Providence Reporter

After seven years as Executive Director of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), Catherine Roberts will step down at the end of August to become Chief Executive Officer of the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP).

“We thank Catherine Roberts for her leadership and for her many accomplishments as executive director,” said Bryna Kra, AMS President and Joseph Silverman, Board of Trustees Chair. “She has been integral to the functioning of the AMS. Her achievements include the highly successful campaign for the Next Generation Fund, steering the AMS through both political turmoil and the COVID-19 pandemic, growing existing AMS programs, and expanding into new areas. Catherine’s presence will be missed.”

Launched in 2020, the Next Generation Fund supports doctoral students and recent PhD recipients as they navigate their early careers. The AMS also added new prizes and fellowships and increased financial and professional support to help mathematicians advance their research during Roberts’ tenure.

Roberts positioned the AMS for a thriving future in other ways. She implemented a strategic plan that resulted in rebranding the AMS identity and establishing offices of Membership, Communications, and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Roberts reimagined the Joint Mathematics Meetings as a robust partnership that now includes more than a dozen professional societies and more research areas and aspects of the mathematical sciences than ever before. She also helped amplify the voices and interests of mathematicians in Washington, DC, expanding AMS advocacy to include education policy and opening new offices near Capitol Hill.

Under Roberts’ leadership, the AMS book program grew with the acquisition of MAA Press; the AMS launched a new gold open access journal, Communications of the AMS; the workflow for MathSciNet was converted to paperless; and the AMS printing and distribution facility transformed to a digital press operation.

“Catherine Roberts repeatedly impressed me by her ability to navigate challenges,” said Ruth Charney, immediate past president of the AMS. “She has been a huge asset to the AMS, and will be hard to replace.”

Roberts called her AMS service “the honor of a lifetime. The AMS is, and will remain, my professional home, as it has been for me since graduate school.” By joining COMAP, Roberts said that she is returning “to my roots, promoting math modeling and education.”

Catherine Roberts comes to COMAP with “talent, experience, and capabilities beyond our expectations and dreams,” said Eric Robinson, COMAP Board of Trustees president. “We are thrilled that she has agreed to become our CEO.”  

Over the next few months, the Board of Trustees will conduct a search for a new Executive Director.

Original source can be found here.