The email was of course music to my ears. Sustained blogging is hard work, and it is nice to know that someone is reading and appreciating. It felt even better, when I googled the emailer and realized that he is actually a veteran of science policy and not just a “policy junkie”.

A legislative assistant then wrote, “we have been following your blog carefully, and it is an excellent resource to understand the scientific and scholarly communities.” And more of this have been coming lately as scholars, policy makers, and politicians were converging on Vancouver for the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Some are asking to meet, which is quite a new experience considering that most of them only know me through a blog I started a mere 15 months ago.

A highlight was a meeting with Hélène LeBlanc, Députée de LaSalle-Émard, and Critic for Science and Technology for the New Democratic Party. Minimal representation from the federal government at the AAAS had surely made her presence at the convention noticeable and appreciated. In my opinion, she now has the most interesting job in the world.

Indeed, the NDP has never had a Science and Technology platform. At least, I couldn’t find one, when I was trying to relay the R&D positions and policies of the various parties during the last election campaign. But now that the NDP is the Official Opposition, it is obviously imperative that they develop a complete and coherent vision about this aspect of governing. And this responsibility must have  obviously landed on Madame LeBlanc’s shoulders.

I was pleasantly struck by her eagerness to do so in a most systematic manner. She has been meeting scientists in Montréal on a regular basis trying to learn about the various issues from the bottom up. She wanted to “pick my brains” and I was happy to share what I know, which is what I try to do with my blog readers on a regular basis. My main advice? Keep the channels of communication open with front-line researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs.

You would think that all scholars, policy makers and politicians are happy to see a less sanitized picture of life in the academic/research community. Not so!

“Your blog is an issue”, wrote a friend who was trying to engineer a “détente” and a meeting at the AAAS between “Piece of Mind” and an obviously vexed Ottawa official. It was not to be and the “détente” will have to wait for another day.

In contrast, I stumbled on a colleague who said supportively: “Whether it is complacency or lack of courage, it is very disturbing to see the research community watching and accepting the sorts of changes that are happening, and it is great to have someone like you speaking out.”

Let me conclude by re-iterating that this blog is about issues, important issues that are nothing short of vital to scholars, whether in Canada or elsewhere in our small world. I for one, always appreciate any feedback, whether complimentary or critical, especially when it leads to great personal encounters such as the ones I had this week-end during the AAAS meeting in Vancouver.

First, let’s keep going with more good staff from Lazaridis. “We must be bold and think big… We’re surrounded by devices that are so sleek and powerful that we’re tempted to think it’s the machines themselves that are valuable. But the devices are just ideas, made into a form that we can hold in our hands … We must have faith in our scientists and their ideas. They will help change the world. Science brings the world’s people together in pursuit of big ideas.”

Now contrast this with the joint pre-budget submission by NSERC, CIHR, SSHRC and CFI to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. “The global job market is increasingly being driven by talented, skilled, creative and highly mobile people who are commercializing innovative ideas and developing new business processes that drive economies and improve quality of life.”

Lazaridis’ was a hugely inspirational speech, which he closed by imploring all the scientists and policymakers at AAAS to remember that the most groundbreaking discoveries of the past 100 years were made by thinkers who had boundless curiosity and unfettered intellectual freedom. “We must remember how powerful the combination of curiosity and imagination truly is.”

And “Talk is cheap” is not a label that can be thrown at Lazaridis anytime soon. The man did after all put his money where his vision is, by founding the Perimeter Institute just over a decade ago and the Institute for Quantum Computing shortly thereafter. “We need this type of blue-sky research that will lead to developments we can’t even imagine,” he said.

This must be music for the ears of Canada’s scientists who have been witnessing the “mission drift of the granting councils” for the last five years.

In their submission to Flaherty, the Tri-council presidents seemed to be pitching for the creation of an “Industrial Research and Innovation Council” (IRIC) to deliver the federal government’s business innovation programs, as proposed by the Jenkins panel.

In his speech,  Mike Lazaridis seemed to be speaking for, and on behalf of, NSERC.

“Sometimes Canada Gets it Right” is a recent joint op-ed by U. of Toronto President, David Naylor and UBC President, Stephen Toope. They were “sending out a few public bouquets” to the federal government in gratitude for the $1.3-billion Knowledge Infrastructure Program (KIP) initiated in the 2009 stimulus budget. Last year, U. of Alberta’s President, Indira Samarasekera, threw a party in Ottawa to celebrate the federal government’s investment of $190-million dollars in the Canada Excellence Research Chair Program (CERC). In a recent op-ed for the Vancouver Sun, Alan Leshner and Stephen Toope pointed at the Perimeter Institute –a recent recipient of another $50-million from the federal government—as a “Canadian example of international research”.

Now even the most puritan among us and the least versed in the arts of politics and diplomacy understand that officials running operations, which rely so heavily on government’s largesse –such as universities– must assume the responsibility/duty of thanking their sponsors. And for that, Naylor, Toope and Samarasekera were doing their job, and a very good job at that.

All of the above-mentioned government investments surely look like great news for Canada’s post-secondary institutions. The Government’s massive support for theoretical physics (and basic research) through PI is of course welcome. The same goes for their spending big bucks to buy Canada some “excellence.” And Canada’s researchers are not as spaced-out as another (ex-) president, Harvey Weingarten, implies in another (failed) attempt at sending out “a public bouquet.” Academics are not really the type who ”… rarely thinks about institutional costs until the roof of their lab starts to leak.” They do appreciate government support for research infrastructure.

But what if it is a zero-sum game and there is no consensus in the academic research community as to these priorities of government even when advocated for by university presidents? All the above examples of government largesse have other things in common besides being catalysts for praise by presidents. All three investments (KIP, CERC, PI but also the Bantings and the Vaniers) are widely perceived by the academic community as either too much money for a too lucky few, or/and as resources diverted from other more important programs that are lacking. All three are seen as involving decision-making without peer review and selection procedures that lack sufficient transparency.

Starting with the CERC program, it is clear that the Canadian research community is miffed at the cost of this “elitist program” in a context where a large number of equally “excellent” Canadian researchers are starving for minimal research funding.  To put this in perspective, the ten new CERCs will receive $53.5-million over 5 years, almost one-third of the new money available to the entire academic research community (almost 30,000 strong) through the Tri-council. On top of that, we now hear that the additional CERCs will require equal matching funds from the universities –excluding Tri-council and CFI funds. In other words, more internal university funds could be diverted from other priorities so as to attract this federal funding. As to decision-making, no one really knows why the University of Alberta ended up with 4 out of the 19 CERCs, while McGill had none, nor the reasons behind the absence of female scientists among the appointees.

