Tom Salisbury
Professor Tom Salisbury of the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at York University has been named the new associate director of industry liaison at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences.
The announcement was made May 20 by the Fields Institute, which launched a search for the position in early 2016 and vetted candidates from across the globe.
Salisbury will step into the tenured role on Sept. 1, and will “develop a scientific environment that nurtures connections and collaborations between academic researchers and scientists in industry,” said a media release issued by the Fields Institute.
He replaces Huaxiong Huang, who will lead the Fields Institute as deputy director beginning in July 2016.
“Having the Fields Institute play a role in liaising between academic mathematicians and industry is something that will be of great benefit to our students, and to those of the other Ontario universities that sponsor Fields,” said Salisbury. “I’m excited at the prospect of helping this take place.”
Salisbury was previously acting as deputy director of the Fields Institute from 2003 to 2006, and is a Fellow of the Fields Institute.
“With over 30 years of experience, Salisbury is a leading figure in probability theory, specifically Brownian motion and related Markov processes, including their applications to mathematical finance and actuarial sciences,” said the release.
Salisbury received his BSc in 1979 from McGill University, and his PhD in mathematics in 1983 from the University of British Columbia. After a postdoctoral position at Purdue University, he moved to York University’s Department of Mathematics & Statistics, where he is a professor and was a former department chair.
He teaches financial engineering at York, was director of analytics at Quantitative Wealth Management Analytics group (QWeMA) prior to the latter’s acquisition by CANNEX, and led the Finsurance project at MITACS. He is a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), he chaired the task force that initiated the 2007 revision of the Ontario grade 12 curriculum and he subsequently served on the Ontario Minister of Education’s curriculum council. He has served terms as deputy director of the Fields Institute and as president of the Canadian Mathematical Society. His research is supported by NSERC, MITACS and the IFID centre.
Founded in 1992, the Fields Institute is a leading international research centre located on the campus of the University of Toronto.
The mission of the institute is to enhance mathematical activity in Canada by bringing together mathematicians from Canada and abroad, and by promoting contact and collaboration between professional mathematicians and the increasing numbers of users of mathematics.