Dear Friends and Colleagues:

Greetings from LMSI Mumbai.

Eight months ago, we opened the doors of the Lodha Mathematical Sciences Institute (LMSI) with a simple question: could we create a place dedicated to world-class mathematical research in India? Not someday - but now.

The answer, it turns out, is yes. And we have made a beginning.

The beginning

In August, we launched LMSI with an inaugural symposium that brought together over 100 mathematicians from leading institutions around the world. There were twelve technical lectures spanning number theory, geometry, probability, theoretical physics, and computational mathematics. It was our announcement to the mathematical community: LMSI is open for collaborative research.

Immediately following, we began our first Thematic Programme on Arithmetic Statistics (TP–25), running from August through December 2025. Sixty-two researchers from over 40 institutions across 15 countries came to Mumbai—from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Cambridge, University of Toronto, alongside colleagues from TIFR, IISERs, CMI, and IITs.

TP–25 centred around the groundbreaking work of Manjul Bhargava on the enumeration of quartic and quintic rings which has led to a lot of activity in the field of Arithmetic Statistics. The goal of the programme was to bring together researchers from around the world to review the progress made so far and to outline future research directions and open problems.

The programme, spread over five months and attracting a wide spectrum of interested researchers, held two major events:

(1) a workshop titled Problems and Techniques in Arithmetic Statistics during the week of 25–29 August.

(2) a conference discussing Recent Developments in Arithmetic Statistics during 15–29 December.

What happened exceeded our expectations. Twenty new research collaborations started at LMSI—partnerships that wouldn't possibly have formed otherwise. Researchers made significant progress, some of them resulting in breakthroughs on problems where they'd been stuck for years, as exemplified by Frank Thorne from the University of South Carolina: “I figured out how to prove a key lemma which has been stumping me for years. This is something I worked out while sitting at my desk at LMSI.”

Eight papers were submitted during the programme. Four papers were accepted for publication. Discussions that started in seminar rooms continued through tea and into evening. Asif Zaman from the University of Toronto described it as “the opportunity to focus so intensely on my own projects while interacting with others on many new projects.”

In December, we hosted the first LMSI Ramanujan Lecture Series featuring Alex Lubotzky from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. On National Mathematics Day, Professor Lubotzky delivered a public lecture, followed by a three-day workshop during 22–25 December on High-Dimensional Expanders that drew 50+ participants. What was exciting about this workshop was the involvement of junior and mid-career researchers who took turns speaking about the background required to understand Professor Lubotzky’s lectures. This involvement ensured that the impact of the workshop and the lectures of the visiting scholar would be felt long after the workshop had ended.

Going forward

In January, we launched our second Thematic Programme on Rational Points, Algebraic Cycles, and the Local-Global Principle (TP1–26).

In this ongoing programme, conjectures concerning the existence of rational points and zero-cycles, and their interactions with analytic number theory and motivic cohomology, are some of the exciting things that come into focus. As an interdisciplinary exploration, it has already gathered people working in such different topics as arithmetic geometry, algebraic cycles, Bruhat–Tits theory and algebraic groups.

The programme will run through May 2026 with three interrelated workshops.

In another direction, we also collaborated with TIFR on a five-day workshop on quantum gravity and quantum field theory, organized by Shiraz Minwalla. Fifty-five participants engaged in intensive discussions spanning black hole microstate counting, the S-matrix, string theory, and the emergence of spacetime. This programme showcases LMSI's breadth beyond pure mathematics, aligning with our vision to encompass the full scope of mathematical sciences. The event was so successful that the organizers are already planning a follow-up conference in 2027!

Gaining momentum

Going further, plans for our third Thematic Programme on Surface Group Representations and Analytic Group Theory (TP2–26) starting June 2026 are steadily on.

And we have already received unsolicited high-quality proposals from leading mathematicians for thematic programmes extending through 2027.

Building for the Long Term

Homi Bhabha said scientific institutions must be “grown with great care like a tree.” The Lodha Foundation understands this—they're thinking in 25 and 50-year timeframes. Resonating with Homi Bhabha’s metaphor of a tree, we are planting seeds in Mumbai, throughout India and even worldwide that in course of time will reveal the LMSI sapling maturing into an active and living ecosystem of research excellence.

The early signs are definitely promising. LMSI has opened its door to the wider and larger mathematical community and is drawing researchers from institutions in India and around the world. LMSI is strengthening connections across the entire mathematical ecosystem.

We're building something that will outlast all of us. Eight months in, we've already begun our journey on that path.

I hope you will join us on this adventure of a lifetime!

Photo Credit: Helen Tansey