As for KIP, remember that its funding was announced in the 2009 stimulus budget that cut $147.9-million from the three granting councils. The juxtaposition of the two decisions created a perception that the government had sacrificed tri-council research funding for bricks and mortar, and that University Presidents had sold out their researchers for their own pet capital projects. Notwithstanding that much of the KIP funding ended up going to smaller, often rural (but hardly research-oriented) community colleges, the arbitrariness of the decision-making also puzzled the research community, which could not understand for example why UBC got a third of the amount received by the University of Alberta. Without giving any hint as to the program’s guiding principles, evaluation criteria, and measures of priority, we are told by the presidents, that “the responsibility for delivering the Knowledge Infrastructure Program fell to Industry Canada – not typically a program delivery department. Yet a team was assembled that reviewed proposals, hammered out a deal with each province and monitored progress.”   

The Perimeter institute is another story of direct funding from government, which circumvents peer-review and open competition. The total Canadian public investment in the Perimeter Institute over the past ten years exceeds $278-million so far. Our university presidents should also be speaking up about the many fine research institutes in Canada, which compete for funds normally through the Tri-council, according to very stringent reviews conducted by international panels. To succeed in these competitions, institutes have to keep improving and renewing themselves, and they have to work hard to try to leverage funds from provincial and international sources.

The picture becomes even darker, when a senior executive of the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada (AUCC) is rumoured to be saying that any cut to the Tri-council of less than 10% in the upcoming budget should be considered a success. You know you have a problem, when you start to factor in the following realities:

• To most Canadian academic researchers, the 3 granting councils (NSERC, SSHRC and CIHR) are the main –and often the sole– source of research funding;
• The 3 councils are the favourite and most reliable sources of research funding, since (most of) their programs are based on open, transparent, competitive, and relatively fair review processes run by qualified peers (not by KPMG!). Researchers need not resort to a Lazaridis for help in making their case.
• The Tri-council’s budgets for academic discovery have been stagnant for years now, while the number of applicants continues to increase significantly. NSERC’s Discovery Grants program alone has seen the number of its applicants increase from 3300 in 2010, to 3482 in 2011, to 3900 for the 2012 competition.
• Canada’s researchers are willing to fight for their Tri-council grants, just like after the 2009 cuts, when 2,250 researchers, including some of the country’s most respected scientists, signed an open letter to the Prime Minister.

There is something problematic in this picture and we might soon run into a perfect storm unless Canada’s university presidents develop a more coherent message that gives priority to their researchers’ dreams and aspirations regarding the nature, the delivery mechanisms, and the academic value of what they are asking from Government. We can then all pitch in, and join forces in sending out “public bouquets” to Ottawa. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

They didn’t get it right because they missed a great opportunity to point at the jewel in the crown of Canada’s legacy at true international collaboration in innovation and discovery, the Banff International Research Station (BIRS).

Full disclosure: I am the scientific director of BIRS, but this is not the only reason why I am disappointed that Leshner and Toope chose not to point at the Station as a “Canadian example of international research”. After all, the reputation of BIRS and the facts speak for themselves. More than 2000 international researchers from 65 different countries converge on the Station every year to participate in one or more of its 70 programs, which –though anchored in the mathematical and statistical sciences– touch upon essentially every discipline in the physical sciences, engineering, and medecine.

Leshner and Toope missed a golden occasion to showcase an ultimate example of how “innovation and international collaboration go hand in hand” –not only in research but also in joint reviewing, in joint funding, and in joint management. A prototype for international collaboration that should inspire the participants of the AAAS  in every discipline and in every aspect of research.

Most relevant here is the uniqueness of BIRS in being a joint Canada-US-Mexico initiative, an ideal vehicle for the advancement of North-American science in collaboration with the international scientific community. BIRS is funded through an honest-to-goodness joint international peer-review process that involves granting foundations representing four North American governments: Mexico’s National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT), Alberta Innovation, the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and Canada’s Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). A first, and a collaborative funding model to emulate and encourage.

In contrast, Leshner and Toope point to the Waterloo-based Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI), which hosts 14 resident researchers and around 45 international visitors. And we can’t help but wonder: was their choice motivated by the huge Canadian government investment in the Perimeter Institute over the past ten years exceeding $278-million and dwarfing the $6-million NSERC  investment in BIRS? (This, by the way, covers only 22% of BIRS budget, while the NSF contributes 30%). Or is it an implicit endorsement of a more direct funding model for research from government, that lies outside the normal procedures of open competition and peer-review? What I would really like to think and believe is that Stephen Toope, being the President of UBC, was simply reluctant to showcase yet another international success story that is headquartered in Western Canada.

By pointing at examples, academic leaders are not only exhibiting success stories –in this case about innovation and international collaboration. They are also effectively showcasing, endorsing, and legitimizing research models to be sustained and emulated. It is unfortunate that Leshner and Toope did not point at BIRS as a model for how governments should cooperate closely in supporting future international collaborations for the Advancement of Science in America.

Filed under: Op-eds, R&D Policy ]]> http://nghoussoub.com/2012/02/13/leshner-and-toope-didnt-get-all-of-it-right/feed/ 0 ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/2012/02/09/reed-elsevier-stock-price-is-dropping-but/ http://nghoussoub.com/2012/02/09/reed-elsevier-stock-price-is-dropping-but/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:15:56 +0000 Ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/?p=7006 Continue reading →]]> “Noise around the boycott against Elsevier offers short term trading opportunity”. That’s from the investment firm Exane Paribas, which “fully expects the price to rebound once this boycott fails like all the previous ones”.  Indeed, even though more than 4900 scientists have already signed the petition initiated by Gowers to boycott all Elsevier’s publications, the numbers look relatively small when you consider that the movement is international and that it is trying to involve all scientific disciplines. Just take a look at the timid participation of Canada’s mathematical community to see the challenges ahead in facing up to the lousy business practices in scientific publishing. But are we reaching a tipping point, where the career benefits of publishing with Elsevier may now need to be balanced with certain risks?

Here is a bold statement from MIT’s Scott Aaronson.  “From now on, if I’m evaluating (say) a faculty or tenure candidate, and I see lots of Elsevier publications, I’m going to wonder about the reasons: “is this person simply unaware of the widely-discussed issues with Elsevier? is the person a timid conformist who feels that his or her papers need a ‘gold star of approval,’ even from a journal whose publisher is known to be mercilessly ransacking universities? if this person can’t even accept whatever minuscule or perceived career risk comes with open(er)-access publishing, why would the person take huge risks in the intellectual realm?” And I’m sure I won’t be the only one thinking this … so the career benefits of publishing with Elsevier (if indeed there are any) need to be balanced with the risks!”

That’s a very interesting take on the situation, though I think that the boycott movement may need to gather much more steam in order to reach the threshold, where non-participation becomes a professional stigma.  In any case, here is a summary –taken from various sites– of why the movement for boycotting Elsevier is gaining some traction.

