Category: News Postings

A bit of site news: we’ve removed the conference calendar that used to reside at commalg.org/conference-calendar/. It apparently stopped working sometime recently, though we only just discovered it. The software that generated it is no longer supported, so for now we’ve decided to remove it.
What we don’t know is whether it will be missed. So please let us know: did you use the calendar? Would you like it to come back? You can leave a quick comment on this entry. We’d appreciate your feedback.

Recently there’s been something of an explosion of mathematical videos. Not only are there “popular math”-type videos (e.g. Vi Hart‘s videos on hexaflexagons and much more), the Simons Foundation has been posting a series of interviews with Deligne, Manin, and others, and more and more conferences are now recorded, such as the introductory workshop “Cluster Algebras and Commutative Algebra” at MSRI in August, and many many lectures of interest at BIRS in Banff (examples 1, 2, 3). These videos are great resources for the community, particular grad students and postdocs. You can “virtually” attend a conference today! Thanks to Irena Peeva for the prompt.

We’re saddened to announce that Shreeram S. Abhyankar passed away at his home on November 2. Abhyankar was a giant of twentieth-century mathematics, making deep contributions to algebraic geometry, commutative algebra, group theory, and combinatorics. He will be missed.

The Executive Committee of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) has established the AWM-Microsoft Research Prize in Algebra and Number Theory to highlight exceptional research in some area of algebra by a woman early in her career. The prize will be awarded every other year with the first prize presented at the AWM Reception at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore, MD in January 2014. Here’s the press release.

Luchezar Avramov, David Eisenbud, and Irena Peeva are organizing the 7-day MSRI Workshop “Representation Theory, Homological Algebra, and Free Resolutions”, Feb 11, 2013 to Feb 17, 2013. To apply for funding, you must register by Mon, Oct 15 2012. Graduate students and postdocs should arrange that their Ph.D. advisor e-mails a brief recommendation letter to the organizers.

Rodney Sharp writes, “I took the attached photo of David and Joan Rees on David’s 94th birthday (last Tuesday, May 29) at the care home where he now lives. It might remind some users of the conference we had about 14 years ago in Exeter to celebrate David’s 80th year, and the one we had 24 years ago to mark his 70th birthday.”
Many thanks, Rodney. It’s good to see them both.  For those who may not know much about David Rees FRS, here is some background: wikipedia, mathscinet, math. genealogy.

David Eisenbud has been named as the next director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, California. His four-year term starts August 1, 2013. (He was previously Director of MSRI 1997-2007.) Congratulations, David! It’s great news for the visibility of commutative algebra and algebraic geometry, as well as for mathematics in general.

The Simons Foundation has announced the first round of Simons Fellows in Mathematics (previously on commalg.org), and it includes a number of our colleagues in commutative algebra and closely related fields. Congratulations to Robert Guralnick, Srikanth Iyengar, Irena Peeva, and Bernd Ulrich on this honor! (Hope we didn’t accidentally miss anyone!)

From Moty Katzman:

The School of Mathematics at the University of Sheffield is hiring a post-doctoral research assistant to work on an EPSRC funded project entitled “Common threads in the theories of local cohomology, D-modules and tight closure, and their interactions.”
The position will last for three years from September 1st, 2012 to June 30th, 2015. The successful applicant will have no teaching duties and will devote their time to study problems originating from prime characteristic methods, local cohomology modules and D-modules. The salary is approximately GBP 28,251 (USD 45,200) with an additional GBP 5,000 for travel expenses for the three year period. Continue reading “Postdocs at Sheffield”

From Sara Faridi:

These postdoctoral positions were not advertised on the AMS website, so I am posting a link here for anyone who is interested. The application procedures for the two types of postdocs available are somewhat different than normal, so please read the instructions carefully.
http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/positions.html

From Aldo Conca:

At the following web page
http://cofund.altamatematica.it/
you find the second call for the INdAM post-doc fellowships in mathematics. These are 2-years post-doc grants payed according to the EU standards.
The dead-line is december 20. Some grants are reserved to non-italians. There will be a third call in the spring 2012.