Spade2 ♠♠ deterministic and stochastic dynamics, fractals, turbulence

B3.2. Quality of infrastructure of the host organisation and partners

Library

The library of the Institute is the Central Mathematical Library of Poland. The collection of books (above 70,000) and journals (more than 630 titles) places the library among the best mathematical libraries in the world. The library collects scientific publications (in congressional languages and in Polish) concerning mathematics and its applications. Since 1993 a database of acquisitions has been accessible via the Internet. The catalogue of books and journals is available on our Internet homepage: http://www.impan.gov.pl/LIB/. The library is open to the general public (weekdays 8:00-19:00, Saturdays 8:30-12:30); students and researchers not working at IMPAN are also allowed to borrow books. Xerox facilities are also available. The library cooperates with many mathematical departments all over the world, exchanging publications and information.

Computer facilities

All of the computers at the IMPAN are connected to a local network. They are Pentiums, PC486, Sun Ultra 5 servers and SunSPARC workstations.

The computers are connected to the Internet (domain: impan.gov.pl). The main servers work under the Solaris operating system, others under Windows, Linux and DOS. Mathematicians can use Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, C++, and some GNU software.

Dissemination of knowledge

The Publication Department of IMPAN publishes 8 internationally recognised journals and serials (see B3.1). Most of the serials have international editorial committees. In particular, small monographs can be publish quickly in the Banach Center Publications. Also preprints of IMPAN give the possibility to spread instantly new knowledge. Since our journals and preprints are available on the Internet (www.journals.impan.gov.pl) there is no problem with world wide access. The programmes of seminars and abstracts of lectures can be also found on our web site (www.impan.gov.pl/biuletyn).

Accommodation

IMPAN holds guest rooms for 20 visitors (there will be 10 more in the near future). The guests are also offered offices with computer facilities.

Advertising

The SPADE2 project will be advertised on the web page of IMPAN as well as in the European Newsletter, where the vacancies for experienced and more experienced researchers will be published. We shall also send posters to the main universities in Europe. Local seminars and lectures are advertised by posters, web page and e-mails sent to interested participants. The ToK successes and events will be advertised on CORDIS web page, too.

A bulletin of SPADE2 is planned to be issued and sent to the participants regularly.

Partners

All partner organisations have sufficiently good infrastructure and facilities necessary to conduct mathematical research. They all have libraries, excellent internet connections and computer facilities.

B4. Management and Feasibility

B4.1. Proposed management and organisational structure

The organisational and management structure of the project is illustrated on the following chart:

Partners

Scientists-in-charge

International Advisory Board

Director of IMPAN

Scientific

Committee

Coordinator

of the project

Administration

Recruitment

Committee

Task

Coordinators

The key management is played by the coordinator who directly communicates with the Director of IMPAN and EU institutions.

1. The scientific committee (which includes Tasks Coordinators and Recruitment Committee) decides about general priorities, the choice of topics and methods to be transferred and the general splitting of means among the tasks. It suggests to the coordinator and task coordinators the general methods of organising the knowledge transfer (e.g. a common seminar). It evaluates the yearly progress in the top programme.

2. The coordinator is responsible for the execution of the ToK programme. He collaborates with the Scientific Committee (in particular with the task coordinators) in:

1. 
   selecting the candidates in IMPAN for the secondments, in the cooperation with the partners scientists-in-charge)the place and period of their visits;
   
2. 
   organising the transfer of methods learned during the secondments after return to Poland;
   
3. 
   selecting the subject and time and advertising the visiting position at IMPAN in the ToK programme, with the help of the technical staff.
   

The coordinator is responsible for financial decisions made in the ToK programme and takes care of all administrative and financial matters (offices, accommodation) using the administration structure of IMPAN. He also collaborates in these matters with partner organisations

3. The Tasks 1 - 4 are coordinated by the task coordinators chosen among scientists involved in the project. They are subordinated to the coordinator of the project. They organise visits (timetable, selection of topics) communicating with scientists-in-charge from the partner organisations. On the IMPAN side they fix the content and timetable of seminars, lectures and workshops connected with the ToK project.

4. The International Advisory Board, IAB (consisting of distinguished scientists) will be established to ensure the maximal possible efficiency and help to indicate the best experts possibly involved in the transfer of knowledge.

