[cmath] The liaison committee

[François Lalonde]

Dear all,

    The chairs of the two Math GSC's have been in contact with the  
directors of the three institutes to form a liaison committee that  
will discuss with NSERC's officials the questions relevant to the  
discovery grant envelope in mathematics. There are several aspects to  
be discussed: the assesment of quality in any future reinvestment in  
the GSC's (that would go beyond the current criteria of ''cost of  
research'' and ''discipline dynamics''), the level for the minimum  
grants in the Mathematics GSC's, the new accelerator grants and its  
impact on the mathematics GSC's, and many others.
     Since PIMS, Fields and the CRM are precisely the three  
institutes that support activities in fundamental mathematical  
research offsite in all regions of Canada, it is their responsability  
to take an active part in this urgent process. As soon as these  
discussions will reach some significant results, I am sure that the  
chairs of the two Math GSC's will send a communique to the cmath  
list. This (partly) answers the second part of Nassif's message  
below. Concerning its first part

  '' But you should know (Francois)  that any communique, whether  
addressed to me or not, (....)  will always get a response.''

I have one suggestion to make (on a humoristic note): when you will  
distribute my memo addressed to the participants of the next site  
visit at the CRM in 2013 to the entire world, please do respond to  
it: there is not much point in giving the full account of all  
victories of the Peloponnesian wars if the question asked was about  
the weather forecast for tomorrow. I prefer Thucydides. On a more  
serious note, your message contained another inaccuracy: I did not  
say ''The CRM will have to find research funds outside of Canada'' as  
you wrote,  but '' The CRM will have to CONTINUE to find research  
funds outside of Canada'', which is completely different. See our  
exchange below. I cannot leave that mistake aside and my Board would  
not either. The foreign funding at the CRM has increased by 320 %  
over the last three years to 420 K per year. It will be more than 500  
K next year, on par with BIRS. These funds come from a wide variety  
of sources (NSF, Clay, AIM, the civilian science division of NATO- 
Brussels, INRIA, INSERM, DIMATIA, Algant- Erasmus, etc). Some of them  
are related to the international Laboratories launched by the CRM in  
collaboration with INRIA (the French Agency in Informatics) many  
years ago, and with INSERM (the French funding agency in medical  
sciences) more recently  for our laboratory in Brain Imaging, and  
soon with the CNRS. The goal of the CRM is to double that foreign  
investment to 1 M $ per year in the next three years to bring new  
money to mathematical research in Canada. PIMS and Fields are doing  
well too. By the way, although this is a detail, I encourage you to  
give your grants information in the form '' x dollars per year for n  
years''  instead of the single big number n \times x; it would  
perhaps appear less impressive but it would be clearer.
       Concerning MITACS, their ratio (federal funding) / (total  
budget) will decrease to zero in 2012. They will be in a position  
harder than any other mathematical organization in Canada. It is the  
duty of every member of MITACS' Board to support by all means the  
gigantic effort that is being made by MITACS' direction to acheive  
sustainability in a way that will preserve the complementarity of the  
three institutes and MITACS,  as well as the very fruitful relation  
that we are building together.

sincerely,

Francois Lalonde
mathematician and director, CRM

Le 07-03-31 à 14:48, Nassif Ghoussoub a écrit :