Journal costs:  Though not alone among publishers in price gouging, Elsevier’s prices are ridiculously high. Here are a few comparisons. The Annals of Mathematics, published by Princeton University Press, is one of the absolute top mathematics journals and quite affordably priced: $0.13/page as of 2007.   Acta Mathematica, published by the Institut Mittag Leffler costs $0.65/page, Journal of the American Mathematical Society, published by the American Mathematical Society for $0.24/page, and Inventiones Mathematicae, published by Springer for $1.21/page. By contrast, ten Elsevier journals cost $1.30/page or more; they and three others cost more per page than any journal published by a university press or learned society.  None of Elsevier’s mathematics journals is comparable in quality to the above cited journals.

Bundling, which is a business practice that forces libraries to subscribe to large numbers of journals in order to avoid paying the exorbitant list prices for the ones they need. The real effect of such a practice is that the average price that libraries pay for the journals they actually want, is higher. There is no concrete data regarding the actual costs to libraries of Elsevier journals compared with those of Springer, for example. Why? because publishers often make it a contractual requirement that their institutional customers should not disclose the financial details of their contracts. For example, Elsevier sued Washington State University to try to prevent release of this information.

Scandalous practices: Elsevier has been involved in various dubious practices regarding the scientific content of its journals. One in particular involved the journal “Chaos, Solitons & Fractals”, which was at some point one of the highest impact factor mathematics journals that Elsevier published. It turned out that the high impact factor was at least partly the result of the journal publishing many papers –by its own editors– full of mutual citations.

In another example, Elsevier seems to have published a series of sponsored article compilation publications, on behalf of pharmaceutical clients, that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures.

Lobbying against public access: Recently, Elsevier has lobbied for the Research Works Act, a proposed U.S. law that would undo the National Institutes of Health’s public access policy, which guarantees public access to published research papers based on NIH funding within twelve months of publication (to give publishers time to make a profit). Although most lobbying occurs behind closed doors, Elsevier’s vocal support of this act shows their opposition to a popular and effective open access policy.

Why not Springer? According to a recent letter by Gowers and his colleagues, “Springer has had a rich and productive history with the mathematical community. As well as journals, it has published important series of textbooks, monographs, and lecture notes; one could perhaps regard the prices of its journals as a means of subsidizing these other, less profitable, types of publications. Although all these types of publications have become less important with the advent of the internet and the resulting electronic distribution of texts, the long and continuing presence of Springer in the mathematical world has resulted in a store of goodwill being built up in the mathematical community towards them. This store is being rapidly depleted,  but has not yet reached zero.”

Fortunately, most Governors had quickly recognized how “banal” Summers’ article was. Why banal? Because all of his statements were either wrong or correct but well known and already practiced at many post-secondary institutions. So, I decided to ignore it again until Margaret Wente decided, a couple of days ago, to echo the banalities in another one of her attempts at “disrupting” higher education, Actually, she may have heard them first from Gwyn Morgan.

What Summers wants you to know is that the world is changing rapidly and  that undergraduate education should be changing accordingly. Fair enough, but how? Well, the most charitable way of summarizing his insight is that education needs to take advantage of the economies of scale and of the availability of information made  possible by the computer revolution. Another level of efficiency can be achieved by “investing” in no other language but English, since it is anyway the global language of trade.

And this is how a computer would summarize –or is it process?– his insights:

1. Students don’t have to learn facts anymore because there is too much knowledge to absorb and they can look them up on the Internet anyway. “Education will be more about how to process and use information and less about imparting it”. 
2. Students don’t have to work anymore because someone else in their group will work for them. Oh! And they should move their desks into circles and groups so they can learn better.
3. Teachers don’t have to be or to know anything because they can show videos and  assign books of other teachers to their students.
4. Students don’t need to learn any language besides English, since the latter is becoming the “global language”.
5. Probability and Statistics are more important than Trigonometry and Calculus and “data analysis” is more important than History.

OK, it is a surrealistic version of his points, but I did say that’s how a computer would process them, didn’t I? Now, how would a human handle them? Well, speaking for myself, I find it hard to refute Summer’s arguments without running the risk of sounding equally banal. But I shall try anyway.

First, I have always thought computers are into “processing” information, while humans are into understanding and original thought, both of which require the hard work of mastering some material. The only alternative is to allow someone or something to do our thinking for us. But can our undergraduate students rely on online information regarding evolution, revolutions, climate change, wars, peace and other disputed matters?

Now I agree that collaboration is great, but I am well positioned to know that it has already been fostered in academia for several decades now. Still, I argue that much of the creative work is done alone, after having invested long and uninterrupted hours to study and master topics. Fine, here I am running the risk of being banal myself, but let me single out one of Summers’ points that I find dangerously misleading and simply not true. He says that, “For most people, school is the last time they will be evaluated on individual effort.” And I say, that in almost every job these days, performance evaluations are still conducted on individuals and much less on groups.

By promoting the concept of “video-teaching”, which –by the way– has also been used in universities for decades now, Summers is really pushing the notion that going to class to hear a lecture is not only outdated but also cost- and time-inefficient. This reminded one commenter of a Doonesbury cartoon from many years ago, where Uncle Duke is running for president and asked about his education policy. He says he would fire all of America’s teachers except for the best, who would present their classes on television to the whole nation. When the other candidates are asked to comment, they say ‘that’s a great idea, I wish I had thought of that!’

“Those who know no foreign language know nothing of their mother tongue”, wrote Goethe. I may add that they will also not know enough about other cultures to avoid the patronizing tone implicit in Summers’s comment about English speakers “treating patients in Africa or helping resolve conflicts in the Middle East.” 

Most shocking is his musing about which scholarly content is more relevant to the workforce of the future. For one, it is a pity that he thinks that students should stop at the pre-calculus 17th century discrete probability theory of Pascal and Fermat and not learn the more calculus-empowered probability and statistics of Bernoulli, De Moivre, Laplace, Markov and Kolmogoroff.

Or did Summers mean that we should only teach students the latest probability and statistics software packages, because all of them will/should be joining the world of finance? Mr. Summers will be surprised to know how much trigonometric functions (and Fourier series) are relevant even in the world of finance. And, we do hope that the former secretary of the US treasury knows about the calculus-based “Black-Scholes model,” and the disastrous effect that the blind and universal use of its software packaged version has had on the 1980′s financial markets.

There is no doubt that Probability and Statistics are extremely important subjects, whose relevance was late to emerge in our educational system. But there is much more to mathematics.  Here is a Table produced by the British Columbia Institute of Technology showing how various areas of mathematics –mostly calculus– are used in “real life”, from bio-medical engineering and Petroleum Technology, to Prosthetics and Wood Products. All are industries, where our undergrads could work some day. But let me stress that this Table only deals with elementary mathematics, very elementary mathematics, the one discovered and developed many centuries ago, and which is taught in undergraduate programs all over the world, as it should.