5. The Recruitment Committee will select YR candidates (see B3.2 Advertising).

It demands recommendation letters and asks experts for the opinions.
More experienced researchers (experts) will be selected carefully by the Scientific Committee

upon suggestions by tasks coordinators (and advised by IAB) basically from the list in B1.4

square brackets and will get personal invitations.
The execution of the Project will be monitored and evaluated yearly by the Scientific Committee in collaboration with the partner scientists-in-charge. The progress (measured e.g. by publications, attracted students etc.) will be reported to the EU commission by the Coordinator.

Very good communication with the Partner Institutions is expected on the base of excellent existing contacts. We plan a part time employment of a technical secretary in charge of the project, in particular in charge of technical preparation on an e-bulletin, and creating and maintaining the web page by a professional.

B4.2. Management know-how and experience of the host
IMPAN has big experience in organising scientific events such as Conferences, Workshops and Semesters (over 20 events yearly). IMPAN was the main organiser of the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1983. Yearly we host a few hundred guests from abroad offering them excellent conditions of work and accommodation. We own guest rooms for 20 visitors and there will be 10 more in near future.

We organise over 20 regular seminars, many of them with a very long tradition.

The annual budget of IMPAN exceeds 3 million Euro. However, only 50% of this amount is obtained directly from Ministry of Science, former Office for Scientific Research (KBN) (the remaining funds have to be gathered from other sources). The scientific staff exceeds 70 people. Apart from the main centre in Warsaw we have 7 branches in other cities and a modern conference centre in Będlewo (with facilities for mid sized conference).

We have very well developed international cooperation. Let us mention again our IMPAN-BC Centre of Excellence and Marie Curie Training Site: Banach Center for Differential Equations, Functional Analysis and Stochastic Processes, and else our cooperation with the FP5 networks: Marie Curie Control Training Site (coord.: SUPELEC - Gif-sur-Yvette) and Geometric Analysis RTN (coord. N. Teleman - Ancona), see also B6.

B5. Relevance to the Objectives of the Scheme.


1. New areas of competence.
The objective of developing new areas of competence has been addressed in B1.2. We listed there a large spectrum of research objectives in which we hope to achieve a substantial scientific progress. These are all interlinked, see B1.1 (or B1.4.motives for example). Analytic-stochastic areas are adequate to provide a strong stimulus to the development of applications of mathematics in technology.
The multidisciplinary profile of SPADE2 which includes the prominent areas of deterministic and stochastic processes, chaotic phenomena and fractal structures, treated in a rigorous mathematical way, will be a magnet for young researchers from Warsaw, Poland and the region.
We made a choice of 5 partner organisations where we plan to send our researchers to acquire knowledge (we plan stays from 2 to 4 months; see B2.4). After returning to Poland these researchers will give new directions to the traditional seminars, grouping local scientists (listed in B2.2), and organise and lead new seminars and courses.
2. Availability of appropriate researchers.
An important role will be played by incoming top-class researchers from several European institutions and also from outside of Europe. There is a strong tendency to invite very experienced researchers. However to build our scientific centre, we want to do our best to attract younger (less then 10 years of experience) researchers, who are at the forefront of

their subject to share with us their enthusiasm.

Adequate salaries and other financial contributions offered by the programme will attract foreign researchers for long stays. We do not doubt the availability of appropriate researchers willing to come to transfer the requested knowledge. We have strong international links and many scientific papers and books have been written by the employees of our institute in co-autorships with top foreign scientists. A great role has been played by our IMPAN-BC 5FP Centre of Excellence which has been visited for at least 1 month stays by many top scientists. Traditions of Banach Center semesters, workshops and other initiatives also are very important.
3. Local critical mass of researchers.
The local research groups are described in B4.2. We give below an additional information how these groups are involved in training of young researchers and PhD students. The 5FP programmes (our Marie Curie Training Site BANACH and CE IMPAN-BC) and hopefully the ToK we apply for, have been making a big pressure to increase substantially the number of PhD and postdoc positions in place of professors becoming retired. There are numerous very talented PhD and undergraduate students available and we want to absorb them in science (see also B6). A substantial increase of the number of such positions is planned already for 2003/2004, despite financial difficulties. The ToK and EST (for which we shall apply in November) will create pressure to increase financing of the Polish YR.

