June 2025

** Who is currently visiting**

No change from last month:
[Sylvie](https://www.i2m.univ-amu.fr/user/sylvie.monniaux/) 
[Sandro](https://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~vaienti/) 
Olivier Lee-Ah-Naye
Lucas Bongiorno

** Opportunities **

ANU staff can apply for visiting professor positions in France (the CNRS "postes rouges"). These are positions for 2-3 months, in French maths department located in France, funded by the CNRS (travel and accommodation costs, plus some per diem). Applications are due by 30 September 2025, for visits between February and November 2026.

To apply you need to do the following:

- Discuss your plans with a potential host department in France (typically through a potential collaborator first, then officially via the Director of said department).
- Let Sylvie and Pierre know to get IRL support.
- Prepare a CV (inc. publications in the last 5 years) and a research proposal.

Being a staff member of an IRL increase chances of success.

** French Maths Society (SMF) **

You should join! Check out [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEhSbftxjtI) to find out why, and/or ask Pierre (who is the IRL FAMSI representative of the SMF). There is a highly discounted rate for AustMS members.

** Travels **
Po Lam gave talks in Madrid and at Monash.
Joan gave a talk at the 2025 Georgia International Topology Conference.
Sylvie went to New Caledonia to present the IRL. More on this below.

** Maths in the Pacific **
Parts of France are in the Pacific region, and host Maths departments. There is one in New Caledonia, and one in [Tahiti](https://gaati.org/about/en/). These teams sometimes struggle with their isolation. Sylvie's visit to Nouméa was a first step towards potentially using the IRL FAMSI to support mathematical research in the Pacific, including both places that have a strong relationship with France and places that have a strong relationship with Australia. Sylvie, Pierre, and colleagues from Nouméa and Tahiti, are currently considering organising a conference at the ANU towards the end of 2026 to start building a network.

Let us know if you'd be keen to be involved!

We have plenty of contacts in New Zealand, of course, but note that quite a few colleagues in [Tahiti](https://gaati.org/about/en/) could interact well with MSI staff.

** Coming up **

In July or August, we will organise a small meeting with colleagues from other ANU schools who are close to the themes of the IRL and keen to talk to mathematicians.

If you have people in mind, please let Pierre or Sylvie know.

Alice Cleynen and Hoel Queffelec will arrive in July.
Pascal Auscher will arrive in September.

**Questions, news?**  
As always, if you have any question, just ask Sylvie or Pierre.
Also, if you have items for this newsletter, please send them to Pierre.
We are particularly interested in:

- papers you have just finished,
- projects you have just started,
- talks you are giving this month.

--------
A/Prof. Pierre Portal (he/him) 2025

May 2025

Here is what is happening in May in our IRL.

Social catch up
Join the other IRL members in the third floor common area for a classic French cafe-croissant on Wednesday 21 May at 10am. The IRL will take care of the croissants, but bring your own coffee.

Talks
Sylvie will talk about "Navier-Stokes equations" at the Colloquium THIS Thursday (4-5pm). The talk should be accessible to everybody at MSI.
Pierre will talk about "Maximal regularity of parabolic stochastic PDE" on Monday 19 May at 1pm in the Mathematical Data Science Centre seminar series. The talk will focus on ideas and directions rather than on techniques, and should thus be fairly accessible to people interested in probability and/or analysis.
Sandro will talk about randomly perturbed dynamical systems in the Analysis&PDE seminar on Wednesday 28 May at 10am.

Who is currently visiting
Lucas Bongiorno is a master level student from Centrale Lyon, doing an internship under Sylvie's supervision from 5 May to 31 October.
No change from last month:
Sylvie
Sandro
Olivier Lee-Ah-Naye

Short term visitors
Matheus Manzatto de Castro (UNSW) visiting Sandro.
Leo Tzou (Melbourne): 3-5 June, visiting Pierre, and speaking at the Analysis&PDE seminar on Wednesday 4 June at 10am.

Travels
Several of us are traveling this month, giving talks that acknowledge the IRL, and globally speaking raising awareness of FAMSI.
Sylvie just came back from Melbourne, and is going to New Caledonia later this month.
Pierre just came back from Karlsruhe (Germany).
Sandro is currently in Sydney (UNSW), and will then be in New Zealand.

Questions, news?
As always, if you have any question, just ask Sylvie or Pierre.
Also, if you have items for this newsletter, please send them to Pierre.
We are particularly interested in:
papers you have just finished,
projects you have just started,
talks you are giving this month,
as long as they are somewhat related to the IRL.

