Monthly Archives: September 2011

When credit is due

Posted on September 26, 2011 by

Last week, UBC inaugurated its new Law building. So what? You may say. What’s the big deal about yet another building in UBC’s amazing journey of development and renewal? Well, to me, the story behind the completion of this major … Continue reading →

Posted in Board of Governors | Leave a comment

UK mathematicians unload on intransigent patronizing bureaucracy

Posted on September 21, 2011 by

One month after more than 100 academics, including six Nobel laureates, wrote to the British prime minister to complain about cuts to chemistry by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), today’s Guardian reports that the mathematicians of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds | 4 Comments

Mathematical modeling of a bureaucrat’s song and dance

Posted on September 20, 2011 by

A few hours after our last post was up, NSERC produced a reply to the letter of the chair of the Math/NSERC Liaison committee regarding term limits. All what I can say for now,  is that if the staffer had … Continue reading →

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Term limits and the integrity of the peer review process

Posted on September 19, 2011 by

Not long after the most controversial Discovery grant competition ever –at least for the Evaluation Group for Mathematics and Statistics (EG 1508)– NSERC announced that 3 out of the 4 members of that EG Executive –who were at the center … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds | Leave a comment

Running for the Board of Trustees of the American Math Society

Posted on September 11, 2011 by

An old friend of mine (and a superb analyst/probabilist/mathematical biologist & geneticist) e-mailed me last January. “I am sitting here in the meeting of the nominating committee at the American Mathematical Society (AMS). The committee hopes that you will consider … Continue reading →

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How do we see each other

Posted on September 9, 2011 by

Viewed so far by 153,373 people, retweeted 2302 times, this creation by PhD student, Matushiq Sotak, became an overnight sensation when it appeared about a month ago. I have asked him if he can make a new grid on how … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Restoring sanity!

Posted on September 8, 2011 by

Do you remember last year’s Washington, D.C.’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear led by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert? Well, here is a banner from the march, that was held high by an obviously concerned, though non-identifiable, Ottawa bureaucrat.

Posted in Op-eds, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

R&D expert panel: All eyes are on Naylor!

Posted on September 6, 2011 by

No wonder Indira Samarasekera had stressed in her submission to the R&D panel, that NSERC should “distinguish its funding of solution-driven research from basic discovery research.”  The President of the University of Alberta must know a thing or two about the fate … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds, R&D Policy | 1 Comment