Events at the IRMACS Centre
Meetings, Conferences, Workshops, Colloquiums and Seminars at the IRMACS Centre
With its interdisciplinary mandate, its beautiful space, its state-of-the-art technology, its knowledgeable and friendly staff, and its philosophy of openness and supportiveness for new ideas, the IRMACS Centre has established itself as a meeting place for researchers and others across Simon Fraser University, across Canada and around the world.
The IRMACS Centre hosts a wide array of academic and non academic events. These include seminars, colloquia, distinguished talks, guest lectures, recurring presentations and videoconferences, workshops, conferences, research meetings, and recruiting, cultural, and community events.
Whether you are an IRMACS member, an SFU researcher, or a visiting researcher, or if you are planning an event that requires a technologically sophisticated meeting space, consider booking your next event at IRMACS.
Meetings
The boardroom, two seminar rooms, and numerous smaller breakout rooms enable the IRMACS Centre to facilitate many types of meetings. The majority of these meetings are research related; annually more than thirty research project groups use the IRMACS facilities for their daily, weekly, or biweekly research meetings. The fact that the Centre also hosts a number of non-research meetings from all walks of life demonstrates one of the fundaments of IRMACS' philosophy: openness to be part of any initiative that benefits Simon Fraser University and the wider community. The number of distance collaboration meetings hosted by the IRMACS Centre has increased consistently since its doors opened in 2004 and currently makes up approximately 40% of all meetings, including the research meetings.
View the extensive list of past meetings the IRMACS Centre has hosted.
Conferences and Workshops
The IRMACS Centre is an ideal place for organizing and hosting research conferences and workshops of up to 100 participants. The IRMACS Presentation Studio is undoubtedly the most sophisticated presentation space at Simon Fraser University. The Centre offers a number of meeting rooms and computer labs for work in smaller groups. The IRMACS staff can provide the administrative and technical support needed for the successful organization of a workshop or a conference.
View the extensive list of past conferences and workshops the IRMACS Centre has hosted.
Visiting Scholar Lecture Series
Visitors have an opportunity to share their research with the IRMACS community. Visit the Events Page for upcoming lectures.
IRMACS Modelling Consortium Colloquium
The IRMACS Modelling Consortium (IMC) is an association of research groups working in the field of complex systems modelling. Consortium members share mutual intellectual challenges and objectives. The Consortium reflects the fact that the IRMACS Centre is acting as a nucleus for complex social system modelling at SFU. IMC Colloquiums are held every two weeks on Fridays in the Centre's Presentation Studio. View the schedule.
View the list of past IMC Colloquiums.
Interdisciplinary Colloquiums
Between September 2005 and April 2008, the IRMACS Centre organized a series of talks called "IRMACS: The Interdisciplinary Colloquium". The main goal of the colloquium was to give an opportunity to the members of the IRMACS community to learn about the research interests of other IRMACS members and their visitors. The Colloquium served as an open forum for the community. It was used to introduce new results to a wider audience, to introduce national and international visitors to the greater SFU community, to rehearse and tune-up presentations for upcoming conferences or thesis defenses, and to simply share research interests with other members of the Centre. The Colloquium hosted presentations by some of the world's most prominent researchers in their fields including: Dr. Andrew Odlyzko, Dr. Mike Steele, and Dr. Peter Beerli. View the extensive list of past colloquiums the IRMACS Centre has hosted.
Coast to Coast Seminar Series
The Coast to Coast Seminar is an hour-long presentation given on a topic from mathematics or computational science and made accessible to audiences at a number of remote sites through collaboration technology. Seminars are held every two weeks throughout the academic year alternating across the country. Initially the Western and Eastern sites were the IRMACS Centre and D-Drive from Dalhousie University exclusively, but as the series grew, and included other universities, presentations in the series have also come from the University of British Columbia, the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, the University of Lethbridge, and the University of Manitoba in the West, and from Acadia University, St. Francis Xavier University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, the University of New Brunswick, and McMaster University in the East. The ACEnet, Sharc-Net, and WestGrid networks distribute the series.
The main goal of the series is to provide an opportunity to scientific communities from various Canadian universities to collaborate and share their interests. The secondary goal is to set the standard for these types of events and to explore further the possibilities of the use of the available technology.
View the extensive list of past Coast to Coast Seminars the IRMACS Centre has hosted.
Canada Research Chairs Seminar Series
Between September 2008 and December 2011, the IRMACS Centre hosted the "SFU Canada Research Chairs Seminar Series". The focus of the series is to provide an opportunity to the wider SFU community to learn more about the current research interests of the SFU Canada Research Chair holders.
In 2000, the Government of Canada created a program to establish 2000 research professorship Canada Research Chairs in universities across the country by 2008. The aim of the program was to "improve Canadians' depth of knowledge and quality of life, strengthen the country's international competitiveness, and help train the next generation of highly skilled people through student supervision, teaching, and the coordination of other researchers' work."
Currently thirty-eight Simon Fraser University faculty members are Canada Research Chair holders. They achieve research excellence in natural sciences, engineering, health sciences, humanities, and social sciences. The CRC Seminar Series is a biweekly series with six presentations per semester.
View the past Canada Research Chairs Seminars hosted at the IRMACS Centre.
Thank you for organizing a wonderful conference -- to me it was more interesting and useful than almost any other conference in recent years. Very high scientific value and standard. Staff and Technical Support: Excellent, in every respect. IRMACS facilities: These are enviable.
Karl Dilcher, Department of Mathematics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
