INI NEWS BULLETIN
June 2018

Dear friends, associates and supporters of INI,

A very warm welcome to you from all the team here at the Institute. As the summer solstice approaches we have been enjoying some fine weather here in Cambridge: the perfect accompaniment to our ongoing schedule of workshops, programmes and one-off events.

As you will see from item #1 below we are particularly excited to share with you newton.ac.uk's newly redesigned menu system. Beyond that we have six further updates to report in this edition, each providing a snippet of the key stories to bear in mind throughout June and beyond.

Remember that you can follow INI online via our Facebook page, Twitter feed and Instagram account. You can also keep tabs on our "This Week's Seminars" page - where you will find a regularly updated schedule of all the talks delivered here, as well as live stream links too.

Would you like to direct colleagues or associates to our newsletter sign-up page? Simply forward them this link: bit.ly/inisignup

News bulletin contents:
1. REDESIGN: New website menu system now live
2. EVENTS: INI hosts the M2D (Models to Decisions) annual conference 2018
3. WORKSHOPS: The RGM (2015) and MQI (2013) programmes return this July
4. PROGRAMMES: what to expect in Q3 and Q4 of 2018
5. DOCUMENTS: GFS programme report published
6. APPOINTMENTS: DAMTP promotes VMV organiser Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb to professor
7. DATA POLICY: INI and GDPR 

1. REDESIGN: New website menu system now live

Over the past weeks our communications and IT teams have been busy redesigning the menu system on www.newton.ac.uk. Although this may seem a straightforward task, the scale of the data hosted on the site has necessitated a shrewd approach to the alterations we've made.

We hope that this new arrangement makes the key information on the site more logical to access for old and new users alike. If you have any feedback please do get in touch with us to let us know your thoughts.

2. EVENTS: INI hosts the M2D (Models to Decisions) annual conference

From 11-14 June INI was pleased to host the annual M2D conference, this year titled "Decision making under uncertainty" and run in conjunction with the ongoing Uncertainty Quantification (UNQ) programme.

Attracting specialists and academics from fields as diverse as statistics, philosophy, climate science, economics, engineering and film studies, the aim of the conference was to "provide a forum for researchers and decision makers from a wide range of disciplines and working backgrounds... to discuss topical challenges... where decisions are informed by models". The conference programme was organised by UNQ organisers Professor Peter Challenor (Exeter) and Dr Catherine Powell (Manchester).

The Plenary Speakers were Professor Jason Lowe (Met Office), Dr Daniel Williamson (Exeter) and Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter (Cambridge).

INI would like to thank all of those involved for making this exciting interdisciplinary event such a tremendous success.

3. WORKSHOPS: The RGM (2015) and MQI (2013) programmes return this July

Two past programmes, Random Geometry (2015) and Mathematical challenges in quantum information (2015) return to INI in July. These follow-up workshops aim to allow participants to discuss and re-evaluate their respective subjects in view of new developments in the field. The details of each are as follows:

RGM follow up
9-20 July 2018
The subject of random geometry has evolved considerably during the programme of the same name which took place at the Newton Institute in spring 2015, and in the intervening months. For instance, a unification of the discrete and continuous perspectives for random surface models (eg random planar maps and Liouville quantum gravity) has been greatly advanced; new methods have been introduced in the study of disordered systems and their phase transitions; and new directions of research have emerged such as a rigorous investigation of Yang--Mills models.The goal of the two-week workshop will be to allow researchers worldwide and from all career stages to catch up on these developments, and to plan for future research directions of the subject by capitalising on recent progress.The workshop will combine a series of mini-courses with invited talks over a period of two weeks.

Beyond I.I.D. in information theory
23-27 July 2018
The week-long workshop "Beyond i.i.d. in Information Theory" at the Isaac Newton Institute, will bring together the classical and quantum Shannon theory communities working on one-shot and finite block length information theory, with coding theorists, researchers into quantum thermodynamics and other resource theories, and mathematical physicists, whose work provides insights into entropic quantities and their properties. These are timely areas of research and interactions between them are increasingly important. Moreover, this focus provides a follow-up to the programme "Mathematical Challenges in Quantum Information".

4. PROGRAMMES: what to expect in Q3 and Q4 of 2018

As highlighted in previous bulletins, INI will be hosting four programmes in 2018. With UNQ and STS soon to conclude, we are now looking ahead to Homotopy harnessing higher structures (July-December 2018) and Scaling limts, rough paths, quantum field theory (September-December 2018).

Full abstracts of both programmes are quoted below, along with links to the associated workshops.

