**PIMS Site Director's Meeting
September 29, 2022**

**Attendees:**
Anthony Quas
Wenyuan Liao
Kristine Bauer
Denise Feighan
Jayadev S. Athreya
Thomas Hillen
Chris Soteros
Allen Herman
Ozgur Yilmaz
Nathan Ng
Weiran Sun
Brian Marcus
Stephanie Portet

**1. Welcome and update from the directorate (5 min)**

**Ozgur**
- PIMS Open House, September 15, 2022, 1:00 pm (Pacific Time): constructive meeting with more than 25 people in attendance virtually
- CNRS-PIMS Partnership: work in progress. Will share updates when more details become available.
- Fields Program for Climate Change: Ozgur thanked the site directors for sending the contact information of people who may be interested in the program. The contact information has been forwarded to Fields. There will be a hybrid meeting scheduled for October 11 - October 12. SDs are welcomed to join the meeting and to share inputs.
- Connexion: no updates to share yet.
- 2 Hybrid Prize Lectures: well-attended events which offered in-person meeting like experience. The events presented opportunities to think about how PIMS can support replicating similar experience across all sites. *i.e. PIMS Tea: instrumental in bringing people together.* Use of discretionary fund to support social gatherings in sync, for example, with the network-wide colloquia, can facilitate more interconnected events reaching a broader audience. More broadly, Marcelo Laca's idea shared during the PIMS renewal task force meeting, to create regional gathering points where researchers can collaborate, should be further looked at.

**Jayadev**
- thanked the site directors for circulating PIMS opportunities across their networks.
- PIMS-Springer: meeting with Springer to discuss about renewing PIMS-Springer agreement. Sharing the Springer subscription status at each site university, if any, would be helpful before the meeting to better support institutions across the network.
- Current PIMS-Springer agreement: the right to publish from our events in their proceedings in the mathematical sciences series with our logo on the books.
- A representative from Springer will come meet w/ PIMS CRG and PRN organizers in December to tell them about the opportunity.

**Kristine**
- Plans to submit a NSERC CREATE proposal for the M2Pi: PIMS Jobs Committee will receive an email soon asking them about their interests to continue to be on the committee or not. Bifurcation of the Jobs committee into two: Industry Advisory Panel and Organizational Committee.
- If the funds to be distributed to each site like NSERC funds, site directors will be listed as collaborators.
- Timeline: LOI stage at the UCalgary in January, and LOI to NSERC in Spring.
- A draft will be shared once it's ready.

**Ozgur**

***Deadline Reminders:***
- SRP: Saturday, October 1, 2022
- PIMS-Europe Fellowship Applications: Saturday, October 1, 2022
- PIMS CNRS Post-Rouges Program: October 7, 2022
- PDF: December 1, 2022 (Kristine: if PIMS sites have their own postdoctoral ads, please send them to Ruth and Ian, and they will put them as news items on PIMS).
- Callysto: October 14, 2022

Wenyuan<>Ozgur: For deadlines ending on October 1,if anybody contacts SDs for an extension, then they can submit proposals by October 4, 2022. Ask them to contact Ian and Ozgur.

**Kristine**
- suggested that PIMS think about what the utility of having an in-person meeting is.
- PIMS Board Meeting: there will be break-out sessions by geographic area for two reasons: 1. According to the PIMS membership agreement, there is a requirement that there be mathematical scientists from each of the geographic regions. However, there are no terms of reference on who these members get selected. Accordingly, discussions about how the terms to be written for each region will take place at break-out sessions, 2. Discussion about regional funding opportunities: SDs to come prepared with 2 local things that might attract external or industrial funding, and to demonstrate them to each university rep who can connect you to funding opportunities (i.e. outreach education,industrial, research activities)
- 3 groups: 1. Washington State & BC, 2. Manitoba and Saskatchewan, 3. Alberta.
- Chris suggested that PIMS create Slack channels for each of the regions.
- Kristine: need to think about who will be moderating each break-out session. She will seek help from SDs once she has more details.

**2. Overview of PIMS Agreement Process**

Slides available at: https://hackmd.io/@PIMSdirectorate/Sk4XwJbzj

- Definition of affiliated members to be clarified.
- Discussion on how site directors to be represented on the PIMS Board continued.
- A simpler PIMS agreement signing process to add a new member university in possible expanded network should be looked into.
- Some suggested options: 1. fractional votes; 2. Shorter rotation period for site directors in each region in case of unexpected absence of a voting site director. The voting representative should be determined prior to the board meeting; 3. a total of 3 votes for site directors (1/3 vote for each SD); 4. regional voting/ representation
- SD representation percentage to be discussed with the PIMS Agreement Committee.
- The new agreement should have a clause re: sending proxies.

**<<Reference>>**
Kirill's Suggestions

> 1) Site Fees are not addressed in any way, and this needs to be corrected.
>
> 2) Procedures for election of the Board Chair, Board Committees (Strategic Planning, Finance, etc.), the PIMS Director/Deputy Director/co-Directors, etc. need to be added to POB (PIMS Operational Bylaws).
>
> 3) Allowing some Site Directors full participation on the Board with full voting rights, in my opinion, creates more problems that it resolves. It introduces two tiers of SDs (voting and non-voting), it creates a (perceived) conflict of interest that may result in unnecessarily complex PIMS Statutes /Agreement when we try to avoid this conflict of interest by discussing what committees SDs may and may not serve on, and so on. Perhaps there is a better and more efficient approach.