This award will support the participation of graduate students and postdocs in the "Seventeenth Riviere-Fabes Symposium" that will be held at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities from April 25-27, 2014.
This annual conference, of which the 2014 meeting will be the seventeenth in the series, celebrates the mathematical legacy of Nestor M. Riviere and Eugene B. Fabes by focusing on recent developments in analysis, especially in the field of partial differential equations. The 2014 program will feature four principal speakers (Alice Chang, Frank Merle, Maciej Zworski, and Alexandru Ionescu), each of whom will deliver a two-hour lecture. The program allows ample time for informal discussion among the participants.
The Symposium was established in memory of two University of Minnesota mathematicians, Nestor M. Riviere and Eugene B. Fabes. Both of them were analysts and did their graduate work together at the University of Chicago. After finishing his Ph.D. under Alberto Calderon in 1966, Riviere joined the School of Mathematics the same year. Fabes finished his Ph.D. under Antoni Zygmund in 1965 and spent two years at Rice University before coming to Minnesota in 1967. The two started a new era in classical analysis at Minnesota. In 1979, after cancer claimed Riviere's life at a young age, the department established the Nestor M. Riviere Lecture in his memory. The Riviere Lecture was supported by a fund established by private donations. When in 1997 Gene Fabes passed away, the families, friends, and students of these two mathematicians fully endorsed the idea of turning the Nestor M. Riviere Lecture into the Riviere-Fabes Symposium. With further financial support from interested people the symposium was formally established in 1998. For a number of past years the symposium is sponsored by the NSF. Broader impact of the past symposia: The broader impact of the past symposia lies in the dissemination and promotion of mathematical discovery and understanding, and broadening participation of under represented groups. In particular the following agencies were informed about the symposia: the Association for Women in Mathematics, which has the goal of encouraging women to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for women in the mathematical sciences; The National Organization of Mathematicians, which has as one of its main goals the promotion of the mathematical development of under-represented American minorities; The Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science, which states its mission as the encouragement of Chicano/Latino and Native American students to pursue graduate education and obtain the advanced degrees necessary for science research, leadership, and teaching careers at all levels. The NSF support gave young researchers without other funding the opportunity to participate at the conference. The organizing committee made every effort to make this funding opportunity known to the targeted groups by email, using both the Midwest PDE and the Riviere-Fabes mailing lists, which have been assembled over the past 16~years; and by posters which were sent to approximately 70 institutes and universities. In this way the results of the meetings were disseminated and contributed to the enhancement and improvement of scientific and educational activities. We have also, for the last two years, been allowed to use the NSF Institutes Diversity Database to advertise our symposia to members of underrepresented groups in that database with research interests close to those represented in each year's symposia. Intellectual merit of past symposia: We usually invite distinguished leaders in some areas to present two-hour talks and other renowned specialists and/or younger researchers to give one-hour talks. For example, during a recent International Congress of Mathematicians, August 19--27, 2010, our speaker Cedric Villani (in 2009) was awarded a Fields medal, another speaker Carlos Kenig (in 2007) gave a plenary address, and Tatiana Toro (a speaker in 2002) presented an invited lecture in the Analysis section. Three of the speakers in 2013, Assaf Naor, Marianna Csornyei, and Fedor Nazarov, gave invited lectures at the 2010 International Congress of Mathematicians in 2010. A fourth speaker from the 2013 Riviere-Fabes Symposium, Mihalis Dafermos, gave an invited lecture at the 2014 International Congress in Seoul. We changed the format of symposium in 2014 and decided to invite four two-hour speakers instead of two two-hour speakrers and four one-hour ones. In 2014 we wre were able to attract four extremely active mathematicians with recent, interesting work to report. The speakers included a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (Sun-Yung Alice Chang), two Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Chang and Maciej Zworski), and three speakers who were invited in the past to an ICM (Chang, Zworski, and Frank Merle). Outcomes: In 2014 the NSF grant DMS 1362668 provided $23850 for travel support of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from outside institutions to participate. The grant aimed to fund up to 30 such young mathematicians to a maximum of $750 each. Together with local funds from the University of Minnesota that we managed to find, this NSF grant allowed us to support the travel of 43 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from outside institutions. It is the standing policy of the Riviere-Fabes Symposium that theNSF-provided funds are used only for young participants without other NSF grants. The speakers are supported from local sources. All lectures were delivered at the highest level and draw considerable interest and attendance. Due to the apparent success of the new format we decided to keep it for future simposia as well.