> Francois:
>
> Thank you for the clarifications. But you should know that any  
> communique, whether addressed to me or not, that spreads  
> misinformation about 3 institutions to which I contributed a good  
> chunk of my professional life, will always get a response.
>
> For now, I ask you and the other directors to join me and the rest  
> of our colleagues in trying to stop the bleeding in the discovery  
> grant programme. This should be the next priority. I have argued  
> all along that the separation between the institutes and the Math  
> GSCs will be detrimental to the latter and only the latter. They  
> now stand vulnerable with no forum (nor advocates) to make their  
> case. Our community would surely appreciate it if you  turn your  
> attention and give your support to this matter.
>
> Nassif
>
>
> On Mar 30, 2007, at 2:52 PM, François Lalonde wrote:
>
>> Dear Nassif,
>>
>>    My memo was short, clear and honest -- it was sent to the  
>> participants in the site visit at the CRM, only to them -- you  
>> were not on that list, Nassif.  You have, incorrectly, decided to  
>> diffuse it on the cmath list  and to the top officials at NSERC  
>> (with no consultation with me). This confirms that communications  
>> by email, which should be so efficient, are no longer reliable, or  
>> useful -- this ethic problem concerns all of us.  My memo was not  
>> intended for your purpose, I mean that it was a sober message, it  
>> was certainly not a glorification of what the CRM has acheived in  
>> the past  five years. The CRM has a fruitful and lively relation  
>> with all other institutes in Canada. I think that it would be fair  
>> to say that there is no other institute that has worked so hard to  
>> collaborate with its Canadian partners: our thematic programming  
>> is shared with Fields, PIMS and MITACS -- it is actually because I  
>> wanted so much that PIMS be part of our 2008-2009 thematic  
>> programming that my letter reached you  !!  What a paradox.
>>
>> It is because I have worked hard to involve MITACS in all  
>> scientific planning for Canada that I have spent months to produce  
>> a report that will help  MITACS be part of the most exciting  
>> developments at the institutes. This was not an easy report.   
>> Believe me,  it needs some courage. You mentioned in your message  
>> what the CRM learned from PIMS : yes it is true, the CRM learned a  
>> lot from PIMS and has a splendid relationship with its director  
>> and all of  its researchers. I am always pleased to acknowledge  
>> this widely. See
>>
>>    http://accromath.ca/
>>
>> were there is an eloge to PIMS and its director Ivar Ekeland;  see  
>> the back cover of the first issue of Accromath where the  
>> acknowlegment to PIMS and Ivar  appears at the top, even before  
>> the logos of the ISM, CRM and MITACS.  The same applies to the  
>> IPSW for which PIMS helped so much, with generosity -- see
>>
>> http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/probindustriels/index_e.shtml
>>
>> where the entire second paqragraph is a tribute to PIMS. If this  
>> is in our website and our newletters, you can imagine that it was  
>> in our MRS site visit too.
>>
>>   But you did not mention what the CRM brought to the whole  
>> country and to the world. And as far as I can remember, you never  
>> did. And I won't either, since I spent the last 6 months  
>> explaining that to lots of NSERC's committees. I do not need, and  
>> I do not want to do it once again.
>>
>>     The overall CRM-ISM budget is 4.8 M this year, of which 1 M  
>> comes from NSERC (in the context of the MRS competition, it is the  
>> ensemble CRM-ISM that must be considered according to the rules of  
>> that programme amongst institutes). This does not include the  
>> inkind contributions of the CRM laboratories on all campuses, nor  
>> the MITACS' investments of course. So, as you see, the CRM faces a  
>> real challenge: it has both the laboratory structure that now  
>> exists (in a different way) at PIMS and the thematic programming  
>> that now exists at Fields. Since you raised that point, let me  
>> simply make the following correction: the thematic programming in  
>> its modern version in the world  was introduced by the CRM in the  
>> 80's at the same time as MSRI (Berkeley). The lab structure at the  
>> CRM was not inspired by the Collaborative Reseach Groups at PIMS  
>> ( as you suggested) but by the ''regroupements'' of the ISM that  
>> were set up in 1991 and were responsible for the first and only  
>> unified  doctoral School in North America.  This took fifteen  
>> years of hard work. The CRG"s at PIMS are very different from the  
>> labs at the CRM-ISM: I am sure that PIMS did not conceive their  
>> CRG's on the model of the ISM's ''regroupements'' and we did not  
>> conceive our labs on the CRG's model. These are independent paths.  
>> Both are interesting.
>>
>>    Concerning the reports from NSERC, I do not have them -- what I  
>> said is simply an exact account of what a NSERC top offcial told  
>> me. I think that I could take his/her words. This is why I did not  
