NEWS provided by the

The Human Frontier Science Program is an international funding agency, supported by Australia*, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea*, Switzerland, U.K., U.S.A. and the European Union (*new members in 2005). HFSP promotes international collaboration through a prestigious program of grants which support interdisciplinary research in the life sciences. The program is intended to bring teams of scientists from various fields such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, computer science and engineering together with biologists to open up new approaches to understanding complex biological systems.
Teams applying for research grants must first submit a letter of intent online. The next deadline is March 31st 2005 and potential applicants must pre-register by March 21st 2005 (see the http://www.hfsp.org for further details). In addition to team grants, individuals trained in non-biological sciences may apply for a Cross Discipline Fellowship to undertake postdoctoral research in biology (the next deadline for such Fellowships will be early in September 2005 - please see http://www.hfsp.org).

The EMS-committee for Raising Public Awareness of Mathematics has announced two new article competitions at the URL: http://www.mat.dtu.dk/people/V.L.Hansen/rpa/secondartcomp.html.

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the 2004 Abel Prize jointly to Sir Michael Francis Atiyah, University of Edinburgh, and Isadore M. Singer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Atiyah and Singer will receive the prize "for their discovery and proof of the index theorem, bringing together topology, geometry and analysis, and their outstanding role in building new bridges between mathematics and theoretical physics." The news release is posted at http://www.abelprisen.no/en/.