Poster by Andrea Yeomans

Anne Dranovski and Kate Klyueva, with the Mathematics Union (MU) at the University of Toronto, has helped to shape the upcoming 3-Country Risk Forum. Many parts of this conference will be accessible to undergraduates.

Friday, October 28 will feature an industry panel discussion, moderated by UTSC’s AMACSS president Andi Kerenxhi. This panel has been carefully crafted to bring relevant issues forward. Part of the discussion will include planned questions, but we will allow for open questions from the audience. The panelists include Mark Coyle of the Royal Bank of Canada, and Joseph C. Paradi of the University of Toronto. In addition to financial risks, highlights may also include risks associated to large scale projects, specifically those relevant to the environment.

After the discussion, MU will host a social event at Hart House. It is an opportunity to continue the conversation beyond the more formal set-up of the panel.

Student talks are scheduled for Saturday afternoon at the Fields Institute. We have already received submissions, but there are still spots open. We are surely looking forward to hearing students speak about their research.

The link below gives a great explanation of Value at Risk (VaR).

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/01/risk-management.html

Leading up to the conference I will to post on things that I learn by looking through Risk Magazine, Bloomberg Business Week, and other various sources that I find at the Joseph Rotman Library at the University of Toronto.

If you are interested, also have a look at Toronto’s new initiatve to increase the general understanding of risk by the creation of the Global Risk Institute,

http://www.fin.gc.ca/n10/data/10-081_1-eng.asp

-RJC

This event was put together by executives of the Pure Math Club. Its principle organizers are Edgar Bering and Ifaz Kabir. It is interesting to note that the Pure Math Club was the first to initiate the rotating nature of these FUN workshops. It was last November that they held a conference on Combinatorics and Optimization, which marked the first non-GTA FUN event.

Mr. Bering had made quite an impression with the recent issues of the Waterloo Math Review. Waterloo has been host to many different activities in undergraduate mathematics. In particular, they hosted the 17th Canadian Undergraduate Mathematics Conference in 2010 which had the largest attendance in the conference’s history.

There will be two locations for bus pick-ups on the way to Waterloo that morning. The Fields Institute at the University of Toronto St. George’s campus, and McMaster University.

Please contact holt.chesley@utoronto.ca if you are planning to use this bus.

Hope to see you soon!

-RJC

The organizing committee is pleased to announce the upcoming FUN Workshop on Discrete Mathematics to be held at Carleton University on Friday July 22. It will begin at 2pm in Room 4351 Herzberg Laboratories. The three speakers joining us have generously volunteered their time. I am excited to hear them speak!

This event was organized jointly with the Carleton University Math Society (http://www.mathsoc.carleton.ca) and the Fields Institute. Michelle Kovesi is President of the Math Society and we had only recently met her at the Canadian Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (CCEM/CUMC) less than a month ago. With such a limited time frame, Michelle had agreed to make local arrangements. Professor Mattias Neufang also recommended that we collaborate with Carleton PhD candidate David Thomson. David is a past organizer for CUMC2009 and the Ontario Representative for the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS). He has been extremely resourceful as a local organizer while conducting his graduate research. David helped to convince the CMS to provided support for this FUN event. It has been a true pleasure putting this together and I look forward to seeing them on July 22.

Some of the non-local students will be touring around Ottawa during the evening of the workshop as well as the days following.

If you would like to attend or need more information then please contact me, rcerezo@fields.utoronto.ca

-RJC