/05
Dr. Douglas N. Arnold is Director of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Arnold's research interests include numerical analysis, partial differential equations, mechanics, and in particular, the interplay between these fields. Much of his work has concerned finite element methods, with the main applications being to the numerical simulation of elastic plates and shells, and also of incompressible fluids. Recently he has been working in computational relativity, with the long-term goal of the numerical simulation of massive astrophysical events, such as black hole collisions, and the resulting gravitational radiation emission.
The Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) is a national research institute established in 1982 by the National Science Foundation. The primary mission of the IMA is to increase the impact of mathematics by fostering interdisciplinary research which links high caliber mathematics with important problems from other disciplines, technology, industry, and society. Allied with this mission, the IMA also aims to expand and strengthen the talent base engaged in mathematical research applied to or relevant to such problems. The IMA is located at the University of Minnesota, and is operated as a partnership between the National Science Foundation, the University of Minnesota, and a consortium of 50 affiliated universities, national laboratories, and corporations. The National Science Foundation recently extended the funding for the IMA to the period 2005-2010 with a grant of $19.5M, the largest mathematics research grant ever awarded by the NSF.
The IMA is a visitor-based institute. It does not have a permanent faculty, but instead brings around 1200 mathematicians and scientists every year to its Minnesota facilities to participate in its programs, and benefit from its highly charged, highly interdisciplinary environment. The major activity of the IMA each year is its thematic program, a 10-month period of concentration on a broad area of research, involving post-docs, long- and short-term visitors, workshops, tutorials, seminars, and other formal and informal activities. Recent programs have focused on Probability and Statistics of Complex Systems and the Mathematics of Materials and Macromolecules, and the IMA is about to begin its 2005-2006 thematic program on Imaging. The IMA also runs a variety of programs for training interdisciplinary mathematical scientists from the level of graduate students through senior scientists.
Posted by David Lemberg at September 6, 2005 11:36 AM Return to SCIENCE AND SOCIETY home page