The Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM) has released its 2024 Annual Report, a comprehensive overview of the centre’s scientific output, institutional developments, training initiatives, and outreach activities over the past year. This edition carries particular significance, as it coincides with the 40th anniversary of the CRM, established in 1984 by Manuel Castellet as the first institute in Spain exclusively devoted to mathematical research.
The year 2024 has been pivotal for the CRM. The centre recorded over 120 scientific publications, expanded institutional ties, and renewed its affiliations with researchers from the UAB, UB and UPC. Additionally, the process has begun to formally include the University of Barcelona and the UPC on the CRM’s Board of Trustees, reinforcing the centre’s role within the Catalan university system.
Highlights of the year include a visit from Terence Tao, who delivered the CRM Annual Colloquium. The CRM has also continued to support early-career researchers through initiatives like the Hypatia Graduate School, BIMR, JISD and BAMB, while the SIJIMat seminar series has consolidated its role as a platform for junior researchers to exchange ideas.
In her foreword, CRM Director Carme Cascante underlines that “the talent, vision, and dedication that define the CRM remain strong,” and expresses her gratitude to everyone who helped make 2024 such a remarkable year.
You can read and download the full 2024 Annual Report here:
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CRM CommPau Varela & Natalia Vallina
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When the reward comes within reach, the brain changes what it compares
As the tokens piled up, choices got faster and more accurate at the same time. The yardstick for judging each offer had moved.CRM CommPau VarelaCRMComm@crm.catGet the latest CRM news and activities in your inbox.Recent newsletters →Two subjects...
Almost every automaton can be reset with a short word
Guillaume Chapuy (Université Paris Cité, CNRS) and Guillem Perarnau (UPC, CRM) have shown that a random finite automaton with n states can, with high probability, be reset by a word of length of order √n log n. The result, published in ACM Transactions on Algorithms, pins the exponent at 1/2, the lower end of a decade of numerical estimates, and addresses the random version of the synchronization problem behind a conjecture Ján Černý posed in 1964 and which still remains open.
Exposició ‘Les matemàtiques de Gaudí’
CRM quod erat demonstrandum | 48
ADA: Decoding Brain Signals Misaligned in Time
The study addresses a key limitation of current brain decoding techniques: the difficulty of interpreting internal mental processes whose temporal dynamics vary from trial to trial.Decoding what is happening in a person’s mind from their brain activity is one of the...
Rare curves, many points: Christophe Ritzenthaler and Rachel Pries on their research and the work around it
Christophe Ritzenthaler (Université de Rennes) and Rachel Pries (Colorado State University) both work on curves over finite fields: he hunts curves with as many points as possible, she hunts curves that almost never occur. In conversation with the CRM during their...
Call open for the 2027 Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Prize
The Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Foundation is accepting submissions for its 2027 prize, which awards 15,000 euros and publication in Birkhäuser's Progress in Mathematics series to an expository monograph on an active area of mathematical research. The deadline is 27...
Susanna Terracini delivers the CRM Colloquium 2026
Susanna Terracini (Università di Torino) delivered the CRM Colloquium 2026 on 14 July, presenting a rigidity result for Kepler billiards obtained with Stefano Baranzini, Vivina Barutello and Irene De Blasi. She was at the centre as a member of the CRM Scientific...
Ho Chi Minh City hosts the SEAMS School on applying mathematics to real-world problems
Students from across the region took courses and worked on group projects at a school co-organised by CRM researcher Tim Myers.CRM CommPau VarelaCRMComm@crm.catGet the latest CRM news and activities in your inbox.Recent newsletters →Between 4 and...
A single ball on a fixed table can compute: Eva Miranda and Isaac Ramos prove that two-dimensional billiards are Turing complete
Eva Miranda (UPC, CRM) and Isaac Ramos (ETH Zürich) show that a point particle bouncing inside a planar table with fixed walls can simulate a universal Turing machine, settling a question Cristopher Moore left open in 1990. The result grew out of a master’s project...
BMS-BGSMath Junior Meeting 2026: Barcelona and Berlin Strengthen Scientific Ties
From 2 to 4 September 2026, the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM) hosted the BMS-BGSMath Junior Meeting 2026, a three-day event jointly organised by the Berlin Mathematical School (BMS) and the Barcelona Graduate School of Mathematics (BGSMath), with the Centre de...
The CRM organises the 2026 Barcelona Summer School for Advanced Modeling of Behavior
The Centre de Recerca Matemàtica held the sixth edition of BAMB!, the Barcelona Summer School for Advanced Modeling of Behavior, from 12 to 23 July 2026 at the Parc de Recerca Biomèdica de Barcelona. Thirty early-career researchers from fourteen countries followed...