Request for Future PCMI Research Topics

This is an open call for proposals to organize a summer session in the IAS/Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI) in 2026 and later.   Each year, PCMI hosts approximately 200 mathematical researchers and students for a three-week session in Park City, Utah. Each year’s session is focused on a common mathematical theme. Parallel programs are held for researchers, graduate students, and undergraduate faculty and students, as well as a small workshop related to diversity and equity issues.  The whole event is centered around approximately 8 minicourses for graduate students.  We are looking for proposals for upcoming programs, and invite proposals that address the following points:

  1. The mathematical theme of each year’s program should be sufficiently broad to be of interest to this rather substantial group of participants. In particular, the topic should generate enough interest to attract 80 graduate students.  Examples of current and recent PCMI programs include ones focusing on:  Extremal and Probabilistic Combinatorics (2025), Motivic Homotopy Theory (2024), Quantum Computation (2023), Number Theory Informed by Computation (2022), Quantum Field Theory and Manifold Invariants (2019), Harmonic Analysis (2018), etc. 
  2. We ask that you list a group of 4 or 5 organizers. This organizing team will be responsible for selecting the graduate minicourse lecturers and for the selection of graduate student and researcher participants.  (The undergraduate components of PCMI are organized by our Undergraduate Steering Committee.)   A good organizing team will be responsive and responsible over the year of preparations leading up to each year’s program, as well as the follow-up, which includes acting as editors for the volume of lecture notes published each year.  We seek organizing teams which are both diverse and sensitive to attracting a diverse group of participants.
  3. Proposals for 2026 should be aware that PCMI will take place in the weeks immediatelypreceding the ICM in Philadelphia.  This may affect participation and extra planning will be needed for this year. *The deadline to submit a research topic for 2026 is January 31, 2025.
  4. While we do accept non-US participants, it is preferable if a reasonable majority of the participants come from the US. 

Please provide us with a short document (less than 2 pages) describing the mathematical topic, and a potential list of organizers (this does not need to be the final binding list, but ideally a suggested group that you think fit the criteria above).  Please include a short description of why this topic might be timely, and some evidence (e.g. in terms of recent conference activity, or other markers) that this topic will attract a sufficient number of applications.

Proposals can be submitted here: https://www.mathprograms.org/db/programs/1705

Questions?? Contact Us at pcmi@ias.edu