Creation of a French-Mexican international joint unit in mathematics

The French and Mexican mathematical communities have a long tradition of cooperation, with the 2009 creation of Laisla being one of its major concrete expressions. This international associated laboratory (LIA) was associated in France with The Marseille Institute of Mathematics, and in Mexico with the Cuernavaca Unit of the Institute of Mathematics at UNAM. The research projects developed in this framework have involved mathematicians from 17 French institutions, along with and all of the primary research centers of Mexico. 

This fruitful cooperation is being strengthened today with the transformation of this LIA into an international joint unit. While LIAs are laboratories without walls, the CNRS's UMIs are true joint organizations in which teams from France and foreign partners work beneath the same roof in a perfectly integrated manner. This new UMI, named LaSoL, is located in Cuernavaca, Mexico, with research activities focusing on eight major areas: algebra, analysis and partial differential equations, discreet and combinatorial mathematics, geometry, probability, dynamical systems, singularity, and topology. 

LaSoL is the CNRS's 36th UMI, and its second in Mexico after LAFMIA, which was created in 2008 in the fields of automatic control and computational science. The CNRS is also cooperating with Mexico through a joint unit with a French research institute abroad (UMIFRE), the Center for Mexican and Central American Studies (CEMCA).