SIAM Announces Newest Leadership

President-Elect

Carol S. Woodward

Affiliation:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) 

Candidate Statement:
SIAM has been, and continues to be, a strong professional resource for applied mathematicians and computational scientists in industry, government labs, and academia. SIAM’s conferences are frequently a place for connecting related work in differing applications and industries and are often the primary place where applied mathematicians go to build their professional networks. SIAM journals are at the top of their respective areas and are typically the first place many in our community go for high-quality papers. SIAM Activity Groups aid in connecting members with overlapping research interests and foster healthy research communities. In addition, SIAM Prizes and Awards recognize achievements in applied mathematics and bring prestige to applied and industrial mathematics world-wide. 

New challenges are facing our field today, and as the main society that serves it, SIAM must respond to these challenges while maintaining its high-quality support of the worldwide applied mathematics community. I expect we will see continued growth in the field as it supports explosive growth in data science and machine learning as well as continued growth in computational science throughout the world. Concurrently, we are seeing significant changes in high-end computer architectures that will also focus demand for new algorithms and heightened need for synergy between mathematicians, computer scientists, and applications scientists. Financially, decreasing journal subscriptions and open access requirements are challenging the journal revenue generation that SIAM relies on for much of its budget.

Through the office of SIAM President, I hope to help SIAM meet these challenges by supporting SIAM’s strong portfolios of journals, conferences, activity groups, prizes, geographic sections, educational support, and committees as they work to strengthen SIAM’s engagement with industrial applied mathematicians; expanding its conferences and networking opportunities throughout our international community; and increasing recognition for applied and industrial mathematics. This work needs to be done while promoting high standards of research and education in applied mathematics as part of an inclusive and diverse community.

Through my work with SIAM as Vice President-at-Large, Council member, officer in activity groups, and on several committees, I have seen the tremendous energy and engagement SIAM’s programs have fostered in our global community.

I look forward to putting this experience to work with SIAM’s many excellent volunteers and staff to meet our current and future challenges.

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Vice President-at-Large

Xiaoye Sherry Li

Affiliation:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Candidate Statement:

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Secretary

Karen Devine

Affiliation:
Sandia National Laboratories, retired

Candidate Statement:
My involvement with SIAM has enhanced my career in many ways: providing me with professional networking opportunities, giving me a broader perspective of the scientific community, and inviting me to serve the community. While these benefits of membership are less tangible than, say, reduced conference registration fees, they are far more valuable for professional growth and advancement. Enabling SIAM members to get involved early in their careers will propagate these benefits to the next generation of scientific researchers.

Board of Trustees

Liliana Borcea*

Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Candidate Statement:
In our world of rapidly developing technological discoveries, a modern and interdisciplinary approach to science is crucial for dealing with the ever-growing scope and complexity of problems. Most areas of science, engineering, and medicine are becoming dependent on mathematical and computational methodologies, and they require a versatile generation of scientists that can move easily between disciplines. SIAM has played a key role in applied mathematics through its journals, activity groups, and conferences. It has important activities such as student chapters and dissertation and best paper prizes that encourage students to be engaged in research and to pursue careers in applied mathematics. 

I have been a SIAM member since graduate school and it has been a privilege to serve on the board, the council, editorial boards, and committees. If elected, it would be an honor to continue serving the SIAM community as a member of the board. I am particularly interested in the involvement of SIAM in education, from the undergraduate to postdoctoral level. I believe that more can be done to attract American and international students to pursue a career in applied mathematics, through summer research programs, internships, and special sessions at SIAM conferences. I would also like to see SIAM play an even stronger role in raising awareness about interdisciplinary research, careers, and education collaboration opportunities in industry and labs.

