Figure 1.

Photo courtesy of Gizem Karaali.

For many years now, the Notices has celebrated National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15–October 15) with a special issue dedicated to the contributions and achievements of Hispanic scholars of the mathematical sciences. I have been fortunate enough to pen the “A Word from…” for these issues since 2019, despite having rotated off the Notices editorial board a few years ago.

As I look back on the last several Hispanic Heritage issues, I am struck by the changing content of these short introductions. The 2019 “A Word from…” was hopeful and informative, explaining the purpose of the celebratory month. In contrast, I wrote the 2020 note in April during the Covid-19 lockdowns, then later edited it to acknowledge the dramatic protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd. The year 2021 saw us deep into the pandemic, and I addressed the radical changes in our personal and professional lives that emerged. In my introduction to the 2022 issue, written in April of last year, I wrote: “[l]et us hope, perhaps unrealistically, that the virus will finally be tamed and that the wanton bloodshed in Ukraine will come to a peaceful end.” To a large extent, we have emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic, although the world will never be the same. Sadly, the war in Ukraine still rages on with no end in sight.

As I write these words now, stunning new developments in artificial intelligence are changing the world around us. Demagoguery and grandstanding mark the politics of our age, and autocrats and fascists continue to make stunning gains. None of us can foresee the exact state of the world the next Notices Hispanic Heritage issues will inhabit.

Here is one thing that is certain: this special issue has a host of contents that should excite, intrigue, and advise mathematicians from all walks of life. First of all, we have four feature articles which highlight the research of Hispanic authors:

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Rodrigo Treviño introduces us to the wonderful world of aperiodic tilings.

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Nicolás García Trillos and Matt Jacobs discuss adversarial robustness in neural networks.

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Ben Blum-Smith and Soledad Villar explain the role of invariant theory in machine learning.

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Woojin Kim and Facundo Mémoli explain persistence over posets in topological data analysis.

Besides the feature articles, this issue is packed with a variety of compelling pieces.

Our Early Career section contains words of wisdom from several esteemed colleagues. First is Anthony Bonato’s wide-ranging interview with Federico Ardila. Next up, Jamie Haddock and Ruriko Yoshida share the advice they received from Jesús de Loera, their advisor. We also get two excerpts (by Jessica M. Deshler and Angel Ramón Pineda Fortín) from the wonderful edited volume Testimonios: Stories of Latinx and Hispanic Mathematicians. Finally, Mariana Smit Vega Garcia gives many useful tips for masters students in the mathematical sciences.

But wait, there’s more! Marcelo Almora Rios and Pamela Burdman dive into college students’ paths to calculus. Our book review, written by Adolfo Arroyo-Rabasa and José Simental, takes a close look at the landmark volume Mexican Mathematicians in the World: Trends and recent contributions, edited by Fernando Galaz García, Cecilia González-Tokman, and Juan Carlos Pardo Millán.

The Communications section contains some remarkable gems that should not be overlooked. First off, Gerardo R. Chacón, Christopher Hayes, and James Nickerson inform us about challenges for deaf students in mathematics graduate school. We also learn about Graduate Assistantships in Developing Countries (GRAID) in an informative piece written by Jose Maria Balmaceda, C. Herbert Clemens, Ingrid Daubechies, Angel R. Pineda, Galina Rusu, and Michel Waldschmidt. Finally, Robert Stephen Cantrell and Susan Friedlander describe the upcoming Mathematical Congress of the Americas, which is coming to the United States in 2025.

As you can see, the 2023 Hispanic Heritage Month issue of the Notices is packed with important and exciting material. Read and enjoy!