--------
A/Prof. Pierre Portal (he/him) 

March 2025

Dear all,

As promised, here is the second of our monthly newsletters. I hope that you are all doing well. I am (very much!) enjoying a relatively stress-free first quarter of the year. I hope you are too. I find myself speaking French almost as much as I speak English at the MSI these days. It reminds me of the time where Thierry Coulhon was around!

**Who is currently visiting.**  

[Sandro](https://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~vaienti/) Vaienti has arrived this week, and will stay until August.

[Sylvie](https://www.i2m.univ-amu.fr/user/sylvie.monniaux/) is fully recovered, and can often be found in the Hanna Neumann building.

Olivier Lee-Ah-Naye, a master student from Marseille, is visiting until August, supervised by Pierre, and using office 2.53. He is adding some functional analysis and operator theory to his background in probability to study some SPDE problems. Feel free to introduce yourself and your students to him!

** Funding. **

The IRL now has an account (within the CNRS in France) with some money (roughly 30k EUR per year) to support travel and other research costs. If you would like to access some of these funds, please send an email with your request to Sylvie and Pierre. The IRL Director (Sylvie) has the authority to approve spending, and the co-director (Pierre) has delegated authority in certain circumstances.

Our funding principle is that the IRL should support as many people as possible to some extent, rather than a small number of people to a large extent. For 2025, we thus plan to reimburse plane tickets only (up to 1500EUR for an International trip). We have already committed to funding plane tickets for:

- Three visiting Master students (supervised by Pierre, Matthew, and Sylvie respectively).
- Matthew going to [ITER](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER).
- Two ECR coming to [Andrew's Winter School](https://maths.anu.edu.au/news-events/events/austral-winter-school-microlocal-analysis-and-non-elliptic-fredholm-theory).
- Two French researchers coming to Bryan and Peter's conference on string theory.
- Sylvie visiting departments in New Zealand and New Caledonia.

Practically, after receiving Sylvie's approval, colleagues employed in France need to book their tickets through the CNRS travel portal, while colleagues employed in Australia can book their own tickets, and receive (partial if cost is more than 1500EUR) reimbursement from the IRL.

**Questions?**  
As always, if you have any question, just ask Sylvie or Pierre.

Bonne journée !

Pierre.

February 2025

Dear all,

I wanted to send you some news about the IRL, and thought that I will write this up as a newsletter. I'll aim to send one out once a month or so.

Who is currently visiting.
As you know, Sylvie has been here since mid-January. She has already gone on many adventures both in maths and in cycling, and the latter unfortunately took her to the Canberra hospital for five days last week. Good news is: we can now confirm that the French health insurance (MGEN Internationale) works well with the Canberra health system. As a consequence, Sylvie cannot come to the office as much as she would like, but she has started coming back today.

Alice has arrived today for a short visit, and will be here until February 20 (before coming back for a year later in 2025).

Responsibilities. 
Besides trying to do some good maths involving people in France and people in Australia, being a member of the IRL does not come with specific responsibilities (except for Sylvie and me). The only thing we formally expect you to do is to put "CNRS-ANU International Research Laboratory FAMSI (France Australia Mathematical Sciences and Interactions)" in the signature block of your papers (and slides if you are giving a talk). 

Visas.
French staff coming to the IRL have been facing some challenges getting their visa. Sandro, in particular, has been waiting more than 4 months already, and hasn't been able to arrive in February as planned. This is quite depressing. So, if you are coming soon, or one of your collaborators is, please make sure visa applications are started as early as possible.

PhD funding.
The CNRS is looking at funding three PhD students this year (standard French PhD scholarship for three years plus 5000EUR a year for International costs) to work mostly in France, but in partnership with an IRL. Partnership can mean a full "cotutelle" (joint PhD), a lighter co-supervision, or simply a long (like 3 months) visit to an IRL. The application form is attached. Sylvie and I will have to rank the applications, and we don't expect to receive funding for more than one students, but we are optimistic about getting one. If you have a project (and maybe a candidate) in mind, please send it through to Sylvie and me.

Master students visits. 
As you can see here, we will already have two Master level students visiting this year. The IRL will be able to pay for their flights, but unfortunately not for anything else. We see this a bit like the FRT program at ANU, i.e. as a great way to build networks and reputation, and to find potential candidates for joint PhDs.

Talking about joint PhDs, keep in mind that you can convert (with some effort) an Australian PhD to a joint France-Australia one if you and your student are interested. This could be a great way to "keep" some of our top ANU students while giving them an excellent International experience.

Questions?
As always, if you have any question, just ask Sylvie or me. I won't respond in the next two weeks though, as I will be on leave around there:)

Cheers,

Pierre.