At the March 2011 Providence Geek Dinner, Jan Hesthaven of ICERM (Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics) gave us an overview of the institute’s mission, explained some ways that they’ll be reaching out to the community, and helped us understand what this all means for the geek community. I caught up with Jan after his talk and we recorded this short video. [Video link]

To my mind ICERM is the biggest – and yet, still largely unknown  - local Geek news of the year.

This past summer Brown won a highly competitive $15.5 million award from the National Science Foundation to form a national mathematics research institute — one of only eight in the nation — where scholars from around the world will come to explore the intersection between computation and mathematics.

ICERM (Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics) will officially open this fall in the renovated top 2 (amazing) floors of 121 South Main Street.

Don’t miss this!

Please RSVP at Facebook – and while you’re there please join our Facebook group. And if you want to join our very-low-volume email announcement send an email to Jack Templin, jtemplin@gmail.com with your name and affiliation.

As always, for first-timers here are the details on the Geek Dinners:

• The event itself is FREE! Beverages and food are for sale at AS220’s excellent bar and restaurant.


• Doors open at 5:30pm. Socializing, eating and drinking up until the 30 min presentation/q&a around 6:30pm. Afterwards, back to socializing, eating, drinking…


• It’s totally casual. Wear whatever, bring whoever, arrive and take off whenever! And don’t worry about eating or not – come famished or full – eating is optional, and frankly, the least of the festivities (that’s not say the food isn’t good – it’s actually great)


• Topics of conversation will vary as they will at any gathering of geeks, but many of us will be talking about AJAX, mash-ups, start-ups, new devices, innovative business models, interaction design, social computing, digital art, web services, etc. etc. etc.


• There is Wi-Fi so bring your connected device of choice.

At the February 2011 Geek Dinner, Tellart co-Founder Matt Cottam gave us an overview of Tellart’s history, showed off some cool projects, and shared Tellart’s vision, hopes, and dreams for an Internet of Things. I caught up with him after his talk to shoot this video. [Video link]