RSME 2019 Biennial Congress in Santander
The Biennial Congress of the Spanish Royal Mathematical Society (RSME) was held in Santander from 4-8 February. The activities of the congress took place in the Building of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Cantabria. With more than 400 attendees from Spain and other countries, the congress was a successful event in which attendees were able to share ideas and scientific advances, as well as develop their research activity with collaborators from different parts of the world.
There were 27 special sessions during the congress consisting of talks on different fields of mathematics such as, numerical and computational methods in renewable energies, relativistic quantum mechanics or harmonic analysis. In fact, these three sessions were organized by members of the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics Vincenzo Nava (BCAM-Tecnalia), Luis Vega (BCAM-UPV/EHU) and Carlos Pérez Moreno (BCAM-UPV/EHU-Ikerbasque), respectively.
In addition to participating in the organization of some sessions, up to 14 members of BCAM contributed to the congress with talks or posters. For example, PhD students Daniel Eceizabarrena Pérez (FPU MECD 2015), Javier Canto Llorente (Predoc EJ-GV 2018) and Javier Martínez Perales (La Caixa 2015) presented posters explaining the work they are developing in the center. On the other hand, PhD student Havva Yoldaș (La Caixa 2014) presented her work in a talk entitled Hypocoercivity of linear kinetic equations via Harris theorem that took place in the session on Kinetic equations and applications.
During the congress there were also 9 plenary lectures, two of them given by the last two awardees of the José Rubio de Francia prizes: Xavier Ros-Otón (University of Zürich) and Angelo Lucia (California Institute of Technology). In addition, three round tables were held in which double degrees in mathematics, the situation of young Spanish mathematicians and the journals in this field were discussed. Javier Fernández de Bobadilla (BCAM-Ikerbasque) intervened in the round table on the situation of young Spanish mathematicians, in which he expressed his intention to actively tackle actions that improve their future as part of his activity as a member of the RSME Governing Board.
Several complementary activities to the congress were also programmed, including workshops on Maple, Mathematica, Matlab and Sage; a poster session on computational mathematics and mathematical software; a free dissemination event "Hay muchas matmáticas en mi tierruca. Píldoras matemáticas", which took place on Friday, February 8th at the Ateneo de Santander, or the Mathematical Walk organized by the Mathematical Society of Teachers of Cantabria. This last event took place after the institutional inauguration act, which had the participation of the president of the organizing committee of the congress, Fernando Etayo Gordejuela; the president of the RSME, Francisco Marcellán Español; the vice-president of the Government of Cantabria and Minister of Universities, Research, Environment and Social Policy, Eva Díaz Tezanos and the Rector of the University of Cantabria, Ángel Pazos Carro.
Finally, during the institutional lunch of the congress, the President of RSME announced that the director of the Department of Mathematics of the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Henar Herrero Sanz will take over the organization of the next Biennial Congress of the Real Sociedad Matemática Española, which will take place in 2021 in Ciudad Real.
