|
Stochastic Dynamics of Evolving Populations (audio)
In this lecture we give an overview of some mathematical developments
that have been motivated by and contributed to the study of evolving
population systems such as those that arise in molecular and evolutionary
biology, evolutionary economics, and evolutionary computation.
Mathematical formulations of these systems have led to classes
of stochastic processes that are sufficiently rich to describe
spatially and hierarchically structured interacting populations
and their genealogical structures. These processes are formulated
in terms of interacting particle systems and measure-valued Markov
processes on structured spaces. Basic tools for the study of particle
systems and measure-valued processes have been developed over
the past 25 years. These include martingale problem methods, dual
processes, countable particle representations, canonical representations,
Palm measures, coupling methods, multi-scale asymptotics, large
deviations, etc. Using these methods considerable progress has
been achieved in understanding some universality classes of behaviors
of spatially and hierarchically structured systems in different
fitness landscapes and space and time scales. In recent years
progress has also been made on some interesting classes of more
complex interactions but the development and analysis of populations
with complex interactions remains an active and challenging area
of research.
January 2004. - The directors of the The
Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM) of l'Université
de Montréal, Christian Léger, and the Fields Institute
for Research in Mathematical Sciences, Kenneth R. Davidson, are
pleased to announce that the CRM-Fields Prize for 2004 is awarded
to Professor Donald
Dawson in recognition of his exceptional achievement and work
in probability.
The Centre de recherches mathématiques and the Fields
Institute established the joint CRM-Fields prize in 1994 with
the goal of recognizing exceptional work in the mathematical sciences.
The recipient is chosen by the Advisory Committee of the CRM together
with the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Fields Institute. The
candidate's research should have been conducted primarily in Canada
or in affiliation with a Canadian university. The main selection
criterion is excellence in research.
Donald Dawson, this year's recipient, is one of the world's leading
probabilists, having made seminal contributions to the study of
spatially distributed stochastic processes and infinite-dimensional
branching systems, among those being the Dawson-Watanabe superprocess.
He received his B.Sc. from McGill in 1958 and his doctorate from
MIT in 1963.
Professor Dawson taught at both McGill University and Carleton
University, where he is now Professor Emeritus. His leadership
within the Canadian mathematical community includes a term as
Director of the Fields Institute from 1996 to 2000. He is a Fellow
of the Royal Society of Canada, as well as of the International
Statistical Institute and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.
Other honours include 1991 Gold Medal Lecture of the Statistical
Society of Canada, the 1994 Jeffery-Williams lecture of the CMS,
an invited lecture at the 1994 ICM, as well as the Fields Institute's
Distinguished Lecture Series in the Statistical Sciences. His
numerous editorial contributions include serving as co-editor-in-chief
of the Canadian Journal of Mathematics. He has served his profession
through numerous NSERC and CMS committees, and is currently President-Elect
of the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability.
Previous recipients are H.S.M. (Donald) Coxeter, George A. Elliott,
James Arthur, Robert V. Moody, Stephen A. Cook, Israel Michael
Sigal, William T. Tutte, John B. Friedlander, John McKay and Edwin
Perkins.
Return to Fields Institute
home page
|
