Conference in France celebrates Claudio Landim’s 60th birthday
In celebration of the 60th birthday of IMPA researcher Claudio Landim, an international reference in probability and its applications to statistical physics, the Centre International de Rencontres Mathématiques (CIRM), in Marseille (France), will host the conference “Interacting Particle Systems and Related Fields”. The meeting will take place between September 22 and 26 and is organized by former students of Landim, such as Milton Jara, a researcher at IMPA, who is a member of the Scientific Committee of the event.
“A long-standing tradition in science, and in particular in mathematics, is to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of renowned scientists with a lecture in their honor. Usually, the organization of this conference is the responsibility of the honoree’s alumni. In the case of Claudio Landim, the first difficulty was choosing who would organize the conference. With more than 20 former doctoral students, and a myriad of former master’s and postdoctoral students, Claudio has left an indelible mark on the Brazilian mathematical community, and also around the world. When we asked how he would like to be honored, the only condition he put was that ‘it be a good excuse to organize a cool conference,'” he reported.
According to Jara, the CIRM was the ‘natural’ setting to host the tribute. “Located in the midst of the famous Provençal calanques, the center offers an environment that combines the tranquility of nature with the intensity of a high-level scientific conference,” he said.
The event will bring together some of the world’s leading experts in probability and analysis, statistical physics and stochastic processes. Among the confirmed speakers are Bernard Derrida (Collège de France); S.R Srinivasa Varadhan (Courant Institute / USA), Herbert Spohn ( Technical University of Munich / Germany), Pablo Ferrari (University of Buenos Aires / Argentina), Perla Sousi (University of Cambridge / England), among others. In all, more than 20 researchers have already confirmed their participation.
For Landim, the event is an opportunity to meet researchers who marked his trajectory. “I’m flattered. It is a privilege to have my mentors present, such as S.R. Varadhan, who celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday last year at a beautiful conference, and collaborators from all over the world. I thank the former students and colleagues who organized the tribute”.
As part of the celebration, a special issue of the scientific journal Markov Processes and Related Fields (MPAG) will be published, dedicated to celebrating Landim’s contributions in the area of interacting particle systems. Friends, co-authors and collaborators are invited to submit articles until December 31, 2025. Papers may bring original research or reviews on related topics, and will undergo a peer review process before publication.
Claudio Landim’s trajectory
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Claudio Landim has been a researcher at IMPA since 1994 and was deputy director of the institute between 2008 and 2024. A specialist in probability, he graduated as a mathematician at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). He holds a master’s degree in Statistics and Probability from IMPA, a PhD in Mathematics from Paris Diderot University (1990) and a postdoctoral degree from the Courant Institute, New York University (1994).
Landim has been a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC) since 2001 and received the commendation of the National Order of Scientific Merit, in 2010, and the Grand Cross degree, in 2023. In 1997, he was awarded the Bronze medal of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) for his contributions to the theory of hydrodynamic behavior of particle systems.
The researcher also received a grant from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation (2004), the Mathematics Prize of the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), and the Juscelino Kubitschek Medal (2016).