By David Bressoud
Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the National Science Foundation-Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences (NSF-CBMS) Regional Research Conferences in the Mathematical Sciences.1 These conferences and the publication of the resulting monographs are conducted in cooperation with SIAM, the American Mathematical Society, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the American Statistical Association. This is an opportune moment to reflect on the series’ contributions thus far and update its requirements to better meet future needs.
The Regional Research Conference series began in 1969 with three distinctive features:
- Conferences are awarded across a diverse set of geographic locations and institution types
- Conferences run for five days and are organized around a single “principal lecturer” who delivers 10 lectures, offering insight into an exciting area of current research
- The lecturer produces a monograph based on his/her talks, enabling dissemination of conference information to a much wider audience.
The NSF currently funds up to 10 conferences per year. A description of past conferences, links to the monograph series, and information on proposal preparation are available online.
Beginning with conference proposals for 2020, several significant changes will occur. These include loosening the restriction that there be only one principal lecturer. The rationale behind this original stipulation—to provide a well-connected, focused flow that progresses from a basic introduction to detailed current research—is still important. Moving forward, the CBMS will allow up to three people to deliver the 10 lectures, provided that one “principal lecturer” coordinates the progression of these presentations.
While continuing to require the production of a monograph based on the 10 lectures, we will also require the submission of information for the CBMS website:
- Principal lecturers will be responsible for preliminary materials that include historical context, a reading list, basic definitions, relevant results, and an outline of the 10 forthcoming talks
- Principal lecturers will use prepared slides (e.g., PDF, PowerPoint, or Beamer) that they will submit to the CBMS by the end of the conference
- Conference organizers will record video of at least the 10 principal lectures, which the CBMS will make available on Vimeo or a comparable site
- Principal lecturers will be responsible for an expanded account of the 10 talks within 45 days of the conference’s conclusion.
The most effective conferences allocate large chunks of time for new researchers to interact with other attendees regarding questions and methods. With this in mind, conference organizers will now be required to describe the facilitation of this networking, whether through problem sessions, hands-on experiences with software, small group Q&A discussions, or other means.
It its earliest incarnation, the CBMS was solely responsible for deciding which conferences received funding; it still had a role in these decisions through 2017. The NSF has now completely taken over this task, which gives the CBMS a much more active role in identifying candidates for principal lecturer, matching them with institutions that might not normally host major research conferences and helping these institutions write competitive proposals. The CBMS has created an advisory board to assist in the identification of potential speakers and sites. Initial members include Susmita Datta (University of Florida), David Donoho (Stanford University), Bengt Fornberg (University of Colorado Boulder), Ken Ono (Emory University), and Mary Lou Zeeman (Bowdoin College). The board is intentionally weighted toward applied mathematics and statistics.
The NSF-CBMS Regional Research Conference series has a proud history. 231 monographs have been produced thus far, with another dozen in the pipeline. SIAM’s CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics has published 92 of these volumes. The first in this series was Garett Birkhoff’s The Numerical Solution of Elliptic Equations [2], while Doug Arnold’s Finite Element Exterior Calculus [1] is the most recent. Four volumes from the SIAM series have prompted second editions [5-7, 9], and three have sold over 10,000 copies each [3-4, 8]. Perhaps the most famous is Ingrid Daubechies’ Ten Lectures on Wavelets [3], based on her 1990 conference at the University of Lowell (now the University of Massachusetts Lowell), which has sold 17,000 copies and been cited almost 30,000 times.
As we collected input for future adjustments, we were heartened by the outpouring of support. While not everyone agreed on the best way forward, all participants communicated the value of these conferences — both in the past and for the future. We are grateful for the legacy of the past 50 years and the opportunity to reimagine this series for coming decades.
1 Support from NSF #1804259
References
[1] Arnold, D. (In production). Finite Element Exterior Calculus. In CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics (Vol. 92). Philadelphia, PA: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
[2] Birkhoff, G. (1972). The Numerical Solution of Elliptic Equations. In CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics (Vol. 1). Philadelphia, PA: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
[3] Daubechies, I. (1992). Ten Lectures on Wavelets. In CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics (Vol. 61). Philadelphia, PA: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
[4] Efron, B. (1982). The Jackknife, the Bootstrap, and other Resampling Plans. In CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics (Vol. 38). Philadelphia, PA: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
[5] Huber, P.J. (1996). Robust Statistical Procedures (2nd ed.). In CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics (Vol. 68). Philadelphia, PA: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
[6] Rheinboldt, W.C. (1998). Methods for Solving Systems of Nonlinear Equations (2nd ed.). In CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics (Vol. 70). Philadelphia, PA: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
[7] Spencer, J. (1993). Ten Lectures on the Probabilistic Method (2nd ed.). In CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics (Vol. 64). Philadelphia, PA: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
[8] Tarjan, R.E. (1983). Data Structures and Network Algorithms. In CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics (Vol. 44). Philadelphia, PA: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
[9] Temam, R. (1995). Navier-Stokes Equations and Nonlinear Functional Analysis (2nd ed.). In CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics (Vol. 66). Philadelphia, PA: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
David Bressoud is DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics at Macalester College. In 2017, he inherited the role of director of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences from Ron Rosier, who had shepherded the organization for almost 30 years.