Jan S. Hesthaven*

Affiliation:
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

Candidate Statement:
The solutions to many of the challenges we must confront, e.g., climate change, the energy transition, and the continued development of artificial intelligence to drive innovation in science and technology, are all deeply anchored in computational and applied mathematics. Furthermore, these rapid and thorough societal changes will require us to rethink education and necessitate an increased understanding of emerging advanced technologies, some of which will be truly transformative. This presents a unique opportunity for SIAM to lead the formation of a truly global community in which ideas, experiences, and opportunities are shared through its journals, its communication, and its outreach to society. It will be a privilege to continue to push for this development and position SIAM as a global partner to academia, industry, and policy makers during these challenging but exciting times.

Cynthia Phillips

Affiliation:
Sandia National Laboratories

Candidate Statement:
I have been impressed with the care all forms of SIAM leadership take financially, while constantly evolving SIAM programs and services. Thus, to the best of my knowledge, SIAM is in good shape overall. However, there are some ongoing and new challenges.

SIAM will eventually need publications policies around the use of AI, such as future, more capable versions of ChatGPT and its competitors. Even current ChatGPT versions can considerably improve a paper's English grammar. This is a service to authors who are not native English speakers and to the reviewers. However, other uses are more controversial. SIAM should closely follow policies that machine-learning conferences and other societies set, and eventually craft a SIAM-tailored, easily updated policy.

Conferences are a SIAM strength. SIAM has embraced international locations to support the many international members, while finding ways to maintain some financial stake in the conferences. However, some researchers are reducing their conference travel post-pandemic, either to reduce their carbon footprint, because of reduced travel funding, or because of decreased tolerance for the hassles of travel. I hope most researchers continue to attend their home SIAM conference, but they may not attend more than one a year. Conferences beyond the SIAM Annual Meeting might consider including more special student events to grow the next generation of attendees. Also, it would be nice to find some innovative ways to encourage more industrial participation in conferences. The connection to industry, and the real-world problems it faces, is a potential way to distinguish SIAM conferences. Could a conference use a minitutorial slot and funding to run sessions that encourage interaction between industrial members and academic members? These could be tutorials on industry issues, problem sessions, or including a small industrial section of a traditional minitutorial. Funding might be particularly important as some industries cut back on travel funding. 

I look forward to seeing the output of the new SIAM Activity Group on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. I hope it can suggest experience-tested, even science-based, methods for improving participation and success across all dimensions of diversity.

Council Members-at-Large

Elizabeth Cherry*

Affiliation:
Georgia Institute of Technology

Candidate Statement:
It is an honor to be nominated for a second term on the SIAM Council. I have been a SIAM member since I organized my first minisymposium as a graduate student in 2000, and throughout my career I have been proud to call SIAM my professional home where I have found guidance together with new colleagues and research activities. I want SIAM to play that same role in the lives of new as well as established practitioners in applied and industrial mathematics and adjacent fields. Thus, it would be a privilege to continue to serve SIAM in this role, both in helping it to maintain its prominence as a global leader and to help it address new challenges and opportunities. 

My first term on the Council began at the height of the global pandemic, when SIAM had to adapt quickly to changes in the way we taught and learned, collaborated, attended conferences, and networked. Although the worst of COVID thankfully is in the past, new challenges have arisen that SIAM must face, and as part of the Council I would like to continue helping it to strengthen its position as a global leader. For instance, while in-person experiences have resumed, a major challenge moving forward is how to integrate the best of remote experiences—including greater inclusivity, lower travel costs, and reduced environmental impact—into our professional interactions. As another example, continued changes to the publishing landscape, including increased open-access requirements for authors and continued reductions in funding for libraries, will require careful navigation. In addition, the rise of tools relying on large language models, such as ChatGPT, are already changing the face of education and research. SIAM will have an important role to play in providing guidance for the responsible use of these tools in teaching and scholarship. 

