The School is to host the next “Orthogonal Polynomials, Special Functions and Applications” (OPSFA) conference in 2017, organized by Peter Clarkson and Ana Loureiro. This will be the 14th edition in the series of OPSFA conferences and the first one of the series to be held in the UK, see http://wis.kuleuven.be/events/OPSFA/
The first OPSFA conference was held in 1984 and now occur every two years, the last three being in Leganes (Madrid, Spain) in 2011, Sousse (Tunisia) in 2013 and Gaithersburg (Maryland, USA) earlier this year. OPSFA conferences normally attract about 200 participants and it is proposed that OPSFA14 will be held in late June/early July 2017. It is also proposed that a Summer School on the topic will be held in the week before OPSFA14.
Earlier this month Peter Clarkson and Ana Loureiro attended the OPSFA13 conference, which was held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA. Ana and Peter both gave two talks at the conference and Peter organized a mini-symposium on “Aspects of Painleve equations”.
The Mathematics division of NIST produced the “Digital Library of Mathematical Functions” and the companion book “NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions” which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011, the culmination of a 10-year project. The section of this on “Painleve Transcendents” formed the basis of one of the School’s Impact Cases in REF2014.