Board of Directors
The Board of Directors is elected from among the Members
of the Corporation. It meets at least twice per year to ensure that the Institute
is fulfilling its mandate for research, mathematics education and collaboration
with external bodies. Board members can access the Board
of Directors Information Page.
Chair,
John Gardner
is a corporate director, currently serving on the boards
of RGA Canada and Angoss Software. A graduate of the University of Toronto (1959)
with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics and the recipient of the Governor
General's medal, he studied as one of the first Commonwealth Scholars philosophy,
politics and economics at Merton College, Oxford, where he was granted bachelor's
(1961) and master's (1965) degrees. Returning to Canada he joined Sun Life of
Canada and pursued actuarial studies, earning his fellowship in the Society of
Actuaries and the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (1965). From 1967 to 1973 he
taught theory of interest and life contingencies at McGill University. He concluded
a thirty-five year career at Sun Life in 1996, having served for ten years as
President of the company, directing its world-wide operations. During that period
he was a member for nine years of the University of Toronto's Governing Council.
Since 1996 he has served on various corporate boards including those of the Workplace
Safety & Insurance Board of Ontario, Avista Real Estate Investment Trust and
Concordia Life. Always interested in the community, he has been President of Boy
Scouts of Canada for the Greater Toronto Area, and served on the boards of the
Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Sunnybrook Hospital, and the Salvation Army. This
year will be his thirteenth on the Fields Board. Back to Top
Deputy Chair, Philip Siller
received his
Ph.D. in mathematics (model theory) in 1973 from the University of Minnesota under
the direction of Prof. Erwin Engeler, now at the ETH in Zurich. He later earned
an LL.B. from the University of Toronto and practiced corporate and commercial
law in Toronto. From 1982-92, he was an executive with Olympia & York Developments
Limited, a diversified real-estate development company with interests in natural
resources and other sectors. Since 1992, Mr. Siller has been president of his
own venture-management firm, Hexagram & Co., and currently serves as co-CEO
of Eastport Capital Corp., a unit of Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York. At the
University of Toronto, he has taught seminars at the Faculty of Law and the Department
of Political Science and served on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Russian
and East European Studies and the Steering Committee of the Harrowston Program
in Conflict Management and Negotiation. Mr. Siller is married and has three children.
This year will be his sixteenth on the Fields Board. Back to Top
Ian
Ainsworth
is Senior Vice President, Investments at Mackenzie Financial,
where he is lead manager of several mutual funds, including the Universal Future
Fund. This year will be his fourth on the Fields Board. Back to
Top
Thomas Coleman
began his appointment
as the dean of the Faculty of Mathematics, and a professor in the Department of
Combinatorics and Optimization, at the University of Waterloo in July 2005. Previously
he was a professor of computer science at Cornell University, and the director
of the Cornell Theory Center (a supercomputer applications center). He was recently
Chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Optimization (1998-2001) and is currently
on the editorial board of numerous professional journals. Professor Coleman is
the author of two books on computational mathematics, the editor of four proceedings,
and has published over sixty journal articles in the areas of optimization, automatic
differentiation, parallel computing, and computational finance. Coleman founded
and directed CTC-Manhattan, a computational finance venture located at 55 Broad
Street in New York. Coleman has been a research consultant for a number of finance-related
and technology companies based in New York, Boston, Seoul, and Tokyo. Coleman's
clients have included major Wall Street investment banks as well as leading software
and technology companies. Coleman received his PhD in mathematics from the University
of Waterloo in 1979, worked for two years as a postdoc in the Applied Mathematics
Division of Argonne National Laboratory (Chicago). He was a faculty member in
the Computer Science Department at Cornell University for 24 years, 1981-2005.
This year will be his second on the Fields Board. Back to Top
Janet Halliwell
is currently working
at JEH Associates Inc., specializing in Public policy, S&T and PSE policy
and is the former Executive Vice-President at SSHRC, the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada. She has chaired the Nova Scotia Council on High Education,
and is a recipient of the Walter Hitschfeld Prize for university research administration.
This year will be her seventeenth on the Fields Board. Back to
Top
Feridun Hamdullahpur
was
appointed interim Provost and Vice-President (Academic) in November 2007. He is
Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Carleton University, Ottawa.
He joined Carleton University as Vice-President (Research) in July 2000 with a
broad mandate to develop and integrate research, graduate studies, technology
transfer and international programs and expertise, and to liaise with government,
business, granting councils, other universities and organizations on research
matters. He also represents Carleton to agencies and organizations that have a
relationship to the development and support of the University's strategic direction.
