Three Trends in SIAM’s 2024 Conferences and Programs

When I reflect on the SIAM conferences and events of this past year, three words come to mind: destination, industry, and careers.

Destination likely played a role in attracting record numbers of registrants for the 2024 SIAM Conference on Uncertainty Quantification (UQ24), which took place in Trieste, Italy, in February, and the 2024 SIAM Conference on Applied Linear Algebra (LA24), which was held in Paris, France, in May. UQ24 attendees were treated to glorious views of the Gulf of Trieste from the converted maritime station where the plenary talks and panels occurred, and from the Savoia Excelsior Palace that once welcomed dignitaries who visited the Austro-Hungarian Empire. LA24 attendees, meanwhile, enjoyed Paris in the spring while cruising the River Seine. Both conferences—which featured excellent talks by leading researchers in their fields—were made possible by the vision and tireless work of local organizing committees, led by Gianluigi Rozza at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste and Laura Grigori at Sorbonne University in Paris (now at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland). Meeting logistics were managed by SIAM’s professional conference staff under the guidance of SIAM Conference Director Lisa Dyson, with assistance from local agencies that will likely help with future European events. SIAM also extends its thanks to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and U.S. Department of Energy, as well as all conference sponsors, for their support.

I predict that next year’s destination conference will be the Third Joint SIAM/CAIMS Annual Meetings (AN25), which will take place at the Palais des congrès de Montréal in Québec, Canada, from July 28-August 1, 2025 (a bit later in the summer than usual). The conference will be co-located with the 2025 SIAM Conference on Control and Its Applications (CT25), 2025 SIAM Conference on Computational Geometric Design (GD25), and 2025 SIAM Conference on Applied and Computational Discrete Algorithms (ACDA25); the program will also include tracks from the SIAM Activity Groups on Data Science; Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; and Supercomputing. SIAM is excited to join our colleagues from the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society (CAIMS) in person, especially since the 2020 joint conference that was originally planned for Toronto was forced to pivot to a virtual format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Montréal is famous for its summer festival season, which will be in full swing during AN25, and I’m sure that many of you will be tempted to come a little early or leave a little later to enjoy the atmosphere. If you’re a student, consider applying to the 2025 Gene Golub SIAM Summer School on frontiers in multidimensional pattern formation, which is scheduled for August 11-26, 2025, at Concordia University in Montréal.

Moving on to industry, SIAM is taking important steps to honor the “I” in our acronym. These steps begin with an increase in the representation of industry-based mathematics at SIAM events. 2024 SIAM conferences featured invited plenary talks by researchers at Amazon, Apple, Google, Merck, and Meta, and both UQ24 and the 2024 SIAM Annual Meeting (AN24) boasted several types of industry career panels. Additionally, the SIAM Industry Committee debuted an exciting new format at AN24: the Industry Lightning Symposium, with brief and accessible talks by Gwen Spencer of Netflix and Wotao Yin of the Alibaba Group. Look for the continuation of this format at AN25, which will also see an invited lecture by the first-ever awardee of the SIAM Industry Prize. The Industry Committee will host other industry-focused events throughout the coming year, including industry panels at non-SIAM conferences and periodic virtual offerings.

Beyond the realm of SIAM conferences, the 2024 Mathematical Problems in Industry (MPI) Workshop assembled teams of professors, postdoctoral researchers, and students to work on real-world problems alongside company representatives from RTX Corporation, University of Delaware’s Graduate College, and Vironix Health under the direction of Taras Lakoba of the University of Vermont. Next year’s MPI Workshop will be directed by Marina Chugunova of Claremont Graduate University and dedicated to the memory of Ellis Cumberbatch, a longtime champion of mathematics’ importance to industry.

This past October, the 2024 SIAM Quantum Intersections Convening united quantum-curious mathematical scientists from industry and beyond with leading quantum science experts for a three-day interactive workshop in Tysons, Va. A recap of this NSF-sponsored gathering is available on SIAM News Online.

Finally, you may have noticed an increased focus on careers at SIAM events this year, specifically involving mathematics practitioners in non-university settings. Many individuals who apply math to real-world problems do not necessarily have “mathematics” in their job titles, even though it’s central to what they do. You’ll see them listed on company rosters as analysts, data scientists, programmers, engineers, economists, actuaries, and so forth. An increasing percentage of our community members pursue these types of positions after earning their final degrees. If you have a passion for mathematics in the context of education, research, engineering, products, processes, design, logistics, accounting, or any other endeavor, SIAM will help you build a satisfying and impactful career.

To that end, SIAM held career panels at AN24, the 2024 SIAM Conference on the Life Sciences, and the 2024 SIAM Conference on Mathematics of Planet Earth, as well as an in-person career fair at the recent 2024 SIAM Conference on Mathematics of Data Science (MDS24), which took place in Atlanta, Ga., this October. In addition to organizing a career panel at AN24, SIAM’s Career Opportunities Committee hosted a virtual resume-building workshop before the MDS24 career fair that matched 53 established mentors with more than 150 student and early-career SIAM members. During this daylong event, mentors offered critical advice about how prospective applicants can turn their academic CVs into industry-suitable resumes, what they should include in their cover letters, and how they can describe their skills to appeal to potential employers.

It is an exciting time to be an applied mathematician or computational scientist, given the myriad ways to build your career and equally many opportunities to contribute to society. We at SIAM look forward to helping you discover what’s possible.