Vision and Mission

Promoting mathematical excellence in developing countries.

 

Mathematics in Developing Countries

Mathematics underpins research in all areas of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) and it is therefore essential for any country wishing to improve STI education and research to have an active community of researchers in mathematics.

Notwithstanding increased access to publications through the Internet, and a larger number of international events through increased funding and financial support for research, it is still proving extremely difficult for mathematicians in most developing countries to break out of their isolation and conduct high-level research at an international level.

The International Mathematics Master (IMM) is a relatively new approach to capacity building in mathematics in developing countries. The vision and strategy behind the concept of the IMM are the fruit of decades of experience of the faculty and staff of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and are inspired by, and complement, several existing programs run by the ICTP and other organizations.

A first implementation of the IMM was launched in 2019 in Pakistan, following a collaboration agreement between the ICTP and COMSATS University Islamabad (CUI) within the framework of the ICTP Affiliated Centre program. Given the success of IMM Pakistan, the intention is to consolidate the program in Pakistan and open similar programs in other countries.


+ Selected organisations promoting mathematics in developing countries

  • The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) has been active since 1964, opened a Mathematics Section in the 1980’s, and has played a fundamental role in supporting the mathematical research careers of literally thousands of mathematicians in developing countries through its multiple programmes. ICTP has also recently supported the creation of regional “partner institutes” in several countries, including in particular the East African Institute for Fundamental Research (EAIFR), which for the moment only includes Physics but is planned to eventually open a Mathematics section.

  • The Centre International de Mathematiques Pures e Appliquées (CIMPA) has also been funding and organising many activities since its foundation in 1978, most notably short intensive courses all over the globe.

  • Over the last couple of decades the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) has built up a network of dedicated centres in Africa offering one and two year Master’s level programmes which have trained to date hundreds of young African physicists and mathematicians.

  • The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) brings together distinguished scientists and mathematicians from all developing countries and coordinates various fellowship programmes.

  • The Organization for Women in Science in Developing Countries (OWSD) offers a large number of fellowships to female scientists, including mathematicians, to carry out PhDs or to start off on research careers.

  • The International Mathematical Union (IMU) has set up a Commission for Developing Countries ( CDC) which supports a variety of grants and projects.

  • The Swedish International Science Programme (ISP) has been involved for many years in a variety of programmes to support science and mathematics in developing countries.

  • The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) has recently been increasingly involved in a number of programmes focused on development.

With the support of these organizations, increased funding from their governments, and often very inspired leadership, some countries, such as China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and a few others, have been able to develop their mathematical research to truly international levels. The Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA) in Rio de Janeiro, for example, has in fact not only fostered and produced research at the levels of the best research institutes worldwide (and one of its students, Artur Avila, has gone on to win the Fields Medal), but has been a precious resource for all of Latin America, many of whose best mathematicians were trained at IMPA. Some other countries also have some good level mathematicians, but in most cases, the overall general level of such research is much lower than what can and should be expected.


+ Existing Capacity Building Strategies

There are essentially three main “capacity building strategies”, each with its own advantages and shortcomings.

Study Abroad Fellowships

Many countries have, or have had at some point, schemes to support students to do PhDs and/or postdocs in Europe or the US with the idea that the students would then return and continue research at an international level. Systematic and ongoing funding of this type can of course have a very positive impact on the overall training of researchers.

Unfortunately, specially in mathematics, most of the times there is little or no coordination and very little support on return to their home country, so these researchers often find themselves scientifically isolated and have to deal with a variety of pressures, including that of conforming to local standards of research.

Schools and Workshops

Short, intensive, schools and workshops are an excellent way of bringing prestigious international researchers to developing countries. They are relatively inexpensive and easy to organise, top researchers are often willing to travel and interested to discover countries with which they are not familiar and curious about the local interest which their participation attracts, local students are excited to meet famous professors, local professors and authorities are interested in the prestige and visibility that this brings to the institution. It seems like a win-win situation, which also partly explains why there is a huge number of such international schools and workshops taking place all the time.

The reality, however, is that most of the time the students do not have the background to follow the lectures and the lecturers are not sufficiently aware of the level and background of the participants, which is often also extremely heterogeneous. Moreover, it is generally very difficult for the students to follow-up on a school or workshop. As a consequence it is very rare for the event to have the desired impact in terms of capacity building. There are of course some success stories, and sometimes a short school does end up with a student and a professor making a lasting contact, see for example this recent story, but it is clear that this is much more the exception rather than the norm and perhaps some thinking should be done as to how to improve the impact of such events.

New Dedicated Institutes

One way to address the lack of continuity of short schools is to set up new institutes running year-long programmes with international faculty, such as the AIMS institutes and the ICTP-EAIFR institute mentioned above, both in Africa. These clearly provide in principle a much more stable and long term training environment which could have much more of an impact on capacity building. Naturally, this solution is only possible when very extensive amounts of funding are available.

IMM - Filling In the Cracks

The IMM is conceived to be complementary to the various schemes mentioned above, or perhaps can be more usefully thought about as filling the cracks left open by existing initiatives. It provides a systematic and coherent training program over two years, which is long enough to give students a solid foundation for further studies, and through its alumni network it aims to coordinate and support the students in their more advanced studies and when they return to their home countries. The scientific program and structure of the IMM owe very much to the model of the ICTP Diploma and can be thought of as an extension or “branching out” of this model to work directly in developing countries.

While the IMM cannot hope to offer students the same kind of overall scientific environment which Diploma students benefit from at the ICTP, it does have several benefits, amongst which the not irrelevant issue of having significantly lower costs and a more direct impact on the wider academic community of the host country.

