Park City Mathematics Institute Celebrates Twenty-Fifth Anniversary and Adds New Leadership and Funding

The Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI), an Institute for Advanced Study outreach program of professional development for the entire mathematics community is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, new leadership and several positive funding developments.

First held in 1991, PCMI was established through a grant from the National Science Foundation, and has been an outreach program of the Institute since 1994. PCMI’s annual summer session brings together participants from across the spectrum of the mathematics community for a three-week, residential institute in Park City, Utah. It combines high-quality lectures and seminars with activities and events designed to foster strong bonds among the community’s various constituents and increase awareness of the roles and the contributions of all professionals in mathematics-based occupations. The more than 300 participants across the PCMI summer session programs include undergraduate students and faculty, graduate students and some of the world’s leading researchers in mathematics, alongside approximately 60 teachers who participate in the K-12 Teacher Leadership Program. PCMI is supported by the National Science Foundation, Math for America, the Clay Mathematics Institute, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, the National Security Agency and a private foundation.

Rafe Mazzeo, has recently been appointed the new Director of PCMI succeeding Richard Hain, Professor at Duke University and current Member in the School of Mathematics, who served as Director from 2009–14. Mazzeo, a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Stanford University and Faculty Director of the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies program, is a leading researcher in geometric analysis, and has also been actively engaged in mathematical outreach for many years. Mazzeo first joined the faculty at Stanford in 1986 as an Instructor, and continued as Assistant, Associate, and in 1997, Full Professor. He was also the Mathematics Department Chair from 2007­–10.

Mazzeo received both his Ph.D. and B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include geometric and microlocal analysis and partial differential equations. He has received many awards and fellowships including from the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Mazzeo is also Managing Editor for Communications in Partial Differential Equations, and is on the editorial boards of several other journals.

In addition to new leadership, there have been several positive funding developments for PCMI in recent months:

• Renewal of National Science Foundation support through July 2019—the NSF provides major support for all levels of the three-week research program: undergraduate, undergraduate faculty, graduate and the research components;
• Renewal of National Security Agency support for the PCMI undergraduate program for 2015;
• A three-year $1 million grant from a private foundation to support the existing K-12 Teacher Leadership Program, assess its effectiveness and expand its impact beyond the approximately 60 teachers who attend the three-week summer institute each year;
• Renewal of Math for America scholarship support for the K-12 Teacher Leadership Program for 2015;
• Selection for membership in the 100K in 10 initiative, a national network of over 200 partners, originally incubated by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Institute, and now an independent non-profit organization. 100K in 10 is designed to fuel the next generation of innovators and problem solvers by providing America's classrooms with 100,000 excellent STEM teachers by 2021.

For more information about the Park City Mathematics Institute, visit http://pcmi.ias.edu