At the same time it faces these new challenges, SIAM continues to address other areas of importance where I would like to contribute, including outreach. For example, as has been increasingly acknowledged, engaging the community worldwide is of paramount importance. Talent and passion know no geographic boundaries, and SIAM should continue to increase its global membership and leadership, co-sponsor international conferences, organize new geographic sections, and partner with similar organizations around the world. Similarly, SIAM remains committed to broadening its membership with students, industrial mathematicians, the broader scientific and engineering community, and members of historically underrepresented groups and is actively working to engage more fully with the widest mathematical community. 

My three years on the Council during a period of great changes in the world have broadened my perspective and prepared me to contribute further. I would be delighted to serve a second term to engage with SIAM in continuing to address these areas and many more.

Hans De Sterck*

Affiliation:
University of Waterloo

Candidate Statement:
As the main international professional society in applied and computational mathematics, SIAM plays a crucial role in the professional life of our research community, and in shaping the influence of mathematics throughout society.

As a SIAM Council member over the past three years, I have enjoyed dedicating my skills and energy to help shape the directions of SIAM in terms of its scientific policies and activities, and I would be thrilled to gain your support to continue my engagement as a Council member for another term. Since the landscape of research and applications in computational and applied mathematics keeps on evolving rapidly, there is no shortage of topics that will require the Council's specific attention over the coming years. As part of this, I would be happy to contribute to setting SIAM's directions and initiatives in various areas: the evolving environment for publishing scientific research, including SIAM's positioning with respect to open access publishing and reproducibility; how to effect real change in improving equity and accessibility to education and research careers for underrepresented groups; and effective conference formats in the post-pandemic world. I hope to be able to make useful contributions to these discussions, aided by my broad international experience with academic positions held in Belgium, U.S., Canada, and Australia; my interdisciplinary view on research; my long-time experience serving on the editorial board of one of SIAM's journals; and my experience as an officer of SIAM activity groups and as a co-chair of a large SIAM conference.

It goes without saying that SIAM, with its leading journals and conferences, is a great asset to our scientific community. I would be honored if I could contribute to further building out the reach and effectiveness of the society as a member of the SIAM Council.

Judith Hill

Affiliation:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Candidate Statement:
SIAM’s goal of advancing the use of applied mathematics in a breadth of problems across a range of engineering and scientific disciplines continues to be of great importance. Achieving this goal relies on having an engaged membership representing many diverse viewpoints—both now and in the future. 

As a SIAM Council member, in addition to supporting SIAM’s overarching goals, I would champion ways that SIAM can increase its engagement with its current student members and chapters and raise awareness with future students. This engagement could come in many forms including thinking more broadly about how to increase student participation in our various conferences beyond technical presentations, fostering member-to-student mentoring, and how to encourage professional member participation in student chapter activities at universities.

Providing additional focus on student members serves two purposes. First, the students of today should be both our future SIAM professional members and our future workplace colleagues; demonstrating to them the value of their professional society and of applied mathematics more broadly will help ensure that SIAM and our profession remain vibrant in the future.  And second, to achieve our goal of ensuring that we have diverse viewpoints representing many experiences in our profession, supporting our student members is one avenue to ensuring that we retain as many perspectives as possible.

Andrea Walther

Affiliation:
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Candidate Statement:
Bridging the gap between mathematical theory and real-world applications forms the core motivation of my mathematical research. To achieve this goal, a vital interaction between mathematics and practitioners is indispensable. SIAM, as the leading international society for applied and industrial mathematics, supports this exchange with a unique infrastructure including high-quality conferences and workshops, top-ranked journals, and influential book series. 

For this reason, I joined SIAM in 2011 and have contributed to SIAM activities in various roles since then. In the future, severe challenges from a broad spectrum must be faced to maintain the success of SIAM: incorporating and covering machine learning in mathematical research, providing network possibilities and face-to-face conferences with a carbon footprint as small as possible, increasing the accessibility of publications for researchers all over the world, and supporting the professional development of young scientists in increasingly demanding surroundings. I believe that my experience as a board member of GAMM, where we are confronted with similar challenges, will help me to serve on the SIAM Council. It would be an honor for me to be elected.