Therefore the ToK would fall on very fertile ground. We have recently signed agreements with the Department of Mathematics of Warsaw University (3 years ago), and the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Warsaw University of Technology (last year) on joint PhD studies programmes. Our PhD students lead exercises/tutorials with undergraduates there.

Moreover most of the scientists - authors of the proposal (including the coordinator), teach advanced courses and lead seminars at Warsaw University, Warsaw University of Technology and Silesian University attracting the best students.
Recently our links with the Warsaw University of Technology increased. This promotes cooperation with technologically oriented researchers. We are in the course of founding a new Mathematical Centre for Science and Technology, within the IMPAN (to be launched in the Autumn 2003). IMPAN seminars and courses attract advanced undergraduate students and YR from all the universities in Warsaw and also from other cities (Katowice and Kraków are 2.5 hours away by train, Łódź is even closer, and participants come also from Lublin, Gdańsk, Toruń etc ). We organise a weekly colloquium for PhD students, inviting top senior professors and the best YR to deliver lectures.
4. International dimension.
Although the Banach Center has been acting for 30 years, it has never been in a position to offer mathematicians from Europe and outside medium term positions (semester or longer) with decent salaries. Therefore, this part of our international activity was not developed to the desired degree. The ToK project opens the possibility to fill this gap.
We plan to transform IMPAN into international research and training institution, using all the existing resources and applying for additional ones, in cooperation with local Universities and international organisations. We hope that it becomes a leading mathematical institution of this type in the central-eastern Europe.
The ToK will strengthen the international dimension of IMPAN. Together with the national PhD studies it will attract PhD students from abroad, with fellowships from other sources. Already in 1995-99 we organised special international PhD studies at IMPAN, but that programme has been suspended because of the lack of adequate financial support. We would like to revitalise these studies. Recently we received financial support from the Polish Committee for Scientific Research (KBN) for PhD studies with the participation of foreign participants. EST (see above) would also play a crucial role.

B6. Added value to the community
A central issue of every modern society is solving problems which appear in technology, ecology, economy and medicine. Mathematical models help expose fundamental structures hidden in these problems and serve as unifying tools to deepen our understanding. The increased diversity of scientific problems poses new challenges to mathematics.

Many of these ideas were invented and developed in Europe and have now been studied world-wide. It is quite possible to maintain European lead in these fields, and this project would be an important contribution to that aim. Having a strong mathematical centre in Warsaw, an important scientific centre in Eastern/Central Europe with a big well educated population, will highly contribute to the European Research Area.

Extension/reinforcement of present activities towards scientific and technological development of the region.
IMPAN continues great traditions of Polish mathematics and the project concerns some of these traditional topics on which bases new areas of competence will be built. It is necessary to transfer to its investigations new mathematical ideas and techniques and to open them to applications. Already in FP5 we have undertaken efforts to develop, on the basis of the traditional areas, modern mathematical disciplines which lead to applications substantial for technological development. The EC programme of the Centre of Excellence IMPAN-BC has been created. However it will definitely finish on 30 September, 2004.

IMPAN-BC included the packages:

1. Public-Key Cryptography and Computational Number Theory

2. Information Theory and its Applications to Physics, Finance and Biology

3. Mathematical Modelling and Analysis of Cellular Populations

4. Nonlinear Systems and Control

5. Mathematics of Finance and Stochastic Control

6. Approximation structures in Banach spaces

7. Symplectic Singularities and Applications

8. Visual Modelling

In SPADE2 we plan to develop new areas of competence, growing from some subtopics in the above packages, including new topics, but better interrelated and much more focused.

The topics of SPADE2 also continue some topics of the FP5 Marie Curie Training Site at IMPAN named Banach Center for Differential Equations, Functional Analysis and Stochastic Processes (acronym: BANACH).

The topics are related to the topics of the FP6 RTN CODY and CODY2 (Conformal Structures and Dynamics), proposals submitted by IMPAN, which got very high notes but have not win.

