The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 141

Encountering Mathematics
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the Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents at this time,
I was asked by the provincial ministry to oversee some of this,
including an evaluation a few years later. I naturally turned
to the mathematics education group at the Fields Institute for
assistance.
At about this same time, in another mathematics
connection, I became aware of and involved with Mitacs
(Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex
Systems, at that time housed at Simon Fraser University and
funded as a National Centre of Excellence under NSERC),
partly through some personal connections but mostly because
of my role as Vice-President Academic and Provost at York,
with a mathematics background and sympathies. I became
a member of the Mitacs Board, and later, when that split
into Mitacs, Inc. (continuing today) and Mprime (living out
the final days of the NCE funding), I went with the Mprime
board, but remained for several years on a contractual basis
as a Special Advisor to Mitacs’ President and CEO. I am
happy to say that for various reasons my engagement with
the Fields Institute also began to increase, with some very
informal advising on government relations issues, which led to
being appointed to the Fields Board—and a few years later
to being elected its Chair, which of course has led to a much
closer and deeper relationship with the Institute. I am also
delighted that some of the people I admired most at Mitacs
are now on the Fields board as well.
Just as mathematics is central to so much, especially
in the modern, technological, interconnected world, so in
my mind is the Fields Institute central to the underpinning
of mathematics research, pure and applied, in Canada and
increasingly beyond.