This is a paid announcement that appeared in SIAM News.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

The Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, located on the University of Minnesota campus, recently announced the following upcoming programs and opportunities:

2013–2014 Thematic Program: The IMA will soon launch its new annual Thematic Program, to run from September 2013 to June 2014. The theme—Scientific and Engineering Applications of Algebraic Topology—will gather researchers from topology, computational geometry, networking, statistics, biology, and other fields to address methods for qualitative analysis and recognition problems in contemporary contexts, including data (finite metric spaces as samples from experiments, surveys, or sensors), networks (Internet traffic, gene regulation, coordinated robotics, communications), and dynamics (systems equipped with only finite resolution or those that are stochastic). The six workshops planned for the year are designed to be truly interdisciplinary. More information about this year’s workshops and the thematic program are available online at http://www.ima.umn.edu/2013-2014.

Call for Proposals: Hot Topics Workshops. The IMA’s Hot Topics Workshops cover rapidly developing areas of interests, focusing on a specific problem or area of exceptional contemporary significance. These workshops are often cosponsored by a participating institution, corporation, government funding agency, or an NSF-focused research group. More information on submitting a workshop proposal is available online at http://www.ima.umn.edu/solicit/hot-topics-guidelines.html.

New Directions Research Professorships: Applications are invited for New Directions Research Professorships, which provide an extraordinary opportunity for established mathematicians—typically mid-career faculty at U.S. universities—to branch into new directions and increase the impact of their research by spending an academic year immersed in the thematic program at the IMA, where they learn new mathematics and applications, connect their research with important problems, and establish new contacts and collaborations. Applications for professorships during the 2013–2014 (Scientific and Engineering Applications of Algebraic Topology) and 2014–2015 (Discrete Structures: Analysis and Applications) thematic programs are still being accepted. Readers can visit http://www.ima.umn.edu/new-directions for more information as well as an online application.

New Directions Short Course: Applied Statistics and Machine Learning. From June 17 to 28, 2013, the IMA will hold its New Directions Short Course, titled “Applied Statistics and Machine Learning.” Applications are now being accepted for the two-week course, organized by Bin Yu (University of California, Berkeley) and David Madigan (Columbia University); the course will introduce participants to a broad array of modern statistical concepts and techniques, with a focus on critical thinking and practical data analysis. The statistical software R will be used extensively and students are expected to have at least rudimentary knowledge of R prior to the course. The course will cover exploratory data analysis (visualization, dimension reduction, clustering), statistical modeling (linear models, generalized linear models, logistic regression, graphical models), and statistical computation (Monte Carlo, Markov chain Monte Carlo, convex optimization). The course will also cover regularized and large-scale modeling techniques.

More information and an online application are available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/2012-2013/ND6.17-28.13. The deadline for applications is April 15, 2013.