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About the Global COE Program

Objectives

The mathematics department at the University of Tokyo has attracted world-class faculties and students to date and historically served as an important base for training mathematical talents nationwide. This, however, does not mean that we are satisfied with the current status. We are making efforts to compete with other high-level world centers specializing in mathematical research and education. Specifically, we are aiming to achieve three purposes in a stimulating and competitive environment:
(1) We will encourage world-class research in pure and applied mathematics;
(2) We will train next generation leaders who will become the driving force of future mathematical innovations in a broader sense; and
(3) We will send graduates who completed research-level mathematical training to the society whose expertise will be useful in every corner of applications.
Our department consists of four divisions -- algebra, geometry, analysis and applied mathematics. At the same time, we will encourage members of the department to organize research groups independently from each of the above four categories. To name a few, we have already organized research groups in mathematical finance, information mathematics, arithmetic geometry, complex geometry, infinite dimensional representations, mathematical physics, statistical analysis and computation, non-linear analysis and vision. In addition to this, we will organize new research groups in order to enhance interactions among these groups and also to raise the level of the researchers’ activities. Furthermore, in the course of rigorous mathematical research, we will place special emphasis on providing doctoral students with training on logical thinking. We also intend to train them in an international atmosphere, so that they will be able to fully exercise their ability in the future based on the belief that they should not be confined within small research areas. This will enable them to actively interact with diverse people thus be able to make contributions in a wide range of situations. We believe that the training through mathematical research will be useful not only in the career as mathematicians, but also in many different areas of professionals in the long run.

Outline of plan

We will invite domestic and international researchers from among a wide range of age groups, research careers and research areas in order to promote research activities and to train research students in the following way:
(1) We will invite world class researchers as visiting professors, and junior researchers as visiting associate professors.
(2) We will invite young talented people from around the world as postdoctoral researchers, and some of them will be selected as Kodaira fellows who will be provided with additional privileges.
(3) We will invite talented young graduate students from around the world and pay travel and living expenses up to a year.
In this way we intend to create an international and stimulating environment so as to cultivate domestic graduate students. Our slogan is “you can always meet somebody in Tokyo”. We are convinced that working together with talented postdoctoral researchers and students from overseas who are in similar age groups will place an extremely positive influence on domestic counterparts.

We will provide support to graduate students in the doctor course in the following way:
(1) We employ as many students as possible as research assistants and/or teaching assistants and pay up to 200,000 yen/month.
(2) We send them to overseas research institutions for short periods in order to receive advices from specialists or to take part in summer schools.

We will promote systematic research collaborations among researchers of different expertise through research group activities. We will organize large-scale international conferences regularly while holding smaller scale conferences more frequently together with special lecture series to maintain the level of research and education. We will organize three-week summer schools by inviting lecturers including specialists from abroad focusing on selected topics which are expected to become increasingly important towards the future. We will organize workshops and poster sessions in order to provide students with opportunities express their own ideas.

We will organize a research group on mathematical finance in collaboration with the graduate school of economics. We will invite users of mathematics from outside of the university so that the students will have opportunities to learn how mathematics is used in the practical situations. We will also organize a research group on information mathematics in collaboration with the graduate school of information science and technology. This will provide students who are superb in both mathematics and information science an opportunity of expertise education. We also plan to develop our original optimization theory as well as internet mathematics including the coding theory and cryptography.

The steering committee consisting of the leader, vice leader, the dean and the vice dean of the faculty, and the coordinators of the four divisions will meet frequently and decide important issues. On the other hand, in order to maximize the engagement of members of the center based on their original ideas, the leader will transfer the responsibility as much as possible to individual members. Large-scale projects will be proposed directly to the leader and discussed promptly by the steering committee. Interdisciplinary activities will be encouraged especially in the collaborations with the economics and information technology departments.

We will appoint the career coordinator targeted for the doctoral students, and the course coordinator to support young postdoctoral researchers, given that they are independent researchers who need to develop educational skills which will be essential to building up their career.

Our activities as well as the results obtained will be disseminated on our website and also in the form of video archives as well as by newsletters. We will appoint public relations officer for ensuring regular and timely announcements. We will continue to publish the Annual Progress Reports which started in 1988 and became bilingual since 1994. Our research and educational activities were evaluated by three mathematicians from American universities in 1994. The results were published in a booklet of about 60 pages and used over these years as an important source for improvements. We plan to receive another external evaluation during the five year term. An external advisory committee will also be established aiming to get advice on a regular basis.

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