And one last point. Summers uses the following reasoning to make his point about video-learning. “In a 2008 survey of first- and second-year medical students at Harvard, those who used accelerated video lectures reported being more focused and learning more material faster than when they attended lectures in person.”

He should have paid more attention in his statistics courses because unless the group of students who used video lectures was randomized, this data is normally deemed to be meaningless.

Filed under: R&D Policy ]]> http://nghoussoub.com/2012/02/07/larry-summers-online-sweatshop-model-for-academia/feed/ 1 ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/2012/02/05/they-also-owned-the-podium-for-canada/ http://nghoussoub.com/2012/02/05/they-also-owned-the-podium-for-canada/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 03:47:03 +0000 Ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/?p=6844 Continue reading →]]> … away from your cameras and without your millions. “We were very grateful to have our summer training for the Canadian International Math Olympiad (IMO) team at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) again this year. As in previous years, the hospitality and assistance were exceptional…” That was Dalhousie’s Associate Professor, Dorette Pronk, who was the leader of Canada’s team for the 52d International Math Olympiad held in Amsterdam. The national team: Six of Canada’s brightest high school students. The results: Each one of them was invited on stage to receive a medal. Medal count: 1 gold, 2 silver, and 3 bronze medals. Age of Canada’s gold medalist: 14. Political, corporate and media interest: Nil.

Every year, Canada participates in the International Math Olympiad (IMO), a highly competitive worldwide annual contest in mathematical problem solving for high school students involving more than 150 countries. As mentioned above, gold, silver and bronze medals are awarded to the top contestants, countries are ranked accordingly, and just like the “other” Olympics, some of us experience country pride, the thrill of owning a higher piece of the podium and all that jazz.

But unlike the “other one”, there is no cash changing hands, no advertising, no corporate sponsors, no consumerism, no media, and no politician in sight.  Nevertheless, Canada’s kids of the IMO are as golden as Alexandre Bilodeau, Donovan Bailey, or even Sidney Crosby, as my son would say. Biceps, physical abilities and motor skills don’t matter. This contest is all about grey matter, mathematical talent, analytical skills, and sheer brainpower.

Here is how the process unfolds in Canada. The selection process for the national teams is rigorous and demanding.  It is coordinated by the Canadian Mathematical Society, and led by an amazing group of volunteers from various Canadian universities. Once the national team is selected, they train together for a few weeks at BIRS, before they fly to the country where the competition is held. Next year, it will be in Argentina.

It was a no-brainer, when I was asked back in 2005, whether BIRS would be willing to host the IMO training camp. Ever since, a dozen of young students and trainers show up at the Banff station every spring for training. Needless to say, BIRS is extremely proud of hosting such an amazing group of smart kids.

But do they enjoy themselves there? Dorette Pronk reports: “Math Team Canada (Matthew Brennan, Heinrich Jiang, James Rickards, Mariya Sardarli, Alex Song and Hunter Spink) was at times so focused on solving mathematical problems and improving their skills that we had to force them to enjoy these other aspects of the camp. So most of out time was spent in a BIRS classroom in Max Bell Hall, but the beautiful surroundings were not completely wasted on our students, and they did enjoy our hikes and excursions, including an evening trip to the Banff hot springs.”

These camps are not without their own little stories and anecdotes over the years. Like when I had to intervene with the security personnel of The Banff Centre, who were taking issue with several kids filling their pockets with food and sweets at the Buffet. The kids were simply getting themselves ready for a mountain hike!

Another great set of stories is when we arranged that the Mexican IMO team come to BIRS as well so that both national teams could train together. But that’s for another post and another day.

Another heart-warming instance is when a very self-apologetic Jim Arthur –as only Jim can be– asked me whether he could stay for an extra 2 days at BIRS after his workshop ended. The reason? He had accepted to address Canada’s IMO team, which was arriving to Banff a couple of days later. Think about how excited these kids were to get to talk math with Jim Arthur, NSERC Gold medalist, Killam prize winner, President of the American Mathematical Society, and nothing short of the pride and joy of Canada’s mathematical community.

But who managed to get the ever-busy Jim Arthur to do that? Well, a little bit of detective work solved the puzzle. The one-named David Arthur, former IMO gold medalist, former deputy leader of Canada’s 2009 IMO team, and returning deputy leader of Canada’s 2011 IMO team, is no one else but the son of Jim Arthur. He had taken a leave from his job at Google to come and train Canada’s team.  What an inspiring story of scholarship and commitment.

Many thanks go to Dorette Pronk, Jacob Tsimerman, and David Arthur, who formed the core leadership team of IMO 2011. Thanks must also go to IMO alumni Alex Fink and Farzin Barekat, as well as other problem solving champions, Lino Demasi and Robert Morewood (who served as team leader to the IMO in 2006). They all “came back” to help and provide further training for Team Canada.

Before I close, I want to relate two interesting stories from the report of Dorette Pronk. The first adds to the continuing discussion about women and mathematics.

“A wonderful highlight of the medal ceremonies was that Lisa Sauermann from Germany scored her fourth and final gold medal (her fifth medal in total – the first one was silver), and she did this with a perfect score of 42 points. This means that right now she is leading the IMO hall of fame, replacing her fellow German contestant Christian Reiher, who was there to congratulate her. This brought up some discussion about the results of female contestants at the IMO. It is interesting that although the number of women participating is lower than the number of men, their scores are statistically comparable.  I discussed this with one of my Dutch colleagues, and he remarked that in his courses at the Technical University in Eindhoven, women, although in the minority, tend to produce better results. He was wondering whether this means that in society the bar to enter a technical or scientific program is set higher for women than for men, whereas this is not the case in the IMO. I am wondering whether this difference might also be related to different work habits and confidence levels between male and female students, where at the IMO everybody is equally focused.”

The other is an amusing tale describing “a bias” in the process of problem selection for the competition, which is done by an international committee of team leaders just before the contest starts. Dorette Pronk describes how the “Combinatorics problem” beat out the “Geometry problem”. “I suspect that the fact that the combinatorics problem involved windmills may have just helped it win by one vote for an IMO in the Netherlands!”

Here is the problem, in case you want to give it a try.

   Let S be a finite set of at least two points in the plane. Assume that no three points of S are collinear. A windmill is a process that starts with a line going through a single point P in S. That line rotates clockwise about the pivot P until the first time that the line meets some other point belonging to S. This point, Q, takes over as the new pivot, and the line now rotates clockwise about Q, until it next meets a point of S. This process continues indefinitely. Show that we can choose a point P in S and a line going through P such that the resulting windmill uses each point of S as a pivot infinitely many times.

But before I talk about “why Lazaridis?” allow me to reproduce this short and powerful letter to the British Prime Minister, signed by 88 British Scientists and published by the Telegraph.

“SIR – We support the ambition of David Willetts, the science minister, to make Britain “the best place in the world to do science”. However, this will remain beyond reach as long as the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the principal source of funding for the physical sciences and mathematics, persists in making disastrous errors in its operations and in damaging scientific discovery in Britain.