>> elaborate on these reports. And looking at the results of this  
>> competition, I have no doubt that all reports for the three  
>> institutes are praiseful.
>>
>>    Now  the heart of the question raised by Nassif: it is true  
>> that BIRS is doing very well in terms of the ratio  federal grant/  
>> total budget, and I  perfectly agree with this (this is why BIRS  
>> is NOT mentionned in the French version of my message, while the  
>> English translation was not correct -- it is the only point of my  
>> message that was incorrect, and it was due to the  everyday  
>> challenge to write everything in both official languages).  
>> However, there is a genuine concern, for  ALL Canadians, when an  
>> institute like the CRM, is facing such a drastic cut over a 15 - 
>> year period. There is no reason to celebrate.
>>
>>     For the first time in Canadian history, a Canadian institute  
>> has launched a new mathematical field worlwide that led to a  
>> Fields Medal. Why not be proud of this ? It is the result of so  
>> many years of efforts.
>>
>> Very sincerely,
>> Francois Lalonde
>>
>>
>> Le 07-03-30 à 13:18, Nassif Ghoussoub a écrit :
>>
>>> Dear Francois Lalonde,
>>>
>>> At a time when individual discovery grants are being cut by 17%,  
>>> NSERC's decision to increase the funding of the 3 math institutes  
>>> was supposed to be an occasion to celebrate. Yet, you have  
>>> elected to diffuse widely a memo (see below), claiming that:
>>>
>>> ``The CRM has ranked first amongst the Canadian Institutes in the  
>>> NSERC MRS competition."
>>> but also stating
>>>  ``these results are worrisome.... because it (the CRM) is the  
>>> least  supported by NSERC in proportion to its overall budget:  
>>> indeed the NSERC grant represents only 20 % of our budget, far  
>>> behind PIMS, BIRS and MITACS which receive between 30 and 50 % of  
>>> their funding from federal agencies. "
>>>
>>> Notwithstanding that the CRM numbers on its own web page show  
>>> that 31% of its budget (firmly anchored on historic in-kind  
>>> contributions) comes from NSERC,  and that no other director has  
>>> received the information and reports that you claim you have from  
>>> NSERC,  I find myself particularly miffed --but not surprised--  
>>> by your choice of PIMS, BIRS and MITACS to dump on, in what  
>>> should have been a "victory speech".
>>>
>>> To that I say:
>>>
>>> 1) That a MITACS Board member points a finger at the network -- 
>>> which is not funded by NSERC's MRS-- at  a point in time where  
>>> the whole country is proud of MITACS' achievements,  is  
>>> irresponsible and clumsy at best. MITACS --which was explicitly  
>>> praised only a few days ago in the federal budget-- attracts huge  
>>> amounts of provincial and industrial cash, and supports hundreds  
>>> (soon to be thousands) of graduate students, post-docs and  
>>> interns across the country. Its recent  successes in getting  
>>> provincial funds are unheard of:  BC ($10M), Quebec ($225K ),  
>>> Atlantic Canada ($1M), Alberta ($1M), Prairies ($375K) etc...No  
>>> other organization (public or private) has as many industrial  
>>> contributing partners (over 250 at last count).
>>>
>>> 2) Your figure of BIRS  --which was not part of this MRS  
>>> competition-- is outright false and totally uncalled for.  I know  
>>> of no other Canadian research institution where NSERC cash  
>>> support ($2.87M) is substantially inferior to provincial matching  
>>> (Alberta alone $3.4M) and foreign funding (NSF alone $3.1M). A  
>>> mere 21% of the BIRS budget. I invite you to join the rest of  
>>> Canada in being proud of what BIRS is accomplishing for the  
>>> international scientific community (2300 participants from over  
>>> 50 countries every year ).
>>>
>>> 3) You say: ``the CRM will have to find research funds outside of  
>>> Canada", and we say that yes a lesson or two can be learned from  
>>> others' pioneering efforts in attracting opportunities to Canada.  
>>> BIRS attracts the largest NSF grant to Canada. The ``Laboratoire  
>>> CNRS  associe a PIMS" brings huge resources to Canada, albeit  in  
>>> terms of  talented researchers with full salaries  paid by the  
>>> French government, or by the access to European granting  
>>> agencies,  that this affiliated Laboratoire allows. Stay also  
>>> tuned for what PRIMA is about to accomplish on an even larger scale.
>>>
>>> 4) It is a pity that the lessons of the first re-allocation  
>>> exercise have been so quickly forgotten by NSERC's staff who --if  
>>> your statements are indeed correct-- seem to be back into the  
>>> unproductive business of foolishly assigning ranks that no  
>>> serious scientist can take  seriously, since they are neither  
>>> substantiated nor useful. What a waste of a joyful opportunity to  
>>> re-assure the community!
>>>
>>> 5)  You had the wit to duplicate and adapt the PIMS collaborative  
>>> programme, the PIMS Industrial problem solving workshops, the  
>>> PIMS PI in the Sky magazine, among other concepts pioneered by  
>>> PIMS.  NSERC rewarded you for it. So, there is no need to either  
>>> break the arm that fed you, nor poke the eye of those who  
>>> inspired you.
