Robert J. Birgeneau became the ninth Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, in 2004 serving until 2013. An internationally distinguished physicist, he is a leader in higher education and is well known for his commitment to diversity and equity in the academic community. During his service as Chancellor, Birgeneau strengthened UC Berkeley’s standing as one of the top universities in the world. Under his leadership, Berkeley became the first university in the United States to offer comprehensive financial aid to undocumented students and the first public university to provide significant financial aid to middle class students.

Before coming to Berkeley, Birgeneau served four years as President of the University of Toronto. He previously was Dean of the School of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he spent 25 years on the faculty. He is a fellow of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London, the American Philosophical Society and other scholarly societies. He has received many awards for teaching and for his research on the fundamental properties of materials.

His awards include a special Founders Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the 2008 Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award, and the Shinnyo-en Foundation’s 2009 Pathfinders to Peace Prize. In 2012 Birgeneau received the Compton Medal from the American Institute of Physics. In 2016 he received the Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Board. He also has received honorary doctorates from a number of universities.

A Toronto native, Birgeneau received his B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1963 and his PhD in physics from Yale University in 1966. He served on the faculty of Yale for one year, spent one year at Oxford University, and was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories from 1968 to 1975. He joined the physics faculty at MIT in 1975 and was named Chair of the Physics Department in 1988 and Dean of Science in 1991. He became the 14th president of the University of Toronto on July 1, 2000.

At Berkeley, Birgeneau holds the Arnold and Barbara Silverman Distinguished Chair in the Departments of Physics, Materials Science and Engineering and Public Policy. He and his wife, Mary Catherine, have four grown children and twelve grandchildren.

Lia Bronsard is a Canadian mathematician and the former president of the Canadian Mathematical Society. She is a professor of mathematics at McMaster University. In her research, she has used geometric flows to model the interface dynamics of reaction–diffusion systems. Other topics in her research include pattern formation, grain boundaries, vortices in superfluids. Born in Quebec, she completed her undergraduate studies at the Université de Montréal, graduating in 1983, and earned her PhD in 1988 from New York University under the supervision of Robert V. Kohn. After short-term positions at Brown University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and Carnegie Mellon University, she moved to McMaster in 1992, she was president of the Canadian Mathematical Society from 2014–2016. Bronsard was the 2010 winner of the Krieger–Nelson Prize. In 2018 the Canadian Mathematical Society listed her in their inaugural class of fellows. 

Brenda Brouwer is Interim Dean of the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University. Dr. Brouwer completed a secondment with the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI), where she joined the executive team as Head, Academic Partnerships. Prior to her secondment at the Vector Institute, Dr. Brouwer was the Vice-Provost and Dean of the School of Graduate Studies at Queen’s University for eight years, preceded by five years as the Associate Dean in the School of Graduate Studies. Dr. Brouwer also provided national leadership in graduate education as President of the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies from 2015-2017.

Dr. Brouwer joined Queen’s after completing a PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Toronto. She holds a BSc in Kinesiology (University of Waterloo) and an MSc in Biomechanics (McGill University). She is a professor in the School of Rehabilitation Therapy with cross appointments to the School of Kinesiology & Health Studies and the Centre for Neuroscience. Dr. Brouwer maintains a successful research program that focuses on quantifying the biomechanical, neuromuscular, and metabolic demands of mobility in healthy aging and stroke, and she has supervised more than 47 graduate students and several post-doctoral fellows. She has published more than 90 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters from work funded through external research grants.

Dr. Brouwer has served on numerous Senate committees, Council of Ontario Universities’ committees, and working groups including the Council on Quality Assurance and the Highly Skilled Workforce Steering Committee. She has also been a member of the US Council of Graduate Studies Advisor group for completion in STEM master’s programs.

Luis A. Caffarelli earned his PhD in mathematics from the University of Buenos Aires. He is professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, and holds the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents’ Chair in Mathematics (No. 1). He is a member of the ICES Applied Mathematics Group. His research interests include non-linear analysis, partial differential equations and their applications, calculus of variations, and optimization.

In a series of papers starting in 1990, Caffarelli studied viscosity solutions to non-linear partial differential equations, both the Monge–Ampère equation and the equation that models flow in a porous medium. This has proven to be an important means to arrive at the existence and uniqueness of solutions. As a result, Caffarelli has been cited as the world’s leading specialist in free-boundary problems for nonlinear partial differential equations, and a pioneer in methods tackling many classical problems that have long defied mathematicians.

With his collaborators, he has authored more than 250 scientific publications documenting this work. Caffarelli has received numerous honors and awards including three honorary doctorates, the Stampacchia Medal from the Italian Mathematical Union, the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society, the Pius XI Gold Medal from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Premio Konex, Platino y Brillantes from the Konex Foundation in Argentina, and the Rolf Schock Prize from the Swedish Academy of Sciences. He also received the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Mathematics from the American Mathematical Society. In 2012 he received Israel’s Wolf Prize in Mathematics.

