Aimed at Master's, Doctoral and Post-Doctoral students from around the world, the ISEM is a mathematics seminar that is organized online. PVU-M teacher-researcher Ralph Chill explains. The class is in English and it is given on a planetary scale. The acronym ISEM is an online seminar, International Internet Seminar on Gradient Systems. Each year a virtual Internet class is given to students, some Master's and most doctoral and post-doctoral students, online. Senior students who can be the local seminar coordinators and prolong the class at their own university also participate. The 13th edition counts 230 participants from 30 countries of which 17 are part of the European Union. Ralph Chill has participated in this virtual seminar since its inception. An LMAM researcher, he is interested in analyzing evolution equations where time is the variable. This area studies the evolution of surfaces like soap bubbles in order to describe them mathematically. "These evolution equations can also be found in physical, biological or chemical models" the mathematician specifies. The seminar was planned from the Lorraine region for the first time this year. Ralph Chill is organizing the seminar with Eva Fasangova, a professor at the University of Prague in the Czech Republic and University of Ulm in Germany : "It's the first of its kind in France, every area considered". It's a mechanism that certainly risks being emulated. "A class as highly specialized as this one given to this many participants is hard to imagine any other way." The seminar takes place in three stages. The first stage is the publication of the class chapters and it began in October. These were read and discussed on the ISEM website, an upgraded blog. Then, groups of 2 to 5 people were formed. Guided by researchers, they work on specific projects by exchanging e-mails. Then, all the participants met during a week in June for summer school : "projects were presented and mini-classes were offered. This phase is the most important one : finally we can meet, talk and speak in depth about subjects. There, collaborations were created and oftentimes the works end up in publications." This "physical" meeting will take place this year in the Czech Republic "in the middle of the forest to work well." After several months spent in the virtual world, a return to nature was needed.

LMAM : Laboratory of Mathematics and Applications of Metz UMR CNRS The LMAM is associated to the CNRS since January 2003. It groups together 38 research professors, 4 secretaries, 1 research engineer, 21 doctoral candidates and, constantly, visitors from laboratories in foreign countries.

• ISEM