1993 - Annual Report

Abstract

During the year under review, the Institute hosted three intensive workshops. These have fallen into a pattern and routinely attract all active workers on a given topic from various leading Institutions. The experts congregate for a week to make an in-depth analysis of the progress that has been achieved here and elsewhere. The workshop on Strings and Gravity during Feb. 1-5, 1993 could be regarded as a sequel to the workshop we held during November 1990. While the one in 1990 Weis in the nature of pedagogic reviews and expert introduction to the subject , the talks in February 1993 were of concrete achievements and their presentation to fellow professionals. Immediately following the workshop on Strings was one on Low dimensional Field theory and their applications in Condensed Matter theory during Feb.8 - 13. This included a pedagogic component and reflected multidisciplinary interest. This Institute has had a leading role in the development of Quantum Groups and it was appropriate that we hosted a workshop for a week during March 1-5, bringing together the scattered few experts in this field. The theoretical computer science group held a followup to their National level meeting as an update meeting on Models and Programs during September 7-11, 199*2. A one day symposium was held in honour of Prof.K.R.Unni on 31st March 1993. With the completion of the third floor to the Library Building, the space crunch felt during the preceding year is no longer serious. We now have more office space and another seminar room will be ready soon. The next task is to get on with housing project and I am happy that we have initiated steps in this direction. Twenty four flats are to be built in a site at 62 Muttukadu Road (New Mahabalipuram Road) and hopefully they will be ready for occupation by January 1995. The computing power in the Institute has kept pace with the demand; we have acquired a Sun IPX workstation together with the peripherals and integrated them with the Institute computer network. This has also provided with us with an improved technical communications with other centers of learning around the world through the use of e-mail as well as telnet facility for use of computer systems elsewhere. The task of the upkeep of the infrastructure of the Institute for the right atmosphere of academic activity is handled by Shri G. Sethuraman and the staff in the Office, Library and Hostel-cum-Guest House Complex. We thank Drs. R. Parthasarathy, Parthasarathy Majumdar, Subhashis Nag, R.Ramanujam and Mr.K.S.Santhanagopalan. for their valuable help in preparing this report. Mrs.S.M. Parijatham and Mr.A.R. Balakrishnan prepared the LateX version of the Annual Report.