Four Illinois universities have been awarded $15.5 million by The National Science Foundation (NSF) to create a new Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation. 

IMSI will be a collaboration project with mathematicians and statisticians from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Chicago, Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The institute will be hosted by the University of Chicago and will focus on creating solutions for urgent global issues such as climate change, artificial intelligence, health care, economics, quantum information theory, material science and data science.

In order to address these scientific issues going on around the world the institute was created in hopes of using these four universities strengths in the math and science fields. 

The University has been working with various institutes on campus such as the Beckman Institute, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the departments of Mathematics and Statistics in collaboration with the University of Illinois Research Park. 

Doug Simpson, professor in LAS at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is the associate director of IMSI along with Kevin Corlette, professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago who will be the inaugural director of IMSI.

The institute will have various applications throughout their research including workshops, programs — which will last around 10 weeks — and research activities. IMSI will sponsor outreach and develop programs for students and faculty at all ages to participate in these newfound opportunities.

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