Dr. Hamdullahpur sits and chairs several committees and Boards including the Sudbury
Neutrino Observatory (SNO), and TRIUMF (Canada's national laboratory for particle
and nuclear physics). Before coming to Carleton, Hamdullahpur was the Associate
Principal, Graduate Studies and Research at DalTech, Dalhousie University (1997-2000),
and at that time was responsible for providing leadership in all aspects of that
institution's research enterprise, including graduate studies, industrial liaison,
scholarships and awards, contract research, and research chairs. He was Associate
Dean of Graduate Studies (1993-95), and Dean of Graduate Studies and Research
(1995-97). Dr. Hamdullahpur received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Mechanical
Engineering at the Technical University of Istanbul, Turkey, and a Ph.D. in Chemical
Engineering at the Technical University of Nova Scotia in Halifax, Canada. Dr.
Hamdullahpur has been an active researcher and supervisor. His research areas
include energy conversion, thermo-fluids and bio-mass gasification and combustion.
He has published over 130 scientific and technical articles and supervised over
40 graduate students. This year will be his second on the Fields Board. Back
to Top
Bradd Hart
is a Professor of
Mathematics and Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at McMaster
University. He was Deputy Director of the Fields Institute from 1999 until 2003.
His principle research area is mathematical logic and particularly model theory;
he was an organizer of a program on algebraic model theory at the Fields Institute
in 1996-97. He received his doctorate from McGill University in 1987 and did a
postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley. He joined
the faculty at McMaster in 1989 as a University Research Fellow. This year will
be the third of his current term on the Fields Board. Back to Top
Barbara
Lee Keyfitz
is serving as Director of the Fields Institute for Mathematical
Sciences for the period July 2004-December 2008. In January 2009, she assumes
a faculty position in mathematics at the Ohio State University. Barbara Keyfitz
received her undergraduate education in mathematics at the University of Toronto
and her M.S. and Ph.D. from NYU's Courant Institute. Her research area is Nonlinear
Partial Differential Equations. She is a Fellow of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, and the recipient of the 2005 Krieger-Nelson Prize
of the Canadian Mathematical Society. Until August 2008, she was John and Rebecca
Moores Professor of Mathematics at the University of Houston, which she joined
in 1983, following appointments at Columbia, Princeton, and Arizona State University.
She is Treasurer of the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
This year will be her fifth on the Fields Board. Back to Top
Tristram
Lett
is the Managing Director, Absolute Return Strategies at Integra
Capital Management. Tris has been heavily involved in the hedge fund industry
for well over a decade. For six years he was a member of the Board of Governors
of the Toronto Futures Exchange and for 5 years was its Chair. As well as being
the current Deputy Chair of the Alternative Investment Management Association
(AIMA), Tris is a member of the Board of Directors of the Fields Institute for
Research into the Mathematical Sciences, a member of the editorial advisory board
of the Canadian Investment Review, a member of the Professional Risk Managers
Industry Association (PRMIA) and the International Association of Financial Engineers
(IAFE). Tris is an MSc graduate of LSE and frequent writer, speaker and media
commentator on matters pertaining to hedge funds. This year will be his third
on the Fields Board. Back to Top
Gregory
Margulis
is the Erastus L DeForest Professor of Mathematics at Yale University.
He received his undergraduate degree and candidate degree (equivalent of Ph.D.)
from Mosocw State University. From 1970-1991 Margulis hold research positions
at the Institute for Problems in Information Transmission of the Academy of Sciences
of the USSR in Moscow. Since 1991 he has been at Yale University. Margulis was
awarded a Fields Medal in 1978 and a Wolf Prize in 2005. He is a member of the
US National Academy of Sciences, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The coming year will be his first on the Fields Board. Back to
Top
Ram Murty
holds the Queen's Research
Chair in Mathematics at Queen's University. He obtained his PhD in 1980 in number
theory from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1980-81, he was a member
of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and in 1981-82, a member of
the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. In 1982 he was granted
an NSERC University Research Fellowship at McGill University, and in 1988 he was
chosen to be the Coxeter-James Prize Lecturer of the Canadian Mathematical Society.
He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1990 and awarded the E.W.R.
Steacie Fellowship in 1991. Jointly with his brother, Kumar Murty, he won the
Balaguer Prize in 1996 for the monograph "Non-vanishing of L-functions and
applications" published by Birkhauser. Later in 1996, he joined Queen's University
as a Queen's National Scholar and a Professor in the Department of Mathematics
and Statistics. From 1998-2000, he was Killam Research Fellow. Since 2002, he
has held a Queen's Research Chair in Mathematics and in 2003, was awarded the
Queens' Research Prize and the Jeffery-Williams Prize of the Canadian Mathematical
Society. His research focuses on analytic number theory and arithmetic geometry.
