Cascade RAIN Meeting 2026

Welcome to the tenth annual Cascade Regional Applied Interdisciplinary and Numerical (RAIN) Mathematics Meeting at the campus of Washington State University Vancouver on Saturday, October 17, 2026. The RAIN Meeting is a gathering of researchers for rapid and informal communication of ongoing research activities in computational and applied mathematics in the northwest region. 

Key Info

• The meeting will be held on Saturday, October 17, 2026. A welcome coffee will start at 9:00 am.

• Talks begin at 9:30 am.  

• Participants are asked to register in advance. Please register by October 10, 2026. There is no registration fees.

• The meeting room (and building) will be announced soon.

•  Directions to WSU Vancouver (parking is free on Saturdays)

• Funding from the SIAM PNW Section is gratefully acknowledged!

Format

The RAIN Meeting begins with a call for speakers. Those planning to give a talk will write their name on a strip of paper that will be placed in a hat for a random draw that determines the talk order. The talk length is determined by the total available time divided by the number of speakers, with talk durations typically ranging between 10–15 minutes.

This format is similar to the Finite Element Circus, the Finite Element Rodeo, and the European Finite Element Fair. However, reflecting the varied interests of our northwest participants, the RAIN Meeting is not limited to finite element talks.

History

The Cascade RAIN meetings were initially conceived as an event to informally get together the mathematical sciences faculty from Oregon State University and Portland State University. The first workshop was held in Corvallis in 2014 and was called Cascade. In order to disambiguate from other similarly named seminars, this conference series was re-named: Cascade Regional Applied Interdisciplinary and Numerical Mathematics Meeting, or simply the RAIN Meeting. The most recent meeting was held in 2025 at Oregon State University.