Homotopy harnessing higher structures (July -December 2018)
WORKSHOPS: http://www.newton.ac.uk/event/hhh/workshops
The last fifteen years have seen an upheaval in algebraic topology. Old problems have been solved using new methods, new methods led to new ideas, new ideas to new problems, and new problems to new  theorems. The result has been a renaissance.
In retrospect, we can see that this fundamental change occurred as the mathematicians in the field confronted and solved an array of related problems. These included the task of making sense of Witten's insights on the elliptic genus, of finding a provable formulation of Mumford's conjecture, the related development of topological field theories, attempts to make rigorous Morava's program using the  geometry of formal algebraic groups to organize stable homotopy theory, and the solution of the Kervaire invariant problem and subsequent reintegration of equivariant homotopy theory. In each case, there was enormous progress after the introduction and the study of higher homotopical  structure.
This programme will highlight four related themes: the new algebraic topology of  differentiable manifolds, derived representation theory and equivariant homotopy theory, the interplay between arithmetic geometry and stable homotopy theory, and the analysis of  foundations in these new contexts "the homotopy  theory of homotopy theory". The four areas are bound together by the use of higher structures, but they do have slightly different characters: some study objects, others are an analysis of methods. This interplay is intentional: objects inspire methods and methods make objects accessible. The intent is to develop the community of scholars from these diverse, but overlapping, areas of algebraic topology, both through a programme of long-term visitors and a sequence of workshops, one each for the various themes.

Scaling limts, rough paths, quantum field theory (September-December 2018)
WORKSHOPS: http://www.newton.ac.uk/event/srq/workshops
The goal of statistical mechanics is to calculate the properties, at macroscopic length scales, of a system composed of a large number of interacting microscopic subsystems. To formalise having a large ratio between largest and the smallest length scales, limits such as infinite volume limits, hydrodynamic limits and scaling limits are studied. These limits are random fields or, in cases where there is dynamics, solutions of nonlinear partial differential equations driven by white noise. Such limits can have symmetries that are not present before taking the limit; for example infinite volume limits may be translation invariant and scaling limits by construction are scale invariant. Increased symmetry leads to very special, beautiful, objects such as euclidean quantum field theories and specific partial differential equations driven by white noise. Then statistical mechanical models can be classified into universality classes characterised by these limits. We think of this as a search for far reaching extensions of the central limit theorem and the theory of large deviations. The possible limits are characterised by very few parameters. A new feature of these extensions is that limits have to be expressed in the correct variables because divergences are inherent in limits that have enhanced symmetries. This is the famous problem of renormalisation in quantum field theory. Divergences arise from the volume of non-compact symmetry groups of translations and dilations. Likewise for partial differential equations driven by white noise divergences appear in naive attempts to define the nonlinear terms in the equations. The solutions are too rough to permit ordinary pointwise multiplication. In the last few years, the theory of rough paths, existence, uniqueness and large deviations for singular partial differential equations has been making very rapid progress. Our four month program has been designed to foster a natural alliance with mathematical quantum field theory, specifically the theory of the renormalisation group, continuation in dimension, operator product expansions and conformally invariant quantum field theory. We aim for progress in global existence of solutions of stochastic pde, dynamical critical exponents, equilibrium critical exponents, bosonisation in two dimensions, better and more complete constructions of euclidean quantum fields.

5. DOCUMENTS: GFS programme report published

The final scientific report for the Growth form and self-organisation programme (2017) has now been published. A full description of the programme's schedule, alongside an interview with its organisers, can be seen here. The report can be read in full via the link below.

"The programme was organized to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s 'On Growth and Form'. Published in 1917, the book has had a lasting impact, effectively starting the field of biophysics and suggesting numerous ways in which mathematics, particularly as it relates to form, could be brought to understand living systems. The anniversary of its publication thus provided an opportunity to review progress, current research directions, and challenges in this interdisciplinary research area" ...

6. APPOINTMENTS: DAMTP promotes VMV organiser Carola-Bibiane-Schönlieb to professor 

INI would like to extend heartfelt congratulations to Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb who has recently been promoted to professor at the Department of Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), University of Cambridge.

Carola is a well-known and much respected figure at INI, having been co-organiser of 2017's "Variational methods and effective algorithms for imaging and vision" (VMV) programme. Amongst her many other involvements with the Institute she has featured as a speaker for the "Statistical scalability" programme (STS, 2017), contributed to a number of Turing Gateway events and been an active supporter of the ongoing Women in Mathematics initiative.

We can think of none more deserving of this exciting new appointment, which Carola will be occupying from 1 October 2018.

7. DATA POLICY: INI and GDPR 

The University of Cambridge, under the infrastructure of which INI operates, offers a robust framework towards data privacy. For the sake of clarity, we wish to assure recipients of this newsletter that we will never use your data for any other purpose. To see our full data policy please click the following link: http://www.newton.ac.uk/information/data-and-conduct

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