PHYSICS

The annual Conference for African-American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences (CAARMS) will celebrate its 10th anniversary in Berkeley, California, the city where the conference was first held in 1995. The CAARMS10 conference, to be held June 22-25, will spotlight the accomplishments of mathematicians from underrepresented minority backgrounds, and is open to all. This year’s conference is being co-hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI). The three-day conference will feature technical speakers, tutorials, and a graduate student poster session. More information about conference logistics and a link to the registration page can be found at: http://www.msri.org/calendar/workshops/WorkshopInfo/258/show_workshop. The advance registration deadline is Monday, June 7. “CAARMS provides a unique opportunity for African-Americans who do mathematical research to share their work, address issues of importance and to extend support for up-and-coming graduate students in the discipline,” said Prof. William A. Massey of Princeton University, who helped found the conference in 1995. The co-organizers of this year’s conference along with Massey are Robert Megginson of MSRI and the University of Michigan as well as Juan Meza of LBNL. In the early 1990’s, Massey (then a researcher at Bell Laboratories) had an idea for an organization devoted mainly to addressing critical issues involving African-American researchers and graduate students in the mathematical sciences. It was envisioned that this organization would highlight current research by African-American researchers and graduate students in mathematics. It would also strengthen the mathematical sciences by increasing the participation of African-Americans and members of other underrepresented groups, by facilitating working relations among them and providing assistance in cultivating their careers. This organization became known as the Conference for African-American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences (CAARMS). Since the first conference in 1995, over 50 of the minority graduate students who have attended CAARMS conferences have gone on to earn a Ph.D. in the mathematical sciences. It was Massey's efforts, along with those of Raymond Johnson, William Thurston, James Turner and others, that led to the first meeting (CAARMS1) at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, California, in June 1995. Since then, Massey has continued to champion this event, which has been held each year at a leading university, industrial or government research institution. For more information, visit the CAARMS Web site at: http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/CAARMS/CAARMS-index.html. Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Learn more at http://www.lbl.gov. MSRI exists to further mathematical research through broadly based programs in the mathematical sciences and closely related activities. From its beginning in 1982, MSRI has been primarily funded by the National Science Foundation with additional support from other government agencies, private foundations, and academic and corporate sponsors. For more information, go to http://www.msri.org/.