(above) M.C.Escher's "Relativity" against a backdrop of INI's main staircase. The Dutch-born artist famed for his mathematical lithographs was born on 17 June 1898.

INI NEWS BULLETIN
June 2019

Dear friends, associates and supporters of INI,

Welcome to the June 2019 edition of our monthly news bulletin. In this release you will find the following seven stories:

1. REPORT: INI and others analyse and explore the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.
2. ROTHSCHILD LECTURE: watch footage of Professor Graeme Milton's talk: "Metamaterials: composite materials with striking properties".
3. KIRK LECTURE: watch footage of Professor Svitlana Mayboroda's talk: "The hidden landscape of localization".
4. PODCAST OF THE MONTH: Dr Bubacarr Bah of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) speaks to INI about compressive sampling and the ambitious work of AIMS.
5. BONUS PODCAST: Professor Svitlana Mayboroda speaks about harmonic analysis, a love of mathematics and her feelings about the Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellowship.
6. WORKSHOPS: details of the two "Complex analysis" workshops still open for applications.
7. FORTHCOMING WORKSHOPS/TALKS/EVENTS: a guide to the coming month at INI.

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Contact: communications@newton.ac.uk

(above) Deputy Director Christie Marr, front centre, welcomes Further Maths students and teachers from Southfields Academy (London) for an introductory day to studying mathematics at the University of Cambridge.

1. REPORT: INI and others analyse and explore the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

In February 2019, a workshop took place to analyse and explore the various aspects of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF). This was organised by INI, the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS),  Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) and an organising committee representing the breadth of the mathematical sciences. The event took place at ICMS in Edinburgh, related to one of 26 recommendations made by Professor Philip Bond in his 2018 Review of Knowledge Exchange in the Mathematical Sciences launched at the House of Lords. 

Over the three days, the 70 representatives from the mathematical sciences community heard from senior UKRI representatives who outlined the ISCF purpose and processes and the various challenges for consideration. The mathematical sciences community then discussed with these representatives the areas of mathematical innovation they felt underpinned the challenges. They also considered how the community might engage with senior business delegates in co-creating such challenges. By discussing the requirements for a ‘good’ ISCF challenge and with priming talks on global industry trends, templates were worked on which might be considered mathematically-inspired ISCF challenges.

A report has now been published that summarises the discussion that took place at the workshop and identifies some next steps. This includes a foreword by INI Director David Abrahams and was written by Matt Butchers (KTN) and Joanna Jordan  (Independent Mathematics Knowledge Exchange Consultant).

2. ROTHSCHILD LECTURE: watch footage of Professor Graeme Milton's talk: "Metamaterials: composite materials with striking properties".

On Monday 3 June, Professor Graeme Milton delivered the talk: "Metamaterials: composite materials with striking properties". Given as part of his role as Rothschild Distinguished Visiting Fellow for the "Mathematical design of new materials" programme, it is now available to view online. The talk's abstract and a link to the video follow below.

Sometimes the properties of a composite are completely unlike those of the constituent materials, even when the structure is small compared to the wavelength: these composites are called metamaterials. Classic examples include bubbly fluids and stained glass windows made from suspensions of metal particles in glass. Other examples include metamaterials with negative thermal expansion made from materials all having positive thermal expansion; metamaterials with negative and/or possibly anisotropic mass density over a range of frequencies; metamaterials that get fatter as they are stretched (having a negative Poisson's ratio); materials with artificial and possibly negative magnetic permeability. The list goes on. Recent attention has been directed to space-time microstructures where the material moduli vary in both space and time. We will review some of the progress that has been made. One particular class of elastic metamaterials, known as pentamodes, has proved useful for guiding stress. Cable networks can also guide stress. It turns out that essentially any cable network under tension, and supporting a given loading, can be replaced by one in which at most four cables meet at any junction. Like pentamodes, these can support, up to a constant factor, only one stress field. Thus by tightening just one cable one gets the desired forces at all the terminal nodes. This last work is joint with Guy Bouchitte, Ornella Mattei and Pierre Seppecher. 

3. KIRK LECTURE: watch footage of Professor Svitlana Mayboroda's talk: "The hidden landscape of localization".

On Wednesday 12 June, Professor Svitlana Mayboroda delivered the talk: "The hidden landscape of localization". Given as part of her role as Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellow for the "Approximation, sampling and compression in data science" programme, it is now available to view online. The talk's abstract and a link to the video follow below.

