Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific society devoted to applied mathematics, and roughly two-thirds of its membership resides within the United States. Founded in 1951, the organization began holding annual national meetings in 1954, and now hosts conferences, publishes books and scholarly journals, and engages in advocacy in issues of interest to its membership. Members include engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, both those employed in academia and those working in industry. The society supports educational institutions promoting applied mathematics. SIAM is one of the four member organizations of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics.

Membership

Membership is open to both individuals and organizations. By the end of its first full year of operation, SIAM had 130 members; by 1968, it had 3,700. Student members can join SIAM chapters affiliated and run by students and faculty at universities. Most universities with SIAM chapters are in the United States (including Harvard and MIT ), but SIAM chapters also exist in other countries, for example at Oxford, at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and at Peking University. SIAM publishes the SIAM Undergraduate Research Online, a venue for undergraduate research in applied and computational mathematics. (SIAM also offers the SIAM Visiting Lecture Program, which helps arrange visits from industrial mathematicians to speak to student groups about applied mathematics and their own professional experiences. ) In 2009, SIAM instituted a Fellows program to recognize certain members who have made outstanding contributions to the fields that SIAM serves.

Activity groups

The society includes a number of activity groups (SIAGs) to allow for more focused group discussions and collaborations. Activity groups organize domain-specific conferences and minisymposia, and award prizes. Unlike special interest groups in similar academic associations like ACM, activity groups are chartered for a fixed period of time, typically for two years, and require submitting a petition to the SIAM Council and Board for renewal. Charter approval is largely based on group size, as topics that were considered hot at one time may have fewer active researchers later. Current Activity Groups:

Publications

Journals

SIAM publishes 18 research journals:

Books

SIAM publishes roughly 20 books each year, including textbooks, conference proceedings and monographs. Many of these are issued in themed series, such as "Advances in design and control", "Financial mathematics" and "Monographs on discrete mathematics and applications". In particular, SIAM distributes books produced by Gilbert Strang's Wellesley-Cambridge Press, such as his Introduction to Linear Algebra (5th edition, 2016). Organizations such as libraries can obtain DRM-free access to SIAM books in eBook format for a subscription fee.

Conferences

SIAM organizes conferences and meetings throughout the year focused on various topics in applied math and computational science. For example, SIAM has hosted an annual conference on data mining since 2001. The establishment of the SIAM Conferences on Discrete Mathematics, held every two years, has been regarded as a sign of the growth of graph theory as a prominent topic of study. The International Meshing Roundtable is an annual conference that was independently established in 1992 and joined SIAM as a workshop in 2022. In conjunction with the Association for Computing Machinery, SIAM also organizes the annual Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, using the format of a theoretical computer science conference rather than the mathematics conference format that SIAM typically uses for its conferences.

Prizes and recognition

SIAM recognizes applied mathematician and computational scientists for their contributions to the fields. Prizes include:

John von Neumann Lecture

The John von Neumann Lecture prize was established in 1959 with funds from IBM and other industry corporations, and is awarded for "outstanding and distinguished contributions to the field of applied mathematical sciences and for the effective communication of these ideas to the community". The recipient receives a monetary award and presents a survey lecture at the Annual Meeting.

MathWorks Math Modeling (M3) Challenge

The MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge is an applied mathematics modeling competition for high school students in the United States. Scholarship prizes totaled $60,000 in 2006, and have since been raised to $150,000. It is funded by Mathworks. Originally, the prize was sponsored by the financial services company Moody's and known as the Moody's Mega Math Challenge.

Leadership

The chief elected officer of SIAM is the president, elected for a single two-year term. SIAM employs an executive director and staff. The following people have been presidents of the society: • William E. Bradley, Jr. (1952–1953) • Donald Houghton (1953–1954) • Harold W. Kuhn (1954–1955) • John Mauchly (1955–1956) • Thomas Southard (1956–1958) • Donald Thomsen, Jr. (1958–1959) • Brockway McMillan (1959–1960) • F. Joachim Weyl (1960–1961) • Robert Rinehart (1961–1962) • Joseph P. LaSalle (1962–1963) • Alston Householder (1963–1964) • J. Barkley Rosser (1964–1966) • Garrett Birkhoff (1966–1968) • J. Wallace Givens (1968–1970) • Burton Colvin (1970–1972) • C. C. Lin (1972–1974) • Herbert Keller (1974–1976) • Werner Rheinboldt (1976–1978) • Richard C. DiPrima (1979–1980) • Seymour Parter (1981–1982) • Hirsh Cohen (1983–1984) • Gene H. Golub (1985–1986) • C. William Gear (1987–1988) • Ivar Stakgold (1989–1990) • Robert E. O’Malley, Jr. (1991–1992) • Avner Friedman (1993–1994) • Margaret H. Wright (1995–1996) • John Guckenheimer (1997–1998) • Gilbert Strang (1999–2000) • Thomas A. Manteuffel (2001–2002) • James (Mac) Hyman (2003–2004) • Martin Golubitsky (2005–2006) • Cleve Moler (2007–2008) • Doug Arnold (2009–2010) • L. N. Trefethen (2011–2012) • Irene Fonseca (2013–2014) • Pamela Cook (2015–2016) • Nicholas J. Higham (2017–2018) • Lisa Fauci (2019–2020) • Susanne Brenner (2021–2022) • Sven Leyffer (2023–2024)