IPAM’s 10th anniversary is an occasion to reflect on its vision, inception and success. Its scientific impact has gone beyond that of the mathematical sciences to reach into many different disciplines. Its influence and contributions at UCLA have reached beyond the Math Dept and Physical Sciences to many other parts of campus. As an NSF national institute, it has served as an important infrastructure for the US mathematical sciences community, especially in acting as a platform to interact with other academic disciplines. Finally, the success of US mathematical institutes, IPAM included, has at least partially inspired many similar endeavors in other nations. I’ll give a personal perspective on these aspects of IPAM, from the perspective of a co-Principal Investigator of the IPAM proposal to NSF (and as UCLA Math Department Chair at the time), later as a Dean of Physical Sciences at UCLA, subsequently as an Assistant Director at NSF for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences and now as president of a university in Asia nurturing a new Institute for Advanced Studies.
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