The Polish Office for Scientific Research (KBN), which finances IMPAN and the Banach Center (in more than 50%), is providing additional money for individual (or small team) grants. There are now several such grants at IMPAN, some of them in the areas of the ToK project (4 right now). Also Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) provides some means (for example FNP subsydium supported in summer 2003 participation of our four students in CIME School in Turbulence in Martina Franca. KBN has also been providing additional money for EC programmes, in particular the Centre of Excellence and Marie Curie Training Site, and it is probable that KBN will continue this policy with respect to FP6. These local means, when added to EC financing the ToK project, should allow us to contribute significantly to the training of Polish participants. It should also allow us to increase the number of local PhD and postdoc fellowships, finance participation in conferences and seminars, etc.

At present we have a demographical peak in Poland with numerous very gifted students in mathematics and we feel responsible for their scientific careers. Without adequate support they will be lost to science or they will emigrate (we have high unemployment rate). A pressure is necessary to increase Polish poor 0.4 percent of GDP spending on research.

Finally the ToK (combined with other programmes) will attract young researchers (YR) from neighbouring and NIS states and foster reintegration of experienced researchers from the USA (this process has already started).

We hope that due to contacts with the ICTP in Trieste also contacts with YR from Asia, Africa and Latin America will develop. Dynamical systems group has already contacts (joint papers) with people at IMPA (Brasil) and Chile. We plan to cooperate with other EC programmes active in the areas of SPADE2, in particular with FP5 HYKE and HARP RTN’s, (nodes in Wroclaw), 6FP RTN Modelling of tumor growth and therapy (node at Warsaw University) and PHD (Phenomena in High Dimensions) node at IMPAN (invited for negotiations).

Anticipating FP6 our IMPAN-BC Centre of Excellence signed a cooperation agreement with Centres of Excellence in math: EURROMMAT, MATHIAS, BIS-31 in Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria, and some other institutions. If our SPADE2 is accepted we plan to involve these centres, thus further contribute to the extension of ERA.

Attractiveness of Europe means, in particular, high level research centres open to foreign visitors and attracting outside researchers by their competence. It also means presence of authorities in science, in particular in mathematics and its applications. Our ToK programme aims, in particular, at putting at higher level the research and researchers in the domain of SPADE2 in Poland and outside. Especially important aim is to attract to science and to rise research qualifications of young people. The coming 10 years in Poland are crucial for the recruitment of candidates for research for two reasons: (a) the population wave at the universities attains its maximum, and (b) the unemployment rate is high (18%). Both factors improve decisively the chances of recruitment of young scientists. The ToK programme should contribute considerably not only to research level of the SPADE2 group and related scientists, but also shows to young graduates that research career in Poland has positive perspectives.

Clearly, the possibility of transferring knowledge, offered to the outside researchers – experts in the domain of SPADE2 – increases attractiveness of the Polish research centres. Indirectly, the rising of expertise in the applied oriented research SPADE will increase the level of mathematics taught at universities. (see B2.1)
Gender Issues. At present the rate of women employed at research positions at IMPAN is about 20% and 6 out of 23 in the subjects of the SPADE2 project. These proportions are likely to become more balanced when the young participants (postdocs and PhD students) will become involved in the project. We will pay a special attention to this issue and make efforts to achieve better balance.

B7. Previous Proposals and Contracts

This proposal is not a resubmission, however it has some common points with the proposal No FP6-509757 BANACH SPADE in FP6-2002-Mobility 3, deadline 22 May 2003, which failed.

The present proposal, while remaining multidisciplinary, is much smaller and focused.

B8. Other Issues

Does the research presented in this proposal raise sensitive ethical questions related to:	YES	NO
Human beings		√
Human biological samples		√
Personal data (whether identified by name or not)		√
Genetic information		√
Animals		√

We confirm that the research presented in this proposal does not involve:

• 
  Research activity aimed at human cloning for reproductive purposes,
  
• 
  Research activity intended to modify the genetic heritage of human beings which could make such changes heritable;
  

• 
  Research activity intended to create human embryos solely for the purpose of research or for the purpose of stem cell procurement, including by means of somatic cell nuclear transfer;
  
• 
  Research involving the use of human embryos or embryonic stem cells with the exception of banked or isolated human embryonic stem cells in culture.
  

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HUMAN RESOURCES AND MOBILITY (HRM)

ACTIVITIES

MARIE CURIE ACTIONS

Marie Curie Host Fellowships for the Transfer of Knowledge (ToK)
Development Host Scheme
PART B

BANACH SPADE

♠♠
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS, FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS AND

STOCHASTIC PROCESSES

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