On Mathematical Problems in Geometric Optics

I would like to introduce myself as the new Editor in Chief of the Notices and share my plans with readers.The Notices is an interesting and engaging magazine that is read by mathematicians all over the world.As members of the AMS, we should all be proud to have the Notices as our magazine of record.Personally, I have enjoyed reading the Notices for over 30 years, and I appreciate the opportunity that the AMS has given me to shape the magazine for the next three years.I hope that under my leadership even more people will look forward to reading it each month as much as I do.Above all, I would like the focus of the Notices to be on expository articles about pure and applied mathematics broadly defined.I would like the authors, topics, and writing styles of these articles to be diverse in every sense except for their desire to explain the mathematics that they love in a clear and engaging way.In addition to articles about mathematics, the Notices will include articles about mathematics education, the history of mathematics, and challenges and opportunities for early career mathematicians.I will continue many of the outstanding features of the current Notices, build on others, and introduce some quarterly columns that are entirely new.In particular, building on the idea of the Graduate Student Section introduced by my predecessor, the Notices will now have an Early Career Section aimed at graduate students, postdocs, and junior mathematicians thinking about what type of career they would like, as well as those who mentor them.This new section is being spearheaded by Associate Editor Angela Gibney, who has tremendous experience mentoring young mathematicians.In the current issue, she gives readers a glimpse of what to expect in this section throughout this year.In addition, the Notices will contain the following new quarterly columns: • "Short Stories" exploring interesting mathematical results that are new or not well known, written by Danny Calegari and Igor Pak.• "GovMath" showcasing mathematical discoveries that have come out of national laboratories and agencies, edited by Emilie Purvine, who is one of my associate editors and a data scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories.• "Math Reviews News" presenting what's new from the perspective of Math Reviews, written by Edward Dunne, the Executive Editor of Mathematical Reviews ® .• "Washington Update" reporting what the AMS Office of Government Relations is doing to connect the Mathematics Community to decision makers in Washington, DC, written by Karen Saxe, associate executive director, AMS Office of Government Relations.• "Math Outside the Bubble" exploring mathematics occurring in the arts, literature, film, and other areas where readers might not expect it, written by Sophia D. Merow, special projects editor and Notices assistant.These columns will occur in different issues throughout the year, starting with GovMath in the current issue.There will also be biannual reports on congressional briefings held by the AMS Office of Government Relations together with the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, the first of which is in the current issue.With all of these different types of articles, sections, and columns, I am hoping there will be enough variety in content and style that every reader can find something that interests them in every issue.