CECM/Math Colloquium:  Wednesday October 8th at 3:30 in K9509

Speaker:  Stephen Braham

Title:  An Introduction to PolyMath

Abstract:

WHY POLYMATH?
--------------

Advances in global network communications, both intranet and extranet,
are proceeding at an incredibly rapid pace.  Amongst many other
influences, the demand for network-accessible tools, resources and services
for engineering and the mathematical sciences drives this phenomenon.
The importance of these new directions is evidenced by the vigorous
activity taking place within and between a broad range of commercial
and academic groups with concerns about how mathematics is presented,
manipulated and incorporated into the growing network infrastructure.
The PolyMath Development Group (PDG) was set up to ride the wave of new
technologies, and to explore how they can be used in research, education, and
industry.

WHAT DOES PDG DO?
-----------------

PDG has become a highly involved player in online scientific technology. It
has a leadership role in the North American efforts to develop the OpenMath
standard with partners IBM and Maple Inc. OpenMath is an international project
focussed on establishing a standard for encoding mathematical knowledge, with
special attention to the often ambiguous semantic content. 

PDG has a core involvement with online education. It hosts the
M3/Plexus project, one of the largest such science-oriented project in the
National Centres of Excellence TeleLearning initiative, and is a key
player in the development of technologies, and plans, for course
delivery with the Technical University of British Columbia (Tech BC), the
Okanagan University College, the Technical University of Eindhoven
(in the Netherlands) and the Island Pacific School (on Bowen Island).


WHAT KIND OF TECHNOLOGIES?
--------------------------

PolyMath's central focus is the development and implementation of
distributed network infrastructures, specific for use by the mathematical
sciences.  These systems are intended to support seamless interaction
between the user and a wide variety of tools, resources and services,
interaction and collaboration between users, and even exchange between
the tools and resources themselves. This involves using state-of-the-art
computers, and exploring the latest software technologies (especially
Sun's Java (tm) language). PolyMath also focusses on multimedia technologies,
including audio and video, and is working on delivering fully-functioned, rich,
environments for studying science and engineering.

INDUSTRY
--------

PDG is not a purely academic experiment. The group believes that it is
important to deliver product that is truly useful to the educational
and research fields in science and engineering. To do that, we work with
industry. PDG has connections to computer companies like Sun, IBM, and Maple,
to universities like Tech BC, OUC, and Tech Eindhoven, and to high and
middle schools. This keeps the group on the edge, and ensures that what it
does is relevent to the real world.

FUN
---

It's a fun group to work in! PDG members get to experiment with technologies
as they come out, and to see the bleeding edge of the information revolution.
They get to be involved with industry, and a large international community
of researchers surfing the technological wave. On top of that, PDG is a close
friendly team, and would love to work with as many people as possible,