Complexity of the geometry, randomness of the potential, and many other irregularities of the system can cause powerful, albeit quite different, manifestations of localization: a phenomenon of confinement of waves, or eigenfunctions, to a small portion of the original domain. In the present talk we show that behind a possibly disordered system there exists a clear structure, referred to as a landscape function, which predicts the location and shape of the localized eigenfunctions, a pattern of their exponential decay, and delivers accurate bounds for the corresponding eigenvalues in the range where, for instance, the classical Weyl law notoriously fails. We will discuss main features of this structure universally relevant for all elliptic operators, as well as specific applications to the Schrodinger operator with random potential and to the Poisson-Schrodinger drift-diffusion system governing carrier distribution and transport in semiconductor alloys. 

4. PODCAST OF THE MONTH: Dr Bubacarr Bah of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) speaks to INI about compressive sampling and the ambitious work of AIMS.

In the tenth episode of the INI podcast Dr Bubacarr Bah of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town shared with us: his thoughts on compressive sampling and its relevance for the "Approximation, sampling and compression in data science" programme, details his role within AIMS, and thoughts on the important work the Institute does in providing opportunities and teaching to talented mathematicians from across the African continent.

00:00 – Introductions 
00:54 – Compressive sampling and interactions within the ASC programme 
01:51 – Discussing the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) centres in South Africa, Rwanda, Ghana, Cameroon and Senegal 
04:18 – Opportunities for young mathematicians from all over Africa 
06:18 – A role within the Cape Town research centre, a Chair funded by the Humboldt Centre 
07:36 – Funding and support from across the world 
10:04 – Making quick progress with students who are “hungry for learning” 
11:14 – Teaching all over Africa, witnessing the enthusiasm for data science 
12:44 – Building cultural bridges across the continent 
13:44 – The financial challenges for African researchers 
15:14 – Growing up: The Gambia, mathematics, teaching, Edinburgh 
17:59 – Always more to do but “hopefully things will grow, and we’ll bring the changes we want in Africa”.

5. BONUS PODCAST: Professor Svitlana Mayboroda speaks about harmonic analysis, a love of mathematics and her feelings about the Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellowship.

In this month's bonus podcast INI welcomes Professor Svitlana Mayboroda. The Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellow for the "Approximation, sampling and compression in data science" programme, Svitlana talked us through a brief history of her career, her specialism in harmonic analysis, a love of mathematics for its own sake and the research aims that she and her collaborators are working towards during their time at INI.

00:00 – Introductions 
01:43 – Early career decision points and working in the USA 
03:08 – Growing up in Ukraine and the career options that lay ahead 
03:50 – Looking at the ASC programme and its research aims 
06:00 – The draw of harmonic analysis 
07:30 – Collaborations between physicists and mathematicians 
10:45 – Applications aplenty, but “the mathematics still drives me” 
12:40 – Receiving the Kirk Fellowship (https://www.newton.ac.uk/about/fellowships/kirk): is it a “good thing”? 
17:55 – Summer travels and academic visits 
18:56 – In praise of the Isaac Newton Institute, “the primary way for mathematicians to collaborate”

6. WORKSHOPS: details of the two "Complex analysis" workshops still open for applications.

The four-month programme "Complex analysis: techniques, applications and computations" begins on 2 September 2019. Of its three workshops, one is already closed to applications, and two have limited spaces remaining. We would urge any who are considering applying to do so at the first available opportunity.

Click the above poster to download and distribute in .pdf format, or click the link below to find out more about each individual workshop and register an application.

7. FORTHCOMING WORKSHOPS/TALKS/EVENTS: looking forward to the month ahead at INI.

> Workshop: Uncertainty quantification for cardiac models 5-7 June 2019

> Programme: Mathematical and statistical challenges in landscape decision making 3 July - 2 August 2019

> Workshop: Current status and key questions in Landscape Decision making 3-5 July 2019

> Programme: Geometry, compatibility and structure preservation in computational differential equations 3 July 2019 - 19 December 2019

> Workshop: Challenges in Landscape Decision-making 3 July 2019

> Workshop: Tutorial workshop 8-12 July 2019

> Workshop: Progress on novel mathematics and statistics for Landscape Decisions, including priorities for further research 31 July - 2 August 2019  

See all forthcoming INI events here: https://www.newton.ac.uk/events/calendar

See all forthcoming INI seminars here: https://www.newton.ac.uk/events/seminars