IMM Vision

The vision behind the International Mathematics Master (IMM) is to have

a 2-year Master of Mathematics hosted by an existing higher education institution in a developing country, taught by prestigious international faculty, and comprising a scientific program based on fundamental and core mathematical topics.

The program aims at attracting the very best local and international students and exposing them to the highest quality teaching in preparation for entering competitive PhD programs. Despite its simplicity, the vision and strategy of the International Mathematics Master are proving to be quite unique and fill a gap in the existing landscape of activities supporting mathematical training and research in developing countries.

The benefits of the IMM approach are many, and include the following;

  • The opportunity for students to learn from faculty who teach and research at an international level, through courses which are accessible and coordinated in order to provide a systematic learning experience leading to a solid mathematical foundation for further study.

  • It is extremely cost-effective, as it relies on the existing institution’s administrative and logistic infrastructure. The only “live” costs are the travel and local expenses of the international faculty and the fellowships for the students.

  • The international faculty can interact with local faculty, giving research talks, and offering mentoring and support, including to faculty from nearby institutions. They can also give public lectures and generally be a resource for the mathematical community of the country as a whole.

Short/Medium Term Challenge: An International-Level Program

The short/medium term goal of the International Mathematics Master program is that it should become as good as any Mathematics Master program anywhere.

The involvement of international faculty coming from many different universities is a strength of the programme (albeit giving rise to some non-trivial logistic issues which we discuss below) and provide a faculty body which any but the very top institutions might find hard to compete with. The programme should attract the very best students from the host country and the region, as well as international students. The measure of its success will be to provide IMM graduates with the foundations and skills to be admitted and successfully pursue PhD studies in excellent programmes in Europe or the US or other top level institutions worldwide. A second measure of success will be to reach the point where a good student with a good Bachelor’s degree from a good European or US University would consider, and perhaps choose to follow, an IMM programme in a developing country, knowing that they are choosing an exciting personal experience without compromising their mathematical training!

Medium/Long Term Challenge: Capacity Building

The medium/longer term challenge is of course for the alumni of the programme to remain involved as tutors and faculty and for some to return to the host country and contribute to the building of research groups. It is expected that at least some of the students would have done their PhDs with some of the visiting faculty, or in any case in research areas close to those of the faculty, who would therefore be able to follow them and mentor them through a transitional period following their return. The even longer term challenge is of course to have a critical mass of researchers in the host country who maintain research ties with their advisors and other international researchers, and are doing research at an international level. In fact, the actual Master’s program is just one of the two main pillars on which the IMM overall capacity building strategy is based. The second is the IMM Alumni Network, which will be created in 2021 with the very first IMM graduating class. The Alumni Network will provide a focal hub through which the leadership and faculty of the IMM can continue to support IMM graduates through their PhD studies and indeed throughout their careers. Alumni can return to their home country to be involved with the IMM program at various levels, perhaps even as IMM faculty themselves, or just to give talks and share their experiences with the younger students, or maybe to participate in open days or fairs in other universities around the country to help recruit the best students. It is fully expected that the IMM will eventually transition into a locally-run highly prestigious Master program with a mixture of local and international faculty.

 

IMM Mission

The “Mission” of the IMM is to implement the “Vision” of the IMM. This requires a number of major steps, amongst which the recruitment of the lecturers, the recruitment of the students, the coordination of the scientific programme, the logistics of the faculty travel, the student accommodation, the teaching resources such as classrooms, and of course, last but definitely not least, the funding. Many of these issues cannot of course be discussed or completely solved a-priori in an abstract way, but rather depend very much on the country and institution which hosts the programme.

The first implementation of the IMM is currently hosted by COMSATS University Islamabad (CUI), Lahore Campus, Pakistan and was launched in September 2019 with a formal inauguration ceremony, with an initial intake of 10 students from Pakistan and 2 students from Nigeria. A new cohort of 6 excellent students from Pakistan started on 15th September 2020, making up a total of 18 students currently enrolled.

However, the challenge for such an ambitious programme is the limited time availability of such prestigious international faculty. This is an unavoidable issue if the faculty consists of senior mathematicians who have their own teaching duties in their resident institutions alongside being active in research at the highest international level. To address this issue and ensure we have the highest standard of faculty members available, we have been innovative in the way we split courses into two parts so they are co-taught by visiting faculty members. When visiting faculty are able to travel for only one or two weeks at a time, they teach intensively during that period and work with the students through distance learning before and after their visit through a combination of:

  •  pre-recorded video lectures

  • regularly updated and graded Google Classroom assignments

  • interactive teacher-to-students Q&A/exercise sessions through the Zoom video conferencing tool, which are recorded and made available to the students.

Details of the academic programme and the courses can be found here. Each visiting faculty member can be joined by a junior teaching assistant, often their own PhD student or postdoc, who may be able to stay longer and continue working with the IMM students before and after the course. A long-term tutor is also present to give some continuity to the various courses and lecturers throughout the programme. By arranging the teaching in such a way, IMM students are guaranteed teaching from some of the world’s best mathematicians.

One of the most promising and exciting aspects of the launch of the first IMM programme in Lahore has been the overwhelming number of enthusiastic offers from volunteer lecturers and tutors, indeed more than the number of available places. The list of “Faculty” and “Tutors” can be found at the corresponding linked pages, with detailed personal profiles for each one. If you would like to be part of the International Mathematics Master, take a look at our ‘Get Involved’ pages (teach, host or donate) for further information.

Stefano Luzzatto
International Mathematics Master Scientific Coordinator