Those accepted into this program will receive a flat rate transportation allowance for the summer conference, and will be partially supported for their participation in the Joint Mathematics Meetings which follow in January 2023.

ELIGIBILITY: Individuals within one to two years prior to the receipt of their PhDs, and up to five years after receipt of their PhDs, are welcome to apply.  Most of those supported by NSF funds to participate in the MRC program will be US-based, that is, employed by or a full-time student at a US institution at the time of the MRC summer conference. However, the terms of the grant allow for a limited number of individuals who are not US-based. A few international participants may be accepted. Depending on space and other factors, a small number of participant slots may be available for self-funders. Applicants wishing to be considered as possible self-funded participants should email ams-mrc@ams.org at the time they apply and state that intention. Self-funders must satisfy the same criteria for admission as those who receive grant support. Individuals who have once previously been an MRC participant will be considered for admission, and their applications must include a rationale for repeating. Please note that individuals cannot participate in the MRC program more than twice. Applications from individuals who have twice been MRC participants will not be considered. Women and underrepresented minorities are especially encouraged to apply.  All participants are expected to be active in the full MRC program.

For any program, fellowship, prize or award that has a maximum period of eligibility after receipt of the doctoral degree, the selection committee may use discretion in making exceptions to the limit on eligibility for candidates whose careers have been interrupted for reasons such as family or health. Therefore, an applicant who has had to slow down or temporarily stop his or her career for personal reasons may request to be considered for an extension in the amount of time after the PhD degree. Please send exception requests to ams-mrc@ams.org.

REQUIREMENTS:

• Completed on-line application form
  
• One (1) reference letter submitted by a professor or supervisor who knows the applicant and can address how the applicant will benefit from, and contribute to, the MRC program.

Applications will close at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, February 15, 2022. Note that all applicants will be notified of their status by May 1, 2022.

Week 1b: May 29-June 4, 2022 -- Data Science

Organizers:
Marina Meila, University of Washington
Facundo Mémoli, The Ohio State University
Jose Perea, Northwestern University
Nicolás García Trillos, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Soledad Villar, Johns Hopkins University

The goal of this workshop is to bring together PhD students and early career researchers in Mathematics, Statistics, and related fields, with the aim of contributing to the further development of mathematical foundations for data science. Specifically, our aim is to create a collective platform for the development of a strong theoretical understanding of the interaction between modern problems in data science (such as the representation of complex spatio-temporal dynamics using topological and geometric summaries, adversarial learning and its connections to regularization and generalization, and the design of novel objective functions for robust data analysis) and areas in pure and applied mathematics such as spectral geometry, metric measure space geometry, optimal transportation, and topological data analysis. Each of these areas has been steadily gaining maturity and prominence in applied domains including neuroscience, machine learning, sociology, and materials science.

In preparation for the workshop, we will organize mini-courses on relevant/concomitant aspects of the following topics:

• Applied Algebraic Topology
• Gradient flows on metric measure spaces and Optimal Transport
• Manifold Learning
• Semidefinite Programming and other optimization techniques for data science and machine learning problems
• Metric Measure Geometry

The emphasis of the minicourses will be on showcasing specific open problems related to data analysis. These topics will form the basis for the discussion during the workshop.