http://www.birs.ca/location/birs/2016/5-day-workshops

Since 2006, the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) has welcomed participants with young children – providing family suites for approved participants and recommending certified local day care providers.

BIRS is happy to announce that, as of January 1, 2015, it will start providing financial support for workshop participants who are travelling with children and require day care services. BIRS’ day care support will extend to day care facilities within the town of Banff, but also to individuals hired by workshop participants to care for their children on the BIRS premises.

Please be advised that BIRS requires pre-approval for day care support and must be requested at least one month prior to the start of the workshop. Participants of upcoming workshops should contact their workshop organizers to obtain approval, and the BIRS staff ([email protected] or [email protected]) for additional details on this program.

Nassif Ghoussoub, FRSC
Scientific Director, Banff International Research Station
http://www.birs.ca/~nassif

BIRS Affiliate Casa Matemática Oaxaca (CMO) will be hosting these 21 workshops in 2015:

http://www.birs.ca/location/cmo/2015/5-day-workshops

We will be posting more information about the CMO, sending invitations, and accepting RSVPs, imminently.

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) and The University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Library are pleased to announce their collaboration on a project to preserve, archive and diffuse the lecture videos from BIRS’ weekly workshops at UBC Library’s digital repository, cIRcle.

BIRS is a place where the imperatives of collaborative and cross-disciplinary research in the mathematical sciences are addressed. Another one of its unique features is that it provides a fully-automated live video broadcasting and recording system for most of its scientific activities. On average, researchers record 20 lectures per week for 48 weeks of the year, totaling 1,000 files per year – all of which are freely available on the BIRS website.

BIRS’ collaboration with cIRcle provides robust and long-term preservation for these videos, as well an enhanced accessibility for scholarly researchers worldwide through UBC’s online library service. Their digital archival system will guarantee the content is discoverable and indexed in popular search engines, thus helping to increase the global reputation of BIRS.

“BIRS is delighted to have its lecture recordings at UBC’s digital repository. The UBC Library has the resources and expertise for proper long-term archiving and preservation of BIRS’s extensive scholarly output, so this is a big win for the world’s mathematical science community!” remarked BIRS’ Director and UBC professor, Dr. Nassif Ghoussoub.

The end result is the first large-scale project to digitally preserve and disseminate mathematical science research output in video format. BIRS is one of the world’s most prominent mathematical science research institutions. It maintains strong ties with UBC’s most prominent mathematicians, statisticians and computer scientists– its Board includes UBC President Arvind Gupta. Every year, about 2100 researchers representing 400 institutions from more than 60 countries, participate in BIRS’ scientific programs, creating a content-rich framework for sharing research, knowledge and information.

“This partnership represents an exciting opportunity to develop the kind of unique collections in cIRcle which showcase UBC’s research strengths and global profile,” says Bronwen Sprout, Digital Initiatives Coordinator for UBC Library. “In this instance, cIRcle is the destination for high quality mathematical peer reviewed research.”

The BIRS videos launched in cIRcle this summer and already boast more than 3,500 downloads. New videos continue to be digitally preserved and uploaded.

To view the current inventory of BIRS videos in cIRcle, visit https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/47157

For more information on UBC Library’s cIRcle visit https://circle.ubc.ca/

For more information on BIRS, visit https://www.birs.ca/

On June 11, the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) announced the selection of Math Team Canada 2014 – a team of six exemplary Canadian high school students – who will compete at the 55th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) from July 3 to 13, 2014 in Cape Town, South Africa.

From June 22 to July 5, the members of Math Team Canada 2014, along with their leaders, will attend BIRS’ 12th Summer IMO Training Camp, to participate in a two-week-long intensive training camp that will provide them the opportunity to practice Olympiad level problems under the guidance of some of Canada’s best IMO trainers and former medal recipients.

The IMO is the world championship high school mathematics competition, at which Math Team Canada can expect to be competing against the world’s best students from over 100 countries. Team Canada has been extremely successful in the past number of years and in 2012, the team received an outstanding six medals (three gold, one silver and two bronze), an impressive overall standing of fifth place overall in the world and an unprecedented achievement for Canada.

2014 Team Canada:

• Michael Chow, Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute (Toronto, ON)
• Caleb Ji, The Bear Creek School (Redmond, WA)
• Antonio Molina Lovett, École Sainte-Anne (Fredericton, NB)
• Qi Qi, Burnaby North S.S., (Burnaby, BC)
• ZhuoQun (Alex) Song, Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter, NH)
• Kevin Sun, Naperville Central High School (Exeter, NH)
• Alexander Whatley, North Houston School of Science and Mathematics (Houston,TX)
• Yang Rui Zhang, University Hill S.S., (Vancouver, BC)

Adult leaders of Math Team Canada 2014:

• Team Leader, Dr. David Arthur, gold medal winner as a Canadian contestant in IMO 2000
• Deputy Leader, Dr. Dorette Pronk, leader or deputy leader of successful Canadian IMO teams in 2001, 2005, 2009 and 2011
• Deputy Observer, Matthew Brennan, gold medal winner as a Canadian contestant in IMO 2012.