1997 - Annual Report

Abstract

The Institute hopes to create, during this plan period,additional space to house many of its increased level of activities and augment the necessary infrastructure. Special effort will be made to enhance our Library Complex, so that it is ready to take full advantage of the raging information revolution and the consequent profound changes that may be incorporated into the set up of the library of a research Institute during the 21st century. We also recognise the need to ensure that computing power of the Institute always remain adequate, and that timely investment is made to remain at the cutting edge of problem solving. Since the Institute is involved in basic research it is only natural for us to have active collaboration with the faculty and students of the Universities and thereby strengthen the knowledge base of our nation. In the next plan period we hope to enhance these opportunities by initiating specific programmes. The Institute is recognised as a Centre of Excellence by the Third World Academy of Sciences (Trieste), so that we may play the role of a resource centre in the south-south collaboration in the International scene. In this programme we plan to have about ten Associateships that will enable mathematicians and physicists working in “the third world” an opportunity to enhance their efforts through academic interaction with us.The year under review saw our hosting two International gatherings : one on Operator Algebras and the other on Special functions & Differential Equations; as well as an Update Meeting on Timed Systems - details of which you will find in this report. In addition, we held pedagogically oriented Instructional Conference on Nonlinear Functional Analysis, the preliminary part of the 12th SERC School on High Energy Physics, and a Summer School on Introduction to Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science.Among the laurels won by our academic staff, I would like to highlight that of V.S.Sunder. who won the coveted Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Mathematics this year.This Annual Report has been compiled through the efforts of a committee consisting of V.S. Sunder, R. Simon, Tapash Chakraborty, R. Jagannathan, Venkatesh Raman and K.S. Santhanagopalan; further G. Venkatesan provided the necessary support, and Usha Otheeswaran assisted in typesetting the annual report using LaTeX.