The council’s pronouncements that research PhD students will no longer be funded through standard grants; that fellowships will only be open in areas chosen by unqualified EPSRC officials; that grant applicants must present an assessment of the “impact” of their work over 10 to 50 years, and that the EPSRC will decide without consulting researchers what level of support is available for every subject, are all seriously flawed. Taken together, they pose a serious threat to British science.

EPSRC has exceeded its remit so spectacularly that it has lost the confidence of a significant proportion of the scientific community. EPSRC must now be subject to scrutiny by Parliament and be held accountable. Appropriate action must be taken to ensure that such a situation cannot occur again. EPSRC should be restructured with an unfaltering focus on scientific excellence, or be replaced.”  

OK now, why Lazaridis? Because no one –including in the UK and the US– has better defended and supported the importance of basic research, while developing the most successful Canadian high tech company in a decade. Surely, “Research in Motion” is going through a rough time, but these problems have nothing to do with scientific vision. They are about marketing, competition, positioning, and … luck.  Plus, just think of the jobs, the billions of dollars and the intellectual property that RIM has generated for Canada. The man has already paid his dues to innovation, to commerce, to the economy, and to consumerism.

But most importantly, Lazaridis has another thing going for him. The man knows first hand the concept of a “research pipeline”. That  “if you don’t feed basic science into the front of the pipeline, the commercialisable stuff coming out of the end will quickly dry up”. He knows that his “Blackberry” and related products owe their existence and success to the breakthroughs of the mathematical physicists of the early twentieth century. Lazaridis gets it like no other. Listen to this:

Theoretical physics (the description of natural phenomena in mathematical form) may seem like knowledge for knowledge’s sake. It is anything but, as Mike Lazaridis tells it. The “next generation of value” will be intellectual capital, rather than natural resources, he says. When discoveries are made in theoretical physics, whether in Canada or elsewhere, “the country with the largest dedicated force to interpret, understand and disseminate that information will be the first to commercialize it.”

And because of that, he went about to create “The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics”, investing tons of his personal money into that institution. But this is not the only reason that Lazaridis is a hugely positive force for Canada’s research effort.

Remarkably, Lazaridis has managed to “sell” the concept of the importance of such an institution to the Government of Canada. Actually, he is the only one who has succeeded lately to introduce “Basic Research” into the government’s agenda. Simply compare the $278-million that the Perimeter Institute has so far received in federal and provincial funding to the pathetically stagnant budget of the Discovery Grants in the last 6 years.

And yes, it is important to be willing and able to make the case to government on behalf of Canada’s scientists. And yes, it is really too bad that Lazaridis sits no more on NSERC’s Council.

The place:

What an amazing, kind, intelligent, unassuming and humble man. How can a politician be so “kind of shy”? I said to myself. He was obviously intrigued in meeting a couple of (beyond) middle-aged mathematicians on a Friday night in an almost empty hockey arena. He expressed his admiration for what UBC has become.  Ed introduced me as a rabble-rouser  on the Board of Governors. “But that’s what democracy is about,” he replied.

We looked for a “Manning” on the roster of players to check why you are here, and we didn’t find any,” said Ed.  I am indeed here with my son, Manning replied. “He is not a player but a physician who is conducting a study on concussions from hockey and their effect on young players. Stanford is having a similar one with chip implants to measure and register the effect of hits and jolts–even the most minor ones.”

I thanked him for his important recent contributions, and for practically becoming the “patron saint” of Canada’s Science and Technology. I also said that I wasn’t surprised by his new role because of a story that Tom Brzustowski had told me many years ago, when he was still President of NSERC.

In the late 1990′s, Tom, Arthur Carty (then President of the NRC), and very probably the Presidents of SSHRC and CIHR were surely surprised to receive an invitation to dinner at Stornoway, from the Leader of her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Preston Manning, who was then heading the Reform Party of Canada, wanted to talk about matters of science and technology. Why surprised? Well, first because they were all perceived as Liberal appointees, and second because some of the Reform MPs were agitating against federal spending on research. Manning had put an immediate end to all that after receiving a letter from the Canadian Mathematical Society. Both Carty and Brzustowski mentioned how impressed and enchanted they were after that dinner, clearly reassured that Canada’s efforts on the R&D front will remain above political squabbling.

“I was pleased to hear that Stephen had talked about Canadian R&D in Davos, yesterday”, he said.  I had fortunately just blogged about that, so I could exchange a few thoughts about SR&ED and the Tri-council. Then, I told him about the Banff International Research Station (BIRS), the jewel in the crown of Canadian math and science located in his beloved province. He had heard about it! I was happy.

I mentioned how much I wanted him to join the BIRS Board of Directors, when we were trying to set it up back then. But then everyone was saying Manning is so busy and will not do it. He gave me the impression that this was not impossible. So I will surely keep it in mind and probably “capitalize” royally on this Friday night encounter.

Then my 16 years old son and his friend James showed up. “Shake the hand of Mr Manning, guys and tell your history teacher on Monday that you’ve done so. He should then teach you about an important piece of Canada’s short history”.

We then departed, but not without Karen giving Manning one of her famous hugs. On the ride back home, Joseph and James, who were hoping to analyse -play by play- the hockey game, were shell-shocked at having to listen to a brief lesson on Canadian history, including “The West wants in …” and all that. For me, it was more like a trip down memory lane.

Joseph and James needed no lesson about Doug Mitchell, though my wife had to set their facts straight by explaining that the one who contributed so generously to the UBC Hockey arena is not really one of the Greek deities. He is a real person, who likes to have fun and who loves to hear that kids are having fun on ice. OK guys, I will thank him again when I sit next to him –which is always– in Board meetings.

Then, I felt sad. How terribly wrong some perceptions of Preston Manning the man may have been for all these years. Simply because he was a politician, and regardless of political convictions, people are prone to think that he must have been power hungry, ruthless, conniving, arrogant, anti-intellectual, etc… Yet, here I was standing next to one of the kindest, most thoughtful, cultured and unassuming men I have ever met.

For whatever reason, ruthless media, paid political attacks, premeditated character assassination, politicians are often dehumanized and vilified. “The politics of personal destruction” as coined by Bill Clinton, is not as bad in Canada as in the US (I have just finished reading this). Still, we are not far behind and we should not fall for it. What a lesson for a Hockey Friday night in Canada! Thank you, Karen and “Uncle Ed”.

