A Brief History of the New Mexico Analysis Seminar

From 1998 to 2009 the New Mexico State University (NMSU) and the University of New Mexico (UNM) co-organized the annual New Mexico Analysis Seminar (NMAS). This annual mini-conference alternated between the two host institutions NMSU and UNM - the two Ph.D granting institutions in mathematics in the state of New Mexico.

In its first three years (1998-2000) the seminar was run on a very meager, temporary budget provided by the host institutions and used mostly to pay the expenses of the main speaker. In the next nine years (2001-2009) the conference benefited immensely from NSF support. In these years the conference has blossomed with an average attendance of 40 outside and 20 local participants per conference. A considerable proportion of the funding has supported numerous graduate students, women, and minority participants. The next three years (2014-2016) will also be supported by NSF. We expect over 100 participants for the 2014 meeting.

The centerpiece of most NMAS has been a three hour lecture series delivered by a first rate analyst and lecturer. In addition to the principal lecture series, the conference allocates time for contributed talks by the participants. In the past we have had participants from more than 70 institutions, from 30 different states, and eight different countries, with the bulk of participants coming from the Southwest region.

In 2004, 2005, and 2007 we successfully experimented with two different formats. The Seventh and Tenth NMAS were joint ventures with Southwest Regional American Mathematical Society (AMS) meetings that were held in Albuquerque, NM, in October 2004 and October 2007, respectively. The Eighth NMAS was prior to a CBMS-NSF Conference (also organized by the NMAS organizers) in Las Cruces, featuring Terence Tao from University of California at Los Angeles held in Las Cruces, NM, in June 2005.

At this point we consider NMAS to be an established event with a critical mass of both regular and intermittent participants from the Southwest and beyond. It is a unique event that fulfills a serious need for professional interaction and enrichment in a region where institutions granting PhDs in mathematics are few and far apart. Both host institutions have strong programs in analysis and also in applied analysis, covering a broad range of interests in Harmonic Analysis, Functional Analysis, Operator Theory, Probability, Wavelets, Partial Differential Equations, Numerical Analysis, global Analysis, and Dynamical Systems. Even so, the regular access to the frontiers of research and the opportunity to interact informally with national and international leaders in Analysis provided by NMAS has served to raise the expectations of our students. This is certainly one the most valuable aspects of these annual meetings.