Each year the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics hosts visiting programs and workshops in various areas of mathematics and theoretical physics. The following is a short description and the request for proposals to organize these scientific activities at the Center. Your ideas are crucial for the success of the Center! Proposals can be submitted at any time but are reviewed in mid-October and mid-February by the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) of the Center. Proposals can be submitted through our website at any time. They are reviewed and selected by the Center’s Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) in mid-October and mid-February. The following are the upcoming deadlines:
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- September 30, 2024 – deadline for proposal submissions to be reviewed by the October 2024 SAC meeting.
- January 31, 2025 – deadline for proposal submissions to be reviewed by the February 2025 SAC meeting.
**proposals for July and August cannot be considered (due to the summer workshops already scheduled)
The events are organized by committees which might consist of scientists from both outside the Center and inside the Center and Stony Brook academic community. These committees are responsible for choosing the intellectual scope of the event, and proposing invited participants for the activity. The proposal should be submitted by a corresponding member of the organizing committee.
Programs
Each year the Simons Center supports 4-6 visiting programs at the Center. These programs normally last from 1 month to a semester. The invitees are expected to come for at least two weeks, and most come for closer to a month though a few participants, including hopefully at least some of the organizing committee, can be in residence for the entire program. The Center can host roughly 15 -20 visiting members at any one time in a program. The Center provides full administrative support for a program, provides the participants with housing and meal discounts, and some travel support is offered. Many of the programs have workshops associated with them.
SCGP expects all proposed program organizers to visit for at least 2 weeks and especially welcomes those who stay longer or for the entire duration of the program.
Workshops/Conferences
Each year the Simons Center funds about 10 one-week research workshops. These are concentrated periods of activity in a focused area of research. The Center provides a fixed budget for each workshop, which can normally support 40-50 in-person participants. There is room to accommodate some additional participants with external funding of their own. All talks are video-recorded and streamed live, but normally not available on zoom, and online speakers and participants are discouraged.
Our workshops normally last for the whole week, Mon-Fri, and have 4-5 hour-long talks per day, to leave enough time for in-depth informal discussions. If you envision a workshop of a different length or format, please discuss this with the Center’s deputy director before proposing. Weeklong workshops cannot take place in July and August due to our annual Math and Physics Summer Workshops.
SCGP expects all proposed workshop organizers to be physically present at SCGP for the entire week (and separate organizing and scientific committees are discouraged)
Criteria used in selecting proposals
Proposals will be reviewed and evaluated by the Center’s Scientific Advisory Committee, which will then make recommendations about which events to support. Below are the criteria used in the selection of proposals.
(i) how well the programmatic activity fits with the mission of the Center, which is to advance fundamental knowledge broadly in geometry and physics, especially at the interface of these two subjects [activities whose organizing committees and key participants include both mathematicians and physicists are especially attractive to the Center]
(ii) amount of activity in the proposed area and the size of the community out of which the invitees will be selected [a certain minimal size of the community is required to ensure a vibrant, diverse program of widespread interest]
(iii) the significance of the work in the proposed area [the proposed activity must have a broad appeal]
(iv) timeliness of an activity in terms of the state of development of the field [we are able to organize activities quite quickly when the developments merit]
(v) if there are many almost identical activities in this field happening around the world anyway, there is less incentive to hold yet another one
(vi) confirmed interest by the leaders in the field and key participants [please reach out informally to most key people before submitting the proposal, so that they confirm to you that they would in principle be interested in attending in person]
(vii) the diversity of the organizing committee and suggested key participants
(viii) the importance of the proposed event for the Stony Brook academic community.
Every proposal will rate higher on some of these criteria than others, but these are the factors the Scientific Advisory Committee will take into account when evaluating programs. If you have any additional questions, feel free to contact the deputy director of the SCGP.