Filed under: Honouring friends, Op-eds ]]> http://nghoussoub.com/2012/01/28/a-close-encounter-of-the-classy-kind-with-preston-manning/feed/ 1 ghoussoub preston http://nghoussoub.com/2012/01/27/it-may-be-crunch-time-for-the-presidents-of-canadas-research-councils/ http://nghoussoub.com/2012/01/27/it-may-be-crunch-time-for-the-presidents-of-canadas-research-councils/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:24:04 +0000 Ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/?p=6621 Continue reading →]]> The government will continue to make “key investments in science and technology” that are necessary to sustain a “modern competitive economy,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Davos today. He then added, “but we believe that Canada’s less-than-optimal results for those investments is a significant problem for our country.” It sounds like shake-up time for Canadian government support for R&D. I say that it is also an opportunity for the leadership of Canada’s research councils to shine!

What’s at stake here? Well, Stephen Harper seems to be quite serious about taking a good look at the recommendations of the R&D expert panel. He had already hinted at reforming the SR&ED programme. After all, that’s where a good chunk of government’s money goes, $3.5 billion of it. And the recommendations of the R&D expert panel seem to be sound, practical and most importantly, implementable without rocking  corporate Canada’s boat too much.

The big question is what will happen to Canada’s Research Councils: NSERC, SSHRC, CIHR, and the NRC. Will the government implement the 5% cut that NSERC’s president, Suzanne Fortier, has already hinted at? You would hope that this will not be the case for the simple reason that the Tri-council did not profit from the good years of stimulus budget –actually they got cut– so there is a good reason for them not to have to contribute to rebalancing the budget. But, what if these cuts do happen?

That’s where the leadership –and ultimately the legacies– of the presidents of the Tri-council will come into play. Will they move to protect advanced research at Canada’s universities? Will they show up to protect basic research? Even more importantly, will they take the lead in guiding government and aligning its objectives with the hopes and aspirations of Canada’s advanced research community? Will they properly articulate the concept of a research pipeline? That if you don’t feed basic science into the front of the pipeline, the commercialisable stuff coming out of the end will quickly dry up?

And why did I single out these pieces of the research pipeline? Well, first because they are the components that have been neglected and alarmingly weakened in the last few years, especially at NSERC. Basic research, represented by the Discovery programme, has been losing ground lately, mostly to industrially driven research programs. To make the story short, here are a few illustrative graphs of how the three major components of NSERC funding have been evolving in the last 10 years.

This data should be analyzed in a context where the number of applicants to the Discovery Grants program keeps increasing from 3300 in 2010, to 3482 in 2011, to 3900 applicants for the 2012 competition. On the other hand, we have seen a major shift of resources towards supporting “Engage” (already up five-fold –at $25-million– since its inception a couple of years ago), and towards the surprisingly lobby-efficient new kids on the granting block, the colleges. All in the name of “Innovation”.

It should be also clear that university-industry research partnerships should be supported and strengthened, but surely not at the detriment of the programs that maintain Canada at the forefront of investigator-driven fundamental research and discovery of the highest quality.

Finally, there is another more drastic scenario, at least for the NRC and NSERC, which was also essentially proposed by the R&D panel. The government may simply proceed with a major restructuring of the NRC — e.g., dismantling some of its institutes — and of NSERC. The proposal calls for the creation of an Industrial Research and Innovation Council (IRIC) to streamline and deliver the more than 60 programs across 17 different government departments in support of the federal government’s business innovation agenda. This will then include IRAP and probably most of NSERC’s Research Partnership Programs, leaving NSERC in a situation where it can really focus on its original mission.

This latter scenario may however be too bold and too ambitious for the cautious ways and slow pace under which Ottawa operates, even if Stephen Harper seems to be serious, able and ready to shake things up.

I cannot remember when and where I first met Tim, but I do remember that he was still a student at Cambridge, and that I was instantly awed by the intellect, the clear thinking, and the humility of this “kid” (who already had a streak of grey in his hair).  I wasn’t surprised at all when a few years later he started solving the mathematical problems that I –and many others– had worked on for years. Most of these problems started with the 1932 book of Stefan Banach where he laid the foundation of –infinite dimensional– Banach space theory. Let me just say that the [G-M] series of papers by Ghoussoub-Maurey containing partial advances on some of these problems were later totally overshadowed by the intricate constructions in the [G-M] of Gowers-Maurey. No hard feelings Tim!

I will not expand here on Tim’s obviously superior mathematical skills culminating with the Fields medal in 1998. This post is really about his leadership role in innovating, advocating and “disrupting” conventional approaches to scholarly activities, whether in research, teaching, publishing or in policy making.

I should have anticipated Tim’s aptitude for independent thinking a long time ago. Former NSERC President Tom Brzustowski and I were advocating for the Canadian government to make the Fields medal’s monetary reward comparable to that of the Nobel prize. Tim did not agree. “It was not necessary”. 

In 2009, Tim started by asking the provocative question whether “massively collaborative mathematics is possible.”  He was introducing crowd sourcing to mathematical research, breaking centuries-old traditions and taboos about mathematics and its practitioners. He then backed up his premise by creating the very first Polymath Project: a historic and successful attempt to use a blog (his) to get a large group of mathematicians scattered all over the world to collaboratively solve a mathematical problem.

He followed up on this project with another innovation, Tricki.org, which is a Wikipedia-style project collecting methods and techniques (tricks!) for mathematical problem solving. Tim has given thought to and proposed new models of mathematical publishing. But what really blows my mind is the time and effort he puts into the pedagogical aspect of our often-misunderstood discipline. Just take a look at his posts on the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos, on basic logic, on group actions, and do not miss his “which is easier” blog experiment to see what I mean about his amazing commitment and contribution to the process of learning.

Last summer, he again demonstrated his leadership qualities by ringing the alarm bells about the recent actions of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC): Micromanagement of the research enterprise, lack of consultation with the academic community, picking winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas, commissioning then ignoring the findings of international panels, not to mention the grand statements and the bureaucratic jargon used to announce it all … His dedication to the future of scientific research and teaching in the UK inspired and mobilized the British mathematical community.

And now again, he is speaking up against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), against greed and against certain business practices in scientific publishing. “So I am not only going to refuse to have anything to do with Elsevier journals from now on, but I am saying so publicly. I am by no means the first person to do this, but the more of us there are, the more socially acceptable it becomes, and that is my main reason for writing this post.” This is also my main reason for writing this post. See also The n-category Café.

But do not miss the section about “coordinated action” in that blog post. We may be needing it again, sooner rather than later.

“First, I want to reassure you that we did not take this decision lightly.  This is a decision that is made by NSERC staff, independent of the peer review process.  Every year we reject applications based on mandate ineligibility.  This decision was based on … the NSERC Act.”  

“It is in this context that your program was considered to be outside of NSERC’s mandate,” opined the NSERC staffer. The rejected application was submitted by a colleague in the department of Linguistics (You see, you are not alone!). The mathematically-based proposal was on the theme of characterizing communicative events in the signal domain, with a focus on testing and refining his signal processing algorithm for computing coordination through correlation map analysis. His cardinal sin was to mention its “anticipated significance in the social sciences and humanities i.e. predict changes to group behavior.”  

