of human activity to energy. Oil is becoming depleted. Greenhouse gases
resulting from the use of fossil fuels appear to be affecting the climate. The U.S.
is too dependent on foreign energy supplies. Developing countries don’t have
sufficient energy sources. We face radical challenges with energy, and this group
discussed how mathematical scientists can help us address them.
Before the workshop, selected participants wrote and shared a set ofwhite papers as seeds for the discussion, and, in the end, each group wrote a
white paper summarizing their discussions and describing the mathematical
sciences challenges in their area. The full text of the group white papers appears
in the Appendix of this report, while both sets of white papers appear on the
workshop website at http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/SustainabilityReport/. This report is a
distillation of this work for the general mathematical sciences audience and the
general public.
The structure used was chosen because this workshop was a follow-up toa 2009 workshop entitled “Toward a Science of Sustainability” that used a similar
structure. That workshop brought together a highly multi-disciplinary team of
researchers to lay out the scientific challenges in sustainability as a whole. The
Mathematical Challenges for Sustainability workshop which followed, and which
is discussed in this report, focused on the mathematical sciences challenges
particular to sustainability. Perhaps the biggest challenges for mathematical
scientists, however, are to learn to ask the right questions, to learn how to work
together with scientists in other disciplines, and to determine how to train their
students to do so, so as to address these complex but crucial problems facing
our world.
A word or two about what this report aims to do and what it does not. First,the report aims to rally the mathematical sciences community to work on the
problems of sustainability. This will require more than simply applying their
methods to small, well-defined problems. It will involve collaborating with
scientists from many disciplines, and it will involve mathematical scientists in
using their skills to make the new challenges precise, to ask the right questions,
and to contribute to making progress to address them. Secondly, the report aims
to demonstrate to a broader audience, including public servants, government
agencies, and members of the public, just what some important sustainability
problems are and why mathematical scientists have a role to play in solving
them. This report does not claim to provide solutions to problems of sustainability