I don’t usually write promotional posts because I don’t enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy reading the technical posts. But I know that a lot of early graduate students and undergraduates read my blog, and this would be of interest to many of them.

I just got back from Utah yesterday where I attended a 5-day workshop run by the American Mathematical Society, called the Network Science Mathematical Research Community (MRC).

The point of the program is to bring graduate students and early career folks together from all over the country to start new collaborations. The AMS runs multiple MRC sessions every year, and this year the topics ranged from network science to quantum physics. We had a group of about 20 people, including statisticians, applied mathematicians, computer scientists, and a handful of pure combinatorialists. We self-organized into groups of four, and spent pretty much all day for the next four days eating great food, thinking about problems, proving theorems, enjoying the view, and discussing our ideas with the three extremely smart, successful, and amicable organizers. There were also career panels every evening that were, in my opinion, better than the average career panel.

The network science group (you can see me peeking out from the back, just left of center).

Anyway, it was a really fun and valuable experience, and the AMS pays for everything and a bag of chips (if by chips you mean more travel money to meet up with your collaborators and a ticket to the AMS Joint Mathematics Meeting the following January). I’m excited to blog about the work that come out of this, as network science is right up there with the coolest of topics in math and programming.

So if you’re eligible, keep an eye out for next year’s program.