So NSERC staff appear to be rejecting a scientific proposal for reasons based on its relevance to fields of study, that they don’t consider accounted for in the NSERC Act. But was the $300-million “Research Partnership Program” ever intended by the NSERC Act? Were recent actions heavily favouring proposals with an anticipated commercial impact ever sanctioned by the NSERC Act?

Would it have been a different story, had the applicant secured a letter of support from the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)? After all, Steve Jobs’ take on “innovation” was based on his conviction that Apple products induce “changes in group behavior”, albeit rational or emotional. The type of “marketing-based innovation” that we should all be doing and funding, according to the Dean of the Rotman School of Management. But we regress.

The story was first reported by fellow blogger Jim Colliander. The Business Development Bank of Canada seems to have used its somewhat allotted “Expand Your Sales” section of the Globe and Mail to advertise NSERC’s Engage program. Jim used the occasion to report on how far current NSERC practices  are adrift from its original mission, a fact that was duly noted by the R&D Panel about all three of the research councils. What is remarkable is that the R&D panel also hinted at the mission drift of the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC).

Indeed, the BDC is the Canadian government’s main arm to support small business with venture capital. This means the BDC is supposed to act where the traditional financial sector is not working well. Originally the BDC was to provide early-stage venture capital but the returns were reportedly not so good so they moved into later stage deals. The problem seems to be that the BDC has neither the capitalization for this nor the expertise. Here are the main recommendations of the R&D panel report on this front.

Recommendation 5: Help high-growth innovative firms access the risk capital they need through the establishment of new funds where gaps exist.

 5.1 Start-up stage — Direct the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) to allocate a larger proportion of its portfolio to start-up stage financing, preferably in the form of a “sidecar” fund with angel investor groups.

5.2 Late stage — Provide the BDC with new capital to support the development of larger-scale, later-stage venture capital funds and growth equity funds in support of the private venture capital and equity industry. These funds would specialize in deal sizes of $10 million and above that are managed by the private sector and subject to appropriate governance practices.

The first recommendation is asking the BDC to get back to early stage financing and work with angel investor groups across the country to do this. For late stage, the R&D panel suggested BDC hold the funds but allow the private sector to manage the funding. The panel also suggests various methods of protecting taxpayer monies –motivated by schemes developed in Israel and other countries.

There appears to be a new strategic partnership developing between the Business Development Bank of Canada and NSERC, two organizations funded by government, which according to the R&D panel, seem to be equally adrift. The irony is that this new pact seems to be taking both organizations even further away from their original mission. NSERC is continuing to drift away from basic research and it surely looks like BDC is counting more and more on NSERC to provide early-stage venture capital, or is it research grants? OK! OK! the scale may be a bit off, but isn’t the thought that counts?

Grade Inflation in Discovery Grant Competitions – by Anthony Quas

Each year in the NSERC Discovery Grant competition, there is a fixed pot of funds to be allocated by each Evaluation Group (determined by a mechanism that is not widely understood). Under the current (post-2009) grant evaluation system, the zero-sum aspect is hidden from panelists as they rank proposals. Proposals are ranked one at a time, but not compared. Further, there is little that is absolute in the NSERC descriptions of the merit indicators – try comparing the criteria for a strong HQP rating with very strong rating for example.

Accordingly, there is a danger of  Grade Inflation, by which the standards, for example, for achieving a very strong HQP rating might become easier year-on-year. In fact, the previous system (not without faults of its own) behaved much better in this regard: each panelist was told they have an approximate `budget’ and they were to recommend a distribution of this amongst those applications for which they were the first reader. Clearly the fixed pot size was very evident to panelists as they made their recommendations.

Grade inflation was one of the factors blamed by Suzanne Fortier in her presentation to the 2011 CMS meeting for the disastrous collapse of grant levels in mathematics in the 2011 Discovery Grant competition.

Studying the data, I concluded that this was indeed a real problem. To measure grade inflation from one year to the next, I asked the question: what is the ratio of the cost of funding (or not) the average application in 2011 (according to its bin) using 2010 bin values to the cost of funding the average application in 2010.

More specifically, I computed the bin distribution of applications (all applications – not just those that were funded) in both years and took the ratio of the weighted average grant sizes using 2010 bin values under the two distributions. A ratio of 1 suggests that this year’s distribution is comparable to last year’s. A ratio above 1 suggests grade inflation. In the graphs below, I’ve expressed grade inflations as percentages.

This indicates considerable grade-instability across evaluation groups (over 40 % of the groups experienced grade inflation or deflation of over 10% between 2010 and 2011) with substantial grade inflation in 2011 in geosciences and both of the mathematics and statistics halves of EG1508 and substantial grade deflation in several of the engineering evaluation groups.

Needless to say, this instability leads to considerable uncertainty year-on-year in the research climate, undermining efforts to consolidate and improve training of graduate students and other highly qualified personnel.

Bureaucrats sometimes bring their own statistics to show you that you are “alone”.  Last summer, it was reported that in a quite provocative and still embargoed  presentation to the CMS membership (see below), NSERC’s President, Suzanne Fortier, asserted that 90% of the Evaluation Group (EG) members in the first two years thought that the new system (for NSERC’s Discovery Grants) worked better than the old system. Yet by last year, at least on EG 1508, 60% of the EG signed an open letter to NSERC’s President expressing serious concern about the outcome of the 2011 competition.

Stay tuned for an upcoming series of blogposts, where various guest bloggers will show you that … You are not alone!

• Welcome and thank you for coming today to discuss the very important issue of housing choice and affordability for students, faculty and staff.
• What is this task group about? Well! As you may know, the Board of Governors approved last year major plans for the densification of university lands. Many of us supported these plans because they created an opportunity to remedy the housing problem for our students/faculty and staff. An opportunity to create affordable housing, more choices and a more vibrant community that will incentivize UBC personnel to live on campus.
• Hence this task group that the Board asked me to chair to find ways to improve on what we are doing, and develop a Housing Action Plan for the Vancouver campus.
• Now I say that this initiative is not coming one minute too soon as the situation keeps getting worse. Not of course for the city’s real estate tycoons, but to our colleagues here at UBC who are trying to secure a decent home.
• In the last 2 weeks, people living on the west side got their property assessments. Typically they were up by 40%. Now this may have made some people feel richer — but this doesn’t bode well for the future of UBC.
• And before I got involved in this, I used to only know about the recruitment and retention problems in my own department at UBC. Since then, I have been hearing stories from all over campus:  Political science, Psychology, Physics, the Library. Departments that can’t even recruit heads, CRCs even CERCs because they are coming from jurisdictions with much more affordable housing.
• And staff. No one has ever considered the plight of staff. Not at UBC and not elsewhere. We are also determined to do something about that. Because there is no other way for a university to go forward.