>>>
>>> I say that some humility and gratitude is in order. It is high  
>>> time for bitterness to take the back seat, and to allow for a  
>>> celebration. Good (French) Champaign should be offered to the  
>>> armies of math scientists who helped you (and the other  
>>> directors) achieve this success.
>>>
>>> Nassif
>>>
>>>
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>> Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:00:04 -0400
>>> From: "[ISO-8859-1] François Lalonde" <directeur at CRM.UMontreal.CA>
>>> To: liste-25jan07 at CRM.UMontreal.CA
>>> Subject: [ISO-8859-1] Résultats de notre demande de subvention
>>>
>>> ENGLISH FOLLOWS
>>>
>>> Chers collègues et ami(e)s,
>>>
>>>     j'ai appris hier que le CRM vient de se classer premier parmi  
>>> les instituts canadiens dans le concours ARM (Appui aux  
>>> ressources majeures) du CRSNG qui est le programme par lequel  
>>> sont maintenant financés les instituts canadiens. Voici les  
>>> résultats du concours pour la période 2008-2013:
>>>
>>> CRM:  1 200 000 $ par an
>>> Fields: 1 200 000 $ par an
>>> PIMS:  1 100 000 $ par an
>>>
>>>   Ces résultats sont encourageants car ils montrent la  
>>> reconnaissance de la qualité et de l'impact du travail réalisé au  
>>> CRM en collaboration avec l'ISM et nos universités partenaires du  
>>> Québec et de l'Ontario au cours des 5 dernières années. Les  
>>> rapports des comités d'évaluation sont particulièrement élogieux.  
>>> Cette subvention représente une augmentation de 25 % de notre  
>>> financement dans une période difficile et dans un concours où les  
>>> rares  fonds disponibles étaient âprement disputés.
>>>
>>>    Mais ces résultats sont également inquiétants: depuis 1997,  
>>> date à laquelle le CRM recevait du CRSNG une subvention de 875  
>>> 000 $, jusqu'à 2013 où le CRM recevra 1 200 000 $, l'augmentation  
>>> n'aura pas atteint 50 % en 15 ans !!!  Bien que le  CRM soit  
>>> l'institut le plus performant au Canada, il est le moins bien  
>>> financé au prorata de son budget par le CRSNG: notre subvention  
>>> du CRSNG ne représente en effet que 20 % de notre budget total,  
>>> loin derrière les autres instituts qui recoivent entre 30 et 50 %  
>>> de leurs fonds des agences fédérales. Cela signifie que le CRM  
>>> devra continuer de trouver hors du Canada ses fonds de recherche  
>>> -- une situation étonnante dans laquelle le premier institut au  
>>> Canada se trouve, plus que tout autre, projeté hors du pays.
>>>
>>>   Merci à tous ceux et à toutes celles qui ont tant travaillé,  
>>> aussi bien sur le plan scientifique, administratif que  
>>> logistique, à ce succès.
>>> cordialement,
>>> François Lalonde
>>>
>>> Dear colleagues,
>>>
>>>    I just learned yesterday that the CRM ranked first amongst the  
>>> Canadian Institutes in the NSERC MRS competition, the program  
>>> that now funds all Canadian Institutes. Here are the results for  
>>> the 2008-2013 competition:
>>>
>>> CRM:  1 200 000 $ per year
>>> Fields: 1 200 000 $ per year
>>> PIMS:  1 100 000 $ per year
>>>
>>>    These results are encouraging as they are the recognition of  
>>> the quality and impact of the work carried out by the CRM in  
>>> collaboration with the ISM, and our partner universities in  
>>> Quebec and in Ontario over the past five years. The reports by  
>>> the evaluation committees are highly praiseful. This grant is a  
>>> 25 %increase from NSERC and comes at a difficult time when few  
>>> funds were available.
>>>
>>>
>>>    But these results are also worrisome. Since 1997 when the CRM  
>>> received an NSERC grant of 875 000 $ until 2013 when the CRM will  
>>> receive 1 200 000 $, the net increase will have been less than 50  
>>> % within 15 yeasrs !!! Though the CRM is the highest performing  
>>> institute in Canada, it is the least supported by NSERC in  
>>> proportion to its overall budget: indeed the NSERC grant  
>>> represents only 20 % of our budget, far behind PIMS, BIRS and  
>>> MITACS which receive between 30 and 50 % of their funding from  
>>> federal agencies. This means that the CRM will have to continue  
>>> to find research funds outside of Canada -- a surprising  
>>> situation in which the premier institute in Canada finds itself,  
>>> more than any other, projecting outside of the country.
>>>
>>>   I would like to thank all those who have contributed, on a  
>>> scientific, administrative or logistic level, to this success.
>>> Sincerely,
>>> François Lalonde
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>   ********************************************************
>>> Nassif Ghoussoub, FRSC
>>> Scientific Director, Banff International Research Station
>>> Distinguished University Scholar, University of British Columbia
>>> Adjunct Professor, University of Alberta
>>> http://www.pims.math.ca/~nassif/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>   ********************************************************
> Nassif Ghoussoub, FRSC
> Scientific Director, Banff International Research Station
> Distinguished University Scholar, University of British Columbia
> Adjunct Professor, University of Alberta
> http://www.pims.math.ca/~nassif/
>
>
>