The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 122

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Tom Salisbury
Since my time as Deputy Director, I have been involved in one
of the Fields start-ups, the Quantitative Wealth Management
Analytics Group (QWeMA), and I am currently back in a
different role, as Associate Director for Industry Liaison.
Three very successful thematic year-long programs ran
while I was Deputy Director: on partial differential equations;
string theory (jointly with the Perimeter Institute); and
renormalization/holomorphic dynamics. Planning also took
place for the two following years’ programs. These thematic
programs are the Institute’s flagship activity, shining a bright
light on a topic ripe for special attention, and providing
an opportunity for a critical mass of researchers to move
their field forward in a way that would not otherwise
happen. Thematic institutes are the particle accelerators
of mathematics, except that what we bring together and
collide are mathematicians. They work because, unlike
laboratory scientists, mathematicians are portable—they can
work anywhere.
These programs are a transformative experience for the
group of postdocs who attend them. I know during my own
thematic program in probability, the network our postdocs
established during their time at Fields had a major impact
on their post-Fields careers. It is inspiring to see young
researchers and postdocs eagerly working together at a
blackboard long after the Institute has closed for the day!
Bringing the world’s leading researchers to Fields, where they
interact with the Canadian research community, raises all
our games. I know my own department has been able to
achieve more, and to recruit outstanding people, because of
the presence of the Fields Institute.
During my time at Fields, our programs succeeded despite
the fact that budgets were tight owing to the fact that the
grants supporting Fields had not increased for some years.
In fact, the biggest challenge we faced during those three