The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 98

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Walter Craig
very detail-oriented on budgetary issues. While this puts
demands on the Director and the staff, it is also absolutely
prudent and a survival skill during times of tight funding.
I became Director in 2013, on secondment from McMaster
University and just in time for the NSERC competition
for the Canadian institutes’ operating grants. It was at
the end of a period of uncertainty in the Institute funding;
Ed Bierstone and Matheus Grasselli had just succeeded in
stabilizing the Ontario component of our budget, and had
submitted an application to the NSF to support participation
in Fields events for scientists based in the United States.
This NSF proposal was successful, and is one of only four
NSF mathematical science grants to institutions outside the
U.S.—the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach,
the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, outside Paris, and
the Banff Institute for Research Station are the other three.
With a writing team of ten, we developed and submitted
a very successful NSERC proposal, which was awarded top
funding. In parallel, and as a second note to inter-institute
cooperation, the three Canadian institutes applied for and
were awarded a second, smaller, joint NSERC grant under a
special Institute Innovation Platform program. This allowed
Fields to add an Industry Liaison component of our staff—Tom
Salisbury is our Associate Director for Industry Liaison and
Pawel Pralat is Assistant Director.
Programs
Programming was a second focus issue during this time.
The tension in planning programs arises from considerations
over how far ahead program activities should be secured.
While it takes significant lead time to organize a major
thematic program, fixing a program too far ahead of time
runs the risk of producing a stale product. The major