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Media Release – June 25, 2021
Canadian Mathematical Society

The 2021 CMS Winter Meeting Will be Held Online

The CMS Virtual Summer Meeting proved to be an enriching and stimulating scientific event, with a record-breaking attendance of over 1,000 mathematicians and many virtual social events and discussions, in addition to excellent scientific sessions. The CMS would like to thank all the organisers, volunteers, participants and attendees for making this virtual event a huge success. The Society also thanks the members of the mathematical community for generously sharing their positive and constructive feedback in the meeting survey.

Upon elaborate consultations with the math community and reviewing the results of the online survey that was sent to the CMS members, the CMS concludes that moving the 2021 Winter Meeting to a virtual platform is the best course of action. This decision was not made lightly. We all long to resume our social lives, to meet and discuss without the barrier of the computer screen. However, many colleagues indicated in the survey that due to potential COVID risks, they do not feel comfortable traveling for the Winter meeting. The safety of our members is our top priority and given the uncertain epidemiological situation, the CMS does not want to put the lives of participants at risk and wishes to organise a meeting which is accessible to all including members with compromised immune systems.

As another essential parameter, it is uncertain at this point whether or not all universities will resume reimbursing travel expenses by 2021, which further discourages participation in in-person meetings. Moreover, the virtual format of CMS 2021 Summer Meeting allowed for the participation of many researchers from outside of Canada, and of those who are not willing to travel.

For these reasons, we believe that the risk of holding an in-person meeting in December 2021 is too high. Given the success of our Virtual Summer Meeting, we expect that the virtual meeting in winter 2021 to be another great success for our community.

We hope that going forward we will be able to resume our in-person meetings and are looking forward to seeing you all at the 2022 Summer Meeting in St.John’s, NL, from June 3rd to 6th.