What have we done so far? First, we wanted input, your input on what to do and how best to do it. And since we started this process last April,

• We have been organizing fora, just like this one, which is the third in a series we have hosted on this topic.
• I’ve talked to Deans to find out what they see as the challenges for their academic departments.
• We have started a blog on the Board of Governors website, and we have been encouraging people to contribute comments. Please do!
• CCP staff have had focus groups with renters and owners to learn more about what approaches would help them live on campus.
• They have been meeting with your employee representatives to find out what they are hearing from their members.
• We have also visited other universities that have the same challenges. NYU, Columbia, Harvard, UCLA, Irvine. Inquired about Stanford, Cambridge and Oxford.  And believe me these universities are way ahead of us on this front. Not only because they are located in prohibitively expensive areas but because their bread and butter is competitive hiring, which is what UBC is destined to do.
• Campus Community Planning staff have also been looking with other jurisdictions, such as Whistler, and other organizations such as BC housing to find out what has and hasn’t worked for them.

• The next steps? We are planning on having a discussion paper that outlines some potential options in late March. You will be getting a sneak preview today from Lisa, mostly some of the options we are exploring. So please speak up if you feel that some of these options are deficient or lacking.
• Students should feel free to ask any question they may have about student housing. Brian Heathcote is here from SHHS and will be available during the Q&A.  There will also be an opportunity during the discussion portion of the forum for students to talk about their housing issues.
• I will now ask Lisa Colby, the Director of Policy Planning for Campus and Community Planning, to tell you more about some of the different strategies we are exploring to address the housing challenges faced by faculty and staff.

“How come I haven’t been reimbursed yet?”

Is France now defaulting on its scientists? My twisted mind started calculating or was it re-calculating? How do we turn this into an opportunity?  I then remembered what a former NSERC president had told me when I mentioned that the UK’s granting agency EPRSC decided to only fund postdocs in applied probability and statistics. “What would the rest do then?”, he had exclaimed. I now had the answer. Plenty of talent available for Canada!

Then, I got this email: “I am advertising two postdoctoral openings in my group at the IMATI-CNR in Pavia. Then another one: “I am advertising a postdoctoral position in my group at SISSA in Trieste. The grant will last 2 years (with a possible extension up to 4 years) and the amount paid (after taxes) will be around 3.170,00 € per month (38.040,00 € net per year). That’s after taxes! But I thought that Italy was broke.

Then came the following email:  In 2012, Inria is offering research positions :
-  20 tenured researcher and research director positions, filled on the basis of competitive calls, intended for junior or senior profiles wanting to invest in medium or long-term research; - 8 research positions consisting of three-year renewable contracts for innovative international profiles: starting positions (after the thesis or a post-doctoral experience) or advanced positions (at least eight years’ experience after the thesis).

This is on top of the 20 postdoctoral positions offered by The Fondation des Sciences Mathématiques de Paris. France is not in such a bad shape after all. Then I read the following bombshell.

The European Commission has selected six futuristic proposals to compete for two huge flagship projects that will apply information and communication technologies to social problems. The victors, to be decided at the end of 2012, expect to receive an unprecedented level of funding for academia: €1 billion (US$1.4 billion) over ten years. Each project will now receive €1.5 million for a one-year feasibility study.

OK! I rest my case. In the meantime, I hope the links above will be of some help to Canadian math graduate students looking for good postdoctoral experience. There are many more on the webpage of the European Mathematical Society.  That was the main reason for this post in the first place.

I happen to get into a lot of mischief and my first video tells the story when my grandmother wanted me to stay outside after my run-in with a skunk. She set a counting challenge which she assumed would keep me busy for a long time. Not so!

You can watch another one of my adventures here.

I have risen out of the minds and souls of mathematicians, math teachers and First Nations Elders. I was conceived at a “First Nations Math Education Workshop” at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS). My adventures are relayed by Veselin Jungic (SFU) and Mark MacLean (UBC), illustrated by Simon Roy, and narrated by Rena Sinclair of the Siksika Nation.

Eldon Yellowhorn, an SFU palaeo-Indian archaeologist and his sister Connie Crop Eared Wolf, have helped produce Blackfoot translations. You can watch them here and here.

The idea of conceiving me emerged while they were discussing the various barriers to teaching math effectively to First Nations students of all ages. Since 2006, three workshops (with a fourth scheduled for 2012) have been held at BIRS to discuss the issues of First Nations math education.

According to Melania Alvarez-Adem (Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences), Genevieve Fox (First Nations Adult and Higher Education Consortium) and Sharon Friesen (University of Calgary) who have been driving the workshops, it is estimated that in British Columbia alone, by grade 4 (age 9-10), First Nations students lag behind their nonNative classmates in basic tests of numeracy by around 20%. By grade 10, only 47% of First Nations students meet the expectations in numeracy, versus 77% of non-Native students.

Overall, high school graduation rates are 40% lower in Native communities than the provincial average, leaving those who fail to complete grade 12 in a very poor position when it comes to further study or employment. If discrepancies in opportunities and in quality of life are to be redressed between First Nations and others, then the issue of trends of such poor performance in mathematics will have to be dealt with.

Besides the above creative teaching material, the BIRS workshops have also led to significant recommendations and advances. One conclusion is that math is a true centerpiece of traditional First Nations knowledge and that First Nations students should be expected to perform as well in the subject as the rest of the population. Another identified a need for a much stronger emphasis on teacher training in the Canadian education system.

The adventures of “Small Number” should play an important role towards this goal. Thank you Veselin, Mark and all the others for this important contribution.

Reviewing the performance of a Dean or a VP is also about evaluating their “offices”, and more precisely their selections of aides, associates, staff and anyone directly involved in running their operations. And what if one weak link in the record of an administrator under review happens to be the performance of the very subordinate appointed to the evaluation committee? Then what?

Aides and subordinates should of course be free to provide testimonials at their bosses’ review, but they should not be put in a situation of conflict. University governance should not allow for this type of situation.

And this is not the only instance where some care is required. An even trickier situation is when a Dean pro-tem is a declared candidate to be a full-fledged Dean. Can the committee then comprise the executive assistant of the candidate, or one of his/her Associate Deans? I am not so sure about this one.

In any case, we keep hearing about the concept of “campus as a living lab”. It may be time for this interesting concept to transcend its “civil engineering” focus and to acknowledge that campus is also a living lab for humans dabbling with other real issues, such as collective governance and ethical practices.

The newly announced “School of Complex Governance” sounds perfectly named for such a task, but it may be more efficient to get the graduate students at the UBC “Institute for Applied Ethics” to help us tighten the loose screws on some of these practices.

And Leadership Kudos go to Dave Farrar for making sure that the next due diligence process will be running with none of these unnecessary distractions.

As to you rank-and-file fellow faculty out there, O spirited descendants of Plato and Socrates, can you please step up and engage in such important processes? Why should senior management go to great lengths trying to involve you in a process that most of you don’t seem to care about?