Over 1000 mathematicians were welcomed to the online platform for the 2021 CMS 75th+1 Anniversary Summer Meeting from June 7-11. This was the third online meeting the CMS has hosted. Participants attended over 40 scientific sessions; five plenary lectures; three prize lectures and one public lecture over the course of the meeting. The plenary lecturers were Henri Darmon (McGill University; Moon Duchin (Tufts University); Matilde Marcolli (University of Toronto); Aaron Naber (Northwestern University); and Ian Putnam (University of Victoria).  

This summer the CMS continued to offer three-hour mini courses on Friday June 4. There were eight mini courses in diverse areas of mathematics including a student mini course on Career Diversity in mathematics.

The official conference opened on Monday morning with an opening and welcome given by CMS President, Javad Mashreghi followed by a plenary lecture by Ian Putnam.  

The CMS Student Committee (STUDC) hosted a student social giving students a chance to network and interact in a non-academic setting in a relaxed atmosphere buoyed by icebreaker activities. Mathematically themed games were also played.

At the end of Wednesday, CMS hosted a well attended Public Lecture featuring Anne Broadbent (University of Ottawa) who gave a talk titled The apple of my i.

The meeting was bookended by two related events with integrated registration.iThe first was the Canadian Women in Mathematics Across Canada (CWiMAC) meeting from June 2-3. The purpose of the CWiMAC workshops is to support the career development of junior female-identified academics in the Canadian mathematics community.

The second was the annual CMESG meeting from June 11th to June 13th. The 2021 meeting included special joint sessions with the CMS as well as GDM (Groupe de didactique des mathématiques du Québec). Additionally, CMESG co-hosted a panel on June 7, 2021 that focused on Data Literacy in light of world events of the past year.

During the 2021 Summer Meeting attendees were able to network with peers and like-minded individuals on the online community boards and in our networking sessions.

The Women in Mathematics committee invited all participants to participate in a discussion on balancing mathematics and life in COVID times during one of the breaks.  Additionally, there was a break on mathematics and film moderated by Brett Stevens (Carleton). 

There was not an awards banquet at the 2021 75th anniversary meeting, but the CMS recognized our 2021 prize winners during the opening remarks and prize winners also prepared a lecture. Those recipients include: Joel Kamnitzer (University of Toronto) recipient of the Jeffery-Williams Prize who gave a lecture on Perfect bases in the representation theory of semisimple Lie algebras and Anita Layton (University of Waterloo) recipient of the Krieger-Nelson Prize who gave a prize lecture on His or Her Mathematical Models – Understanding Sex Differences in Physiology. This year, the Excellence in Teaching Prize was awarded to Alfonso Gracia-Saz.  For the last 7 years, Alfonso Gracia-Saz worked tirelessly in [MN1] [SW2] his course Calculus with Proofs (called “Calculus!”). had a huge impact on students, undergraduate and graduate, and professors. This talk was prepared by his colleague Bernardo Galvao-Sousa (Toronto) in memory of Alfonso who passed away from COVID-19. In the talk Bernardo guided the audience through the story of Calculus! and Alfonso’s development as an educator.

The AARMS – CMS Student Poster Awards were also presented during the online event.  The winners were AARMS Prize: Yuying Li (Western University) with Modelling and pricing cyber security risk; CMS President’s Prize: Axel Turnquist (New Jersey Institute of Technology) with Optimal transport on the sphere; and CMS Student Committee Prize: Stéphanie Abo (University of Waterloo) with Modelling the circadian regulation of the immune system: sexually dimorphic effects of shift work.

Putting on such a meeting requires much dedication and hard work and would not be possible without the efforts of the Scientific Organizing Committee, the Scientific Directors, the Session Organizers, and the CMS staff.  Ailana Fraser (University of British Columbia), Monica Nevins and Mateja Šajna (University of Ottawa) the Scientific Directors, worked tirelessly on a large scientific program originally for 2020 and then for 2021 when the meeting was postponed and moved online[MN3] . Their dedication and flexibility helped to make this 75th +1 anniversary meeting one to remember.

The CMS would like to acknowledge  financial support from the University of Ottawa, MITACS, PIMS, FIELDS, CRM, AARMS, MapleSoft, and Bolster Academy.