November 2022 Newsletter

Current and Upcoming Activities

Fall 2022 Long Program: Confronting Global Climate Change, September 19-December 9, 2022

November 30 - December 2, 2022: Remote Sensing for Climate Analysis

December 7-9, 2022: Economic Impacts of Climate Change

January 9-February 3, 2023: Interdisciplinary and Critical Data Science Motivated by Social Justice

This research collaboration workshop will partner with the Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (QSIDE), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that sits at the intersection of social science, humanities research, data science, and social justice. A hallmark of QSIDE work is interdisciplinary teamwork, which fosters collaboration between data scientists, social scientists, and community experts. This working group will gather the interdisciplinary expertise needed for current QSIDE projects together for data science for social good effort to 1) explore new statistical, computational, and qualitative approaches for analyzing social justice data, 2) to incorporate current scholarship on critical digital and data, and 3) to create infrastructure for and document these interdisciplinary collaborative efforts. We will open with a public minisymposium on critical data science practices and introduce data science for social justice work. We will then work to identify projects within our goal areas and create research teams. Throughout the program, we engage in discussions on the interdisciplinary and critical data science process and invite guest speakers related to the context areas of our explorations and/or to the methodologies we are using. The end of the program will conclude with a closing online minisymposium where participants will present work some, future directions, and open problems for the community.

February 20-24, 2023: Distributed Solutions to Complex Societal Problems Reunion Workshop

March 20-24, 2023: Randomness in Topology and its Applications

March 31-April 1, 2023: Assessing the Economic and Environmental Consequences of Climate Change

Spring 2023 Long Program: Mathematics, Statistics, and Innovation in Medical and Health Care, March 4-May 24, 2023

The quantification of medical and health care has brought a revolution to our lives with strong and long-lasting social and economic positive impact. This quantification stems from an exemplary synergy among mathematics, statistics, data science, medicine, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), and has been prompting the creation of new interdisciplinary areas across the various fields. While there has been an unprecedented growth and development in many scientific directions, there is a continuing need to further develop existing areas and set the foundations for new ones, as the underlying issues and challenges are evolving in rather complex and interlinked ways. Indeed, creating new therapies has experienced a fast growth already but efficiently funding such innovations and, in turn, making them available at large-scale has its own distinct challenges and demand for new business models and novel decision-making mechanisms. Furthermore, personalized medicine is rapidly becoming a main component of medical care but many issues directly related to the patients’ attitude, risk communication and individual treatment decisions have not been neither extensively studied nor quantified.

This long program aims at creating an interdisciplinary platform for knowledge exchange and debate among the various stakeholders: mathematicians, statisticians, physicians, economists, computer scientists, policy makers and researchers in decision science, data science, ML, AI, business, operations research and engineering. The focus will be more on newer interdisciplinary themes like risk management, funding and R&D of biomedical innovation, health care system design, health care delivery, insurance coverage, personalized diagnostics and treatments, telemedicine, medical cyber-physical systems and others.

Apply for Spring 2023 Research Membership

Fall 2023 Long Program: Algebraic Statistics and Our Changing World: New Methods for New Challenges, September 18-December 15, 2023

This program will focus on mathematical and statistical challenges arising in applications central to our changing world: (1) modeling environmental and ecological systems so that we can better understand the effects of climate change on these systems, (2) reimagining urban development and economic systems to address persistent inequity in daily living activities, and (3) providing theoretical underpinnings for modern statistical learning techniques to understand the implications of widespread use and for easy adaptation to novel applications. These are all hard challenges, but by bringing together biologists, social scientists, economists, statisticians, and mathematicians, and viewing the challenges collaboratively through the lens of algebraic statistics and more generally, nonlinear algebra, we can utilize this new perspective to address these challenges side-by-side.

Combinatorics, algebra, and geometry underlie many of the statistical challenges present in the three focus applications of the program. For example, modeling and inferring biological and social networks relies on statistical models that are fundamentally algebraic, and in many cases, estimation is done using combinatorial walks, while understanding modern statistical learning techniques relies on understanding principles rooted in algebraic geometry. Due to such underlying mathematical structures, algebraic and geometric methods have had a long history in statistics, from which the field of algebraic statistics has grown. By taking specific problems and identifying the underlying geometry and algebra, this program will pair domain-specific expertise and recent developments in algebraic statistics to develop interdisciplinary connections aimed at addressing new applications. The goal of the program is not only to see where we can make progress on these applications, but also identify the mathematical and computational tools that we will need in the future, that we should start developing today.

Apply for Fall 2023 Research Membership

Spring 2024 Long Program: Data-Driven Materials Informatics: Statistical Methods and Mathematical Analysis, March 4-May 24, 2024

Materials informatics is an emerging field defined by the use of simulation tools combined with methods from data sciences and machine learning to better understand materials properties and design innovative materials. The models which are considered cover an extremely wide range, from Schrödinger’s equation, which describes matter at the (sub)atomistic scale, to the equations of continuum mechanics. Mathematical sciences play a key role in materials informatics, both to construct the databases used to train machine learning algorithms (since these databases are made of reference simulation results), and to harness them in order to extract the most relevant information. The aim of this program is bring together a diverse scientific audience, both between scientific fields (physical sciences, materials sciences, biophysics, etc) and within mathematics (mathematical modeling, numerical analysis, statistics and data analysis, etc), to make progress on key questions of materials informatics.

Apply for Spring 2024 Research Membership

Summer 2023 Bootcamp for Undergraduates

The Summer Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics Accelerator (SUMSA) is an eight week mathematics and statistics summer bootcamp for undergraduates at U.S. colleges and universities which will be hosted by IMSI on the campus of the University of Chicago starting June 12, 2023. The aim of the program is to help prepare students for the rigors of graduate school in a mathematical science with lecture series and problems sessions taught by experienced postdocs and advanced graduate students from the University of Chicago. The primary focus of this bootcamp is basic coursework; in particular, the program is not an REU, which tends to be more project-oriented.

Accepted applicants will be offered travel support and housing on the University of Chicago campus, and a stipend. The bootcamp is only available to participants who are able to attend in person. Participants are expected to spend the full eight weeks in residence during the program. The deadline for applications is February 17, 2023.

IMSI Seeks Proposals for Scientific Activity

IMSI is currently seeking proposals for long programs, workshops, interdisciplinary research clusters, and other scientific activity with a deadline of March 15, 2023. Information about how to submit proposals can be found on the proposal overview page and the resources linked therein. There are currently openings for long programs in 2025-26 and beyond, and openings for workshops in the winter of 2024 and beyond. IMSI holds two proposal cycles per year, with deadlines of March 15 and September 15.

Season Two of Carry the Two Launches in January

IMSI’s podcast, Carry the Two will release the first episode of its second season on January 3. The second season will bring a new slate of guests discussing topics such as artificial language learning and the mathematical roots of building evolutionary trees.

Carry the Two is hosted by Sadie Witkowski and Ian Martin. You can find a list of episodes on IMSI’s website at https://www.imsi.institute/podcast/ and can listen and subscribe on podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Winter 2023 Communications Bootcamps

IMSI offers three free bootcamps intended to help early career researchers develop their communications skills. These bootcamps build skill sets applicable to academic and non-academic careers, and enhance individuals’ ability to realize their broader communication goals. The winter 2023 bootcamps will be offered via zoom on the evenings of February 9, 16, and 23. For more information and to register, see https://www.imsi.institute/communications-bootcamps.

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IMSI acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation
(Grant No. DMS-1929348)

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