He is the author of more than 140 peer-reviewed articles and 7 books. He has supervised
the research of more than 30 graduate students and 20 post-doctoral fellows. He
also has research interests in philosophy and logic. In 2005, he was cross-appointed
to the Department of Philosophy at Queen's University. The coming year will be
his first on the Fields Board. Back to Top
Philip Scott
is a Professor in the Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics
at the University of Ottawa and cross-appointed in SITE (School of Information
Technology) at Ottawa U. He obtained a BSc from U. North Carolina (Chapel Hill)
and a Master's and Ph.D. in Pure Math from Waterloo. He works in mathematical
logic, category theory, and theoretical computer science. He has served on NSERC
Grant and Advisory Committees in Computer Science and was the Chairman of NSERC's
Computer Science Grant Committee GSC331. He has been a visiting scholar in Japan
(Kyoto), France (Luminy), and the U.K. and most recently was an EPSRC visiting
researcher at Oxford Computing Labs. This year will be his first on the Fields
Board. Back to Top
Janice Gross
Stein
is Harrowston Professor of Conflict Management and Negotiation in
the University of Toronto's Department of Political Science. She was the founding
director of the Munk Centre for International Studies. She received her undergraduate
degree from McGill University, her Master's from Yale University, and returned
to McGill for doctoral studies. She joined the University of Toronto in 1982 and
was named a University Professor in 1996. A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada,
Janice Stein is an acknowledged expert on conflict resolution and international
relations, and has served on many international advisory panels. Stein currently
serves as Vice-Chair of the Advisory Board to the Minister of Defense. She has
recently been appointed a Trudeau Fellow and was awarded the Molson Prize by the
Canada Council for an outstanding contribution by a social scientist to public
debate. A regular television commentator on foreign policy issues, Professor Stein
is the co-author of We All Lost the Cold War and Citizen Engagement in Conflict
Resolution: Lessons for Canada in International Experience. This year will
be his first on the Fields Board. Back to Top
Juris
Steprans
is Professor of Mathematics at York University and is currently
serving as Deputy Director of the Fields Institute. He obtained his BMath degree
from the University of Waterloo in 1977 and completed his PhD thesis under the
supervision of Franklin D. Tall at the University of Toronto in 1982. His research
has focussed on the applications of set theory to other areas of mathematics,
notably, group theory, topology, real analysis and the theory of Banach spaces.
He has held visiting positions at various universities and institutions including
Dartmouth College, the University of Warsaw, the Fields Institute, the University
of Wisconsin at Madison and Rutgers University. He has served in various capacities
with the CMS and at NSERC. He was elected a Fellow of the Fields Institute in
2004. This year will be his second on the Fields Board. Back to
Top
Hari Venkatacharya
is a
seasoned entrepreneur with extensive experience in building successful teams and
creating and executing operational strategies. Most recently, Hari was President
& CEO of Clineo, a leading electronic medical records company. Hari is also
former President & CEO of Cyrca, a data security and compliance company with
operations in Canada, US and India. In addition, he is former Chairman and President
of Karthika Technologies, sold to Kasten Chase in 2002, at which point Hari become
a Senior Vice President at Kasten Chase. He is a Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs
(TiE) Toronto, and involved in mentoring young companies. In addition to being
a Fields Institute Board member, Hari sits on the board for Sampradaya Dance Creations.
Hari is an active member of abcGTA, which addresses the imbalance in lack of diverse
representation on Canadian agencies and boards. He received his undergraduate
science degree from the University of Toronto and MSc from the University of Ottawa.
This year will be his fourth on the Fields Board. Back to Top
Stephen
Watt
is Distinguished Research Professorship and a former Chair of the
Department of Computer Science at the University of Western Ontario. In 2004 he
received the NSERC Synergy Award for Innovation. One of the developers of "Maple",
he conducts research in symbolic computation and computer algebra. He served on
the Fields Board in 1999-2000 . This year will be the third of his current term
on the Board. Back to Top
J.
Graham Weir
is an independent businessman. From September 1990 to December
2000, he was Vice President and Director of Corporate Finance for Goepel McDermid
Inc., where he initiated and completed acquisition, financing, financial advisory,
merger and valuation assignments for mid-market public and private companies generally
headquartered in Calgary and active in the oil and gas producer and service sectors.
He graduated from Trent University in 1974 with a Bachelors Degree in Mathematics
and the University of Manitoba in 1977 with a Masters Degree in Actuarial Mathematics.
Mr. Weir received the designation Chartered Business Valuator in 1994 and completed
a Masters Degree in Mathematical Finance at the University of Oxford in 2005.
Mr. Weir serves as a director of several companies including: Flagstone Energy
Inc., Graymont Limited, Grupo Calidra, S.A. de C.V., Pulse Data Inc. and Wave
Energy Ltd. The coming year will be his first on the Fields Board. Back
to Top
Ed Witten
is the Charles
Simonyi Professor of Mathematical Physics in the School of Natural Sciences at
the Institute for Advanced Study. He received his B.A. from Brandeis, and his
M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton. After positions at Harvard and Princeton, he has
been at the Institute for Advanced Study since 1987. Witten won the Fields Medal
in 1990. He received the Nemmers prize in Mathematics from Northwestern University
in 2000. In physics, he has won the Einstein Medal and the Dirac Medal, and received
the Dannie Heineman prize of the American Institute of Physics in 1998. He is
a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences. He received the National Medal of Science in 2003. This year
will be his first on the Fields Board. Back to Top