Charmaine Dean is Vice-President, Research & International and Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. Her research interest lies in the development of methodology for disease mapping, longitudinal studies, the design of clinical trials, and spatio-temporal analyses. Much of this work has been motivated by direct applications to important practical problems in biostatistics and ecology. Her current main research applications are in survival after coronary artery bypass surgery, mapping disease and studying mortality rates, including for Covid-19 research, forest ecology, fire management, smoke exposure estimation from satellite imagery, and modeling of temporary and intermittent stream flow for flood analysis and predictions.

Dr. Dean received her PhD degree from the University of Waterloo in 1988. She was 2007 President of the Statistical Society of Canada, 2002 President of the International Biometrics Society, Western North American Region, and has served as President of the Biostatistics Section of the Statistical Society of Canada. She has given eleven years of service to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, including two as Chair of the Statistical Sciences Grant Selection Committee and one as Chair of the Discovery Accelerator Supplement Committee for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences. She has served as Chair of the National Institutes of Health Biostatistics Grant Review Panel; on the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Advisory Council and on selection panels for that foundation; on the Board of Directors of the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences; on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Banff International Research Station; and as a member of the College of Reviewers of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. She is a member of the Mitacs College of Reviewers and of College of Reviews of the Canada Research Chairs Program. She is Associate Editor of Biometrics, of Environmetrics, and of Statistics in Biosciences, and Senior Editor of Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology.

From 2011 to 2017, Charmaine Dean served as Dean of Science at Western University. In her role as Dean, she provided leadership and oversight for all faculty, staff, students and operations for the Faculty of Science as well as in University matters and key relationships outside the University. Prior to her service at Western, she played a major role in establishing the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University in her capacity of Associate Dean of that Faculty. Previously, she was the founding Chair of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Simon Fraser University.

Yum-Tong Siu is currently William Elwood Byerly Professor of Mathematics, Harvard University. He received his B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Hong Kong in 1963, his M.S. from the University of Minnesota in 1964, and his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Princeton University in 1966. He started his academic career as an Assistant Professor at Purdue University (1966-1967), then University of Notre Dame (1967-1970), became Associate Professor at Yale University in 1970 and full Professor in 1972. He left Yale for Stanford University in 1978. After four years at Stanford, he joined the Harvard Mathematics Department in 1982. In 1992 he became the William Elwood Byerly Professor. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1971-1973) and Guggenheim Fellow (1986). From 1996 to 1999 he served as Chairman of the Department. Over the years, he has held Visiting Professor positions in many well-known institutions around the world.

Professor Siu has been a prominent figure in the field of several complex variables for several decades. He has mastered techniques at the interface among complex variables, differential geometry, and algebraic geometry. He gave invited addresses at three International Congresses of Mathematicians, two of which were plenary addresses (Helsinki, 1978; Warsaw, 1983; Beijing, 2002). For his significant contributions to Several Complex Variables, he was awarded the Stefan Bergman Prize by the American Mathematical Society in 1993. Other academic honours include: honorary doctorates awarded by University of Hong Kong, University of Bochum (Germany), and University of Macau; Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences; Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Member of the National Academy of Sciences, Member of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, and Member of Academia Sinica.

Carolyn Watters is National Research Council of Canada (NRC) inaugural Chief Digital Research Officer, a position which includes oversight of the Digital Technologies Research Centre. Dr. Watters joined the NRC through the Interchange program, on secondment from Dalhousie University.

Dr. Watters, who has a PhD in Computer Science, served as the Provost and Vice President Academic for Dalhousie University, one of Canada’s oldest research universities, from 2010 to 2018. While Provost she served for a term as the Chair of the U15 Provost’s Academic Committee. Dr. Watters was one of the founding members of CALDO, a consortium of four and later nine Canadian research universities to build partnerships with universities in Latin America. She has engaged widely in quality assurance including a term as Chair of the Maritimes Higher Education Commission. Previously she was the Dean of Graduate studies including a term as the president of the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies. During that time she led international initiatives in partnership with the US Council of Graduate Schools.

She remains a Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University, specializing in human computer engagement in information spaces from documents to social media. Her interdisciplinary and collaborative work has spanned all three national research funding councils: the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She has published over 170 peer-reviewed articles, supervised many PhD and Masters students, and has engaged in applied research with corporations.

Dr. Watters engages, nationally and internationally, as a role model for women in science and technology, including giving service for many years on the founding board of Women Unlimited. She also has a deep appreciation for the importance of entrepreneurial experience and capacity building across disciplines and cofounded a successful spin-off company, now 20 years old, based on developing innovative interactive mathematics and working with publishers in the digital transformation of learning material.

Dr. Watters has been a member of a NSERC Discovery Grant committee, the NSERC Discovery Grant Process Review Panel, was the initial Chair of the NSERC Create Competition Committee, a member of the SSHRC Governing Council, and the Research Council for Mitacs.