Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Summer Research in Mathematics program was postponed to 2021 and held remotely.

MSRI's Summer Research in Mathematics program provides space, funding, and the opportunity for in-person collaboration to small groups of mathematicians, especially women and gender-expansive individuals, whose ongoing research may have been disproportionately affected by various obstacles including family obligations, professional isolation, or access to funding. Through this effort, MSRI aims to mitigate the obstacles faced by these small groups, improve the odds of research project completion, and deepen their research experience.

The ultimate goal of this program is to enhance the mathematical sciences as a whole by positively affecting the research and careers of all of its participants and assisting their efforts to maintain involvement in the research community.

The past decade has seen tremendous progress in understanding the behavior of large random matrices and interacting particle systems. Complementary methods have emerged to prove universality of these behaviors, as well as to probe their precise nature using integrable, or exactly solvable models. This program seeks to reinforce and expand the fruitful interaction at the interface of these areas, as well as to showcase some of the important developments and applications of the past decade.

The Complementary Program has a limited number of memberships that are open to mathematicians whose interests are not closely related to the core programs; special consideration is given to mathematicians who are partners of an invited member of a core program.