Professor Gabriel Gatica, director of the Center for Research in Mathematical Engineering, CI²MA , Universidad de Concepción considered as a “planetary coincidence” the fact that volume 37, number 4, of October 2017 of prestigious IMA Journal of Numerical Analysis, included five articles that are written by members, mainly graduates, of this UdeC center.

In fact, the most recent issue of this journal, one of the most prominent in the area of ​​Numerical Analysis, includes articles co-authored by two academicians from the Department of Mathematical Engineering, four current researchers and one ex postdoctorate of CI²MA, as well as six graduates of the Doctoral Program in Applied Sciences with a minor in Mathematical Engineering of UdeC. The articles published by the latter are H(div) conforming and DG methods for incompressible Euler s equations (Johnny Guzmán; Chi-Wang Shu; Filánder A. Sequeira); Finite element semidiscretization of a pressure–stress formulation for the time-domain fluid–structure interaction problem (Carlos García; Gabriel N. Gatica; Salim Meddahi); Graphs, spanning trees and divergence-free finite elements in domains of general topology (Ana Alonso Rodríguez; Jessika Camaño; Riccardo Ghiloni; Alberto Valli); y Pure vorticity formulation and Galerkin discretization for the Brinkman equations (Verónica Anaya; David Mora; Ricardo Ruiz-Baier).

“During my research stay at Brown University, Providence, United States, I had the opportunity to attend one of the most famous meetings of the numerical analysis community in that country, where several presentations were made by current and former thesis students of CI²MA. At that moment, I thought of ‘coincidence’, but after appreciating that the same happened in other countries, I noticed that the students of the Doctorate of the UdeC frequented recognized events in Numerical Analysis and it turns out that the same thing happens with the journals of the area. In this way, I realized that, in fact, it is no coincidence that in a single issue of a prestigious journal several articles by former students of this program are published, but that it is only the beginning of many other appearances that I hope will continue to increase. I congratulate each one of the members of the Doctorate in Applied Sciences with a minor in Mathematical Engineering for this and many other achievements” says Filánder Sequeira, who currently works as an academician at Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica.

Jessika Camaño has a similar opinion. She is also graduate from the doctoral program and currently is a researcher at CI²MA and a Professor at the Faculty of Engineering at Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción. “This fact is the result of the solid training we were able to acquire during the PhD, the training of academicians with a high level of research and a high scientific productivity. In addition to the above, we must highlight the work and enthusiasm by each one of us”. In turn, the academician at the Universidad del Bío-Bío and current CI²MA researcher David Mora, agrees in the analysis and states that “this fact once again highlights the quality of the training that was given to us in the Doctorate program, with the knowledge and tools that allow us to develop frontier knowledge in Numerical Analysis of EDPs”.

One of the most recent graduates of the Doctorate Program is Carlos García, who currently has a postdoctoral position at the Bio-Bio University under the guidance of CI²MA researcher, Ricardo Oyarzúa. García says that the coincidence mentioned by Professor Gatica “is the result of years of work, not to mention decades, that allows the continuous activity of the researchers trained in CI²MA, and now contribute from several parts of the world. For me, it is an honor that my name appears along with well-established researchers and I sincerely hope that this remains the case. Most graduates of the doctoral program are researchers that remain very active and productive, both in quantity and quality of research, which make things like this happen, and hence this may well be just the first of many similar coincidences”.

According to Ricardo Ruiz-Baier, current researcher at Oxford University, “the constant growth of collaboration networks involving CI²MA members inevitably coincides with a couple of jobs of people from the center or people who is closely linked to the work being carried out in the UdeC, in specialized Numerical Analysis journals. Moreover, in each international conference that has a session dedicated to Numerical Analysis of EDPs, it is very probable to find some former students, or a close collaborator of Professors Raimund Bürger, Gabriel Gatica, Rodolfo Rodríguez, or Mauricio Sepúlveda, among others. However, it is not common for something to happen in one of the most important journals in the area, since it is a very selective forum, where it is not enough to present some correct and innovative work, but also must be of high interest and wide impact”. In this regard Ruiz-Baier says that in the work developed by the center, there are decisive factors, such as “not only the extent of contacts grows with each generation of graduates, but also that the quality and impact of the contributions of the members of the center have been increasing steadily, especially in recent years. Several of the young researchers at the center are already reaching international recognition, which harmonizes with the constant dedication and vision of the most established researchers. Another important agent in the center's productivity and scientific visibility has been the series of events of global scope that are organized within CI²MA (WONAPDE and numerical cities), as well as the collaborative projects in which the plant has actively participated for several decades” researcher says.

Verónica Anaya, an academician at the Department of Mathematics at the Universidad del Bío-Bío, agrees with her colleagues and former classmates in the Doctorate program and emphasizes that “this is further evidence of the excellent training one obtains in the Doctorate”.