Recognizing the value of international research experience for graduate students, the Department of Mathematics has launched a program that provides selected young mathematicians the opportunity to participate in research at a national research institute in France. The “International Research Experiences for Graduate Students” program is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation and by Vanderbilt University. Principal investigators on the NSF grant are Edward B. Saff, Professor of Mathematics and Executive Dean of the College of Arts and Science; and Mike Mihalik, Professor of Mathematics and Chair of the Department of Mathematics.

Through a partnership with the French scientific research institute INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique), the selected Vanderbilt students will visit one of INRIA’s labs and participate in one of the many mathematics research projects being conducted by the institute. INRIA graduate students and post-doctoral researchers may also come to Vanderbilt to collaborate with researchers here.

The grant provides for approximately nine graduate students over a three-year period to each spend five months in France, which includes a one-month orientation period. Vanderbilt's French and Italian Department is supporting the project with a special “Survival French Workshop” to help prepare students for the activity.

The INRIA-Vanderbilt program grew out of ongoing research collaboration between Vanderbilt’s Edward B. Saff and a team of French Researchers at INRIA’s Sophia-Antipolis facility. It is based on several areas of common scientific interest between INRIA teams and Vanderbilt researchers. (For a list of INRIA projects for which there is common interest at Vanderbilt, click here.)

 The INRIA exchange program is expected to broaden scientific and cultural experiences for mathematics graduate students at Vanderbilt. In addition, cooperative research projects between senior researchers at INRIA and those at Vanderbilt are likely to flourish as a result of these exchanges. The ultimate outcome will be enhanced scientific efforts at both institutions.

Date Posted: Nov. 15, 2004

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