Math for a Global Knowledge Society: AAAS
| Edward Aboufade, secretary of Section A of the AAAS |
This article is published in the December 2011/January 2012 issue of MAA FOCUS.
Four mathematics symposia will be part of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The 2012 meeting, with the theme “Flattening the World: Building a Global Knowledge Society,” is being held in Vancouver, Canada, February 16–20.
The AAAS, founded in 1848, is the world’s largest general scientific society, with more than 120,000 individual and institutional members. The organization is divided into 24 discipline-based sections, including Section A (Mathematics). Each year, Section A puts together the mathematics program at the AAAS meeting.
The meeting is organized into symposia, with three or more speakers and often a discussant who reflects on the talks given. Section A is sponsoring four symposia this year, featuring outstanding expository talks by prominent mathematicians and scientists:
Analogy in Applications of Mathematics and Statistics to Other Disciplines, organized by Benjamin Mann, Ayasdi (Scheduled speakers: Robert Calderbank, Gunnar Carlsson, Michael Deem, Richard Lenski, and Konstantin Mischaikow) Quantum Computing: Current Status and Future Prospects, organized by John Preskill, California Institute of Technology (Scheduled speakers: John Preskill, Michael Freedman, John Martinis, Scott Aaronson, and Charles Marcus) Excursions into the Mathematics of Medical Imaging, organized by Jonathan Taylor, Stanford University (Scheduled speakers: Jonathan Taylor, Michael Lustig, and Robert Adler) Illuminating the Obesity Epidemic with Mathematics, organized by Carson Chow, National Institutes of Health (Scheduled speakers: Carson Chow, Kevin Hall, and Boyd Swinburn)
Among the 175 symposia in the physical, life, social, and biological sciences, other symposia will be of interest to the mathematical community, including
Updating the International System of Units: The Foundation for Science and Technology Data to Knowledge to Action: Computational Science in a Global Knowledge Society Physical Sciences Approaches to Cancer: Growing Interdisciplinary Collaborations Human Rights: Quantitative Methods in the Age of Information and Communication Whole Earth Simulations for Decision-Making: Realistic Goal or Pipe Dream? Global Challenges to Peer Review of Scientific Publications Mismatched Resources: Underrepresented STEM Faculty in the Global Knowledge Society
For further information, including the schedule of talks, go to aaas.org/meetings.
The AAAS Annual Meeting is the showcase of American science, and the AAAS Program Committee wants to offer symposia each year on topics in pure and applied mathematics. For example, in recent years there have been symposia on subjects such as the collective behavior of animals and people, origami, energy, and the changing nature of mathematical proof.
The Steering Committee for Section A seeks organizers and speakers who can present substantial new material in an accessible manner to a large scientific audience at the 2013 meeting, which will be February 14–18 in Boston. We invite everyone to attend the Section A Committee business meeting in Vancouver on Friday, February 17, 2012, at 7:00 p.m., where we will brainstorm ideas for symposia. In addition, I invite you to send me, and encourage your colleagues to send me, ideas for future AAAS annual meeting symposia.
Current members of the Steering Committee for Section A are John H. Ewing, chair (Math For America); Jill Mesirov (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard); Kenneth Millett (University of California, Santa Barbara); Edward Aboufadel (Grand Valley State University); Warren Page (City University of New York); Tony Chan (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology); Mary Ellen Bock (Purdue University); and Joceline Lega (University of Arizona).