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Important message from the president and the treasurer:
Dear IAMP Members,
The new Executive Committee has reviewed the financial situation of the Association and the status of our member database. The good news is that IAMP has almost 1400 registered members. The bad news is that several hundred of them have obsolete email addresses and more than half of the registered members are inactive in the sense that they have not paid their dues in recent years.
1) Status of the database.
In the past two months we have tried to identify the valid email addresses of our members with obsolete contact data; we were successful in about one hundred cases. In many other cases we could not locate the member based upon the available (sometimes very rudimentary) data. First, we would like to encourage all members to visit the webpage
www.iamp.org -> Membership list
and check and update their personal data (email address being the most important). Second, we would ask you to think about friends and colleagues who could be members but may not be reachable by email and to encourage them to go online and fill in their data.
2) Members with outstanding dues.
IAMP needs financial resources. Most of our income is from member dues; a small part are donations and membership fees of associate members. Most of our expenses go to support conferences in mathematical physics. Although our resources allow only a small contribution to a limited number of selected conferences, in many cases the additional support from IAMP is essential to fill the gap in the financial plan of the organizers and thus to make the conference possible.
Unfortunately, many of our registered members have forgotten to pay their dues for several years which resulting in a reduction of the Association budget. According to the Paragraph III. 11 (c) of the Statutes of IAMP, membership shall be terminated by elimination after non-payment of the dues for one year. This rule has never been enforced in the past.
The new Executive Committee is determined to clean up our membership list and to encourage our non-paying members to pay their arrears. To make this easier we declare a one-time partial amnesty with a fixed deadline after which Paragraph III. 11 (c) will be enforced
The following sections explain the changes in the membership dues and categories. These changes have been discussed by the Executive Committee and approved by its vote on April 21, 2009.
I. PARTIAL AMNESTY
A partial amnesty is introduced to entice people in arrears with their payment to restore their good standing status. Anybody who is in arrears from 2008 or before, but pays his or her dues for the last two years (i.e. for the years 2008 and 2009) before Dec 31, 2009, will be considered in good standing as of Dec 31, 2009.
This amnesty is a one-time action that ends on Dec 31, 2009. After that date, Paragraph III.11.c. of the IAMP Statutes will be automatically enforced.
Members in arrears will receive reminders per email in the next weeks (assuming their email address on the database is correct). However, we would strongly recommend to everyone to check his or her status online (www.iamp.org -> Membership List) and pay the outstanding dues even before the reminder arrives (this would reduce our workload). Note that payment for at least 3 years ahead is recommended.
For the payment of the dues, please, visit
We have setup a very convenient and safe online payment system with credit card. It is also possible to pay by US checks and bank transfer (to a bank in Germany).
II. REDUCED DUES (R) STATUS
Certain members have enjoyed a "reduced dues status" that effectively means free membership. The goal was to make it possible even for mathematical physicists with limited financial resources to join the Association. With all its good intentions, this privilege has been granted somewhat unsystematically in the past, and there was no renewal procedure to regularly check the eligibility. The new Executive Committee has decided to maintain this possibility for those who really need it, but at the same time we wish to reduce its possible abuses. Therefore, the following rules will apply to the "reduced dues" (R) category.
i) Any new member of the Association enjoys R-status in the calendar year when he or she joins IAMP.
ii) Beyond the first year, only those members are eligible for R-status, who simultaneously satisfy the following two criteria:
a) They are not affiliated with institutions in a member state of the European Union or in an OECD country (list given at www.oecd.org)
AND
b) Their yearly professional income is below 12000 (twelve thousands) Swiss Francs or equivalent in local currency (based on self-declaration).
iii) Members with R-status must reconfirm their status every three (3) years by applying per email for the renewal of their status to the Treasurer. In the application, the member should declare that he or she is eligible under the criteria listed in ii). It is the duty of the member to seek for renewal of the R-status, otherwise he or she will be automatically transferred to Ordinary Member (O) status and will be liable for paying regular dues.
iv) The new rules i)--iii) are effective from January 1, 2010. Previously granted R-status will not be honored beyond this date and every member seeking R-status must reapply before January 1, 2010.
III. LIFE MEMBERS (L) STATUS
Life Membership was designed to relieve members from regularly paying their dues by offering them a one-time payment that guarantees membership even after retirement. The current rule required paying dues for a number of years equal to Max[ (65 - current age), 5]. This formula is not particularly attractive to young members (almost none of our lifetime members is below 35), while it is fairly generous to older members. To make the system more balanced, the following new rules are introduced:
i) Life Membership is granted to those members who have paid a total of 25 years of membership on or after Jan 1, 1995, irrespective of possible gaps and arrears in their payment history.
ii) Members interested in L-status will have the possibility to acquire the L-status under the current rules until Dec 31, 2009. However, this possibility is open only to those members who are in good standing. Members who are in arrear and wish to become Life Members under the current rule (only possible until Dec 31, 2009) will have to first become members with good standing following Section I and then they can apply for L-status.
iii) Previously granted L-status will be honored.
On individual request, the Treasurer will be happy to advise members on the choice between the options i) and ii).
IV. ADJUSTMENT OF DUES
The new Executive Committee is committed to keep the dues at a level that is affordable to all members. However, the dues have essentially been constant for two decades, so some adjustment may be necessary in the future. Moreover, certain longer trends in currency exchange rates may need to be taken into account in setting the dues in the future. Around the end of every year, the Executive Committee will set the new rates that will be in effect for any due payments in the future.
We apologize for this long message about the changes in the membership dues, but the Executive Committee believes that these changes are necessary to make our dues payment system fairer and more effective.
Pavel Exner President
Laszlo Erdös Treasurer
New members: The following colleagues recently
joined the Association
| Gunther Uhlmann
|
University of
Washington, USA |
| Priya Pathak
|
TU Dresden, Germany
|
| Sivanandam Sivasankaran
|
Sungkyunkwan
University, South Korea
|
| Marimuthu Bhuvaneswari
|
National Cheng Kung
University, Taiwan
|
| Max Lein
|
Technical University
Munich, Germany
|
| Jose Lages
|
Universite de
Franche-Comte, France
|
| David Hasler
|
College of William &
Mary, USA
|
| E. Ahmed
|
Mansoura University, Egypt
|
| Martin Zirnbauer
|
University of
Cologne, Germany
|
| Simone Warzel
|
TU Munich, Germany
|
| Robert Sims
|
University of
Arizona, USA
|
| Fabio Toninelli
|
Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon and CNRS
|
| Bijan Kumar Bagchi
|
University of
Calcutta, India
|
| Takuya Mine
|
Kyoto Institute of
Technology, Japan
|
| Samuel Braunstein
|
University of York, UK
|
| Stefan Adams
|
University of Warwick
|
| Julien Queva
|
Universite
Diderot-Paris 7, France
|
| Cedric Villani
|
Ecole Normale
Superieure de Lyon, France
|
| Suresh Tiwari
|
Institute of Natural
Philosophy, India
|
| Gherardo Piacitelli
|
SISSA, Italy
|
| Claudio Cacciapuoti
|
Bonn University, Germany
|
| Serge Preston
|
Portland State
University, USA
|
| Raffaele Carlone
|
Czech Academy of
Sciences, Czech Republic
|
We welcome them heartily!
and others recognized by the IAMP (type C):