June at ICMAT

From 9 to 13 June, El Escorial hosted the 12th International Conference on Harmonic Analysis and Partial Differential Equations. The conference, known as “El Escorial Encounters,” has become, in its almost 50-year history, the most prestigious in the world in the field. This last edition gathered more than 200 researchers from at least 20 countries. The programme included ten invited lectures and three mini-courses, aimed at doctoral students who are new to the area. This year, one of these mini-courses was given by mathematician Hong Wang (New York University), co-author of a recent proof of the Kakeya problem in three dimensions.

A multidisciplinary team —composed of researchers from three centres of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the Pontifical Comillas University, and the company AItenea Biotech— has developed an innovative computational strategy that enables the design of therapeutic molecules from scratch, even with limited experimental data. Specifically, the researchers, who publish their results in the journal Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, have designed a molecule that could be used in future therapies against Alzheimer’s disease and certain types of cancer. David Ríos Insua (ICMAT-CSIC), Eduardo González García (ICMAT-CSIC), Pablo Varas (ICMAT-CSIC) and Eugenia Ulzurrum (ICMAT-CSIC) are coauthors of the study.

ICMAT hosted a special activity throughout the month of June organised by the Institute’s Hitchin–Ngo Laboratory: the Extended Special Workshop of the Hitchin–Ngo Laboratory. On 10, 12, 13, 17, 24 and 26 June, international experts in the fields of geometry and mathematical physics delivered lectures. Among them, one of the Lab’s directors, Nigel Hitchin (University of Oxford), as well as Richard Wentworth (University of Maryland), Asia Mainenti (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), Graeme Wilkin (University of York), Miguel González (ICMAT), Ramiro Lafuente (University of Queensland), Panagiotis Dimakis (University of Maryland), Gabriele Rembado (Université de Montpellier and University of Maryland), Guillermo Gallego (FU-Berlin), Guillermo Barajas (University of Southern Denmark, Odense), Guillermo Gallego (FU-Berlin) and Jacques Hurtubise (McGill University).

From 23 to 27 June, the XVII International ICMAT Summer School on Geometry, Dynamics and Field Theory took place at the teaching centre La Cristalera (Miraflores de la Sierra, Madrid). The event is especially aimed at early-career researchers, including PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. This year, there were over 40 participants from countries such as Spain, Belgium, Poland, Argentina and Singapore. Throughout the week, they were introduced to research topics that connect differential geometry with areas such as physics, engineering and the development of numerical methods, among others.

Mathematics is not only written with numbers or equations. It is also traced in the sand, tied in ropes, or drawn on the walls of a house. With the aim of highlighting and studying these forms of mathematics, ICMAT is launching an international working group dedicated to ethnomathematics, a discipline that unites mathematics, anthropology, arts, and other areas of the humanities. Its first activity was held on 19 June, and included three lectures on some of these cultural manifestations: Inca quipus, house decoration in South Africa, Chokwe Sona drawings from Angola, or geometric ornamentation in Islamic art.

Women for Africa Foundation is celebrating the tenth edition of its scientific cooperation programme Science by Women this year. This initiative, in which the ICMAT has participated since its first edition, enables women scientists from the continent to undertake six-month research stays at Spanish institutions. To mark the first decade of the programme, an event was held last Wednesday, 18 June, at the foundation’s headquarters. “The ability to understand the world, model it and transform it through mathematics is independent of one’s place and circumstances of birth”, said Javier Aramayona, Director of ICMAT, who attended the event, among others.

• Xueting Jin (School of Mathematical Sciences Capital Normal University of China), until 01/07/2025
• Hu Jianyu (Nanyang Technological University), until 04/07/2025
• Harald Andrés Helfgott Seier (Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu, Paris), until 05/07/2025
• Ana Rechtman (Institut Fourier de l`Université Grenoble Alpes), until 05/07/2025
• Sebastián Ferraro (Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina), until 11/07/2025
• Eugenia Malinnikova (Stanford University), until 17/07/2025
• Pedro Luis Hernández Llanos (Universidad de O`Higgins, Chile), until 19/07/2025
• Elizabeth Gillaspy (University of Montana, USA), until 31/07/2025
• Andoni de la Hera de Arriba (UNED), until 31/07/2025
• Rubén Izquierdo López (UNIR), until 31/07/2025
• Víctor Soto Larrosa (Universidad Europea de Madrid y Universidad de Alcalá), until 31/07/2025
• Daniel Isaac Puignau Chacón (King's College London, UK), until 05/08/2025
• Babel Raïssa Guemdjo Kamdem (Institut de Mathématiques et de Sciences Physiques. Porto-Novo, Bénin), until 23/10/2025
• Giulia Cardoso Fantato (Universidade de Sao Paulo), until 31/01/2026