The meeting held in Danbury on 8th and 9th of January 2003, was the first meeting held under the NetCA grant. Its was held in order to discuss the future of Computer Algebra in the UK.

The meeting initiated with participants giving short presentations about their current activities and carried on with other topics such as Computer Algebra in UK, future conferences and research visits. Staff from participating universities and the industrial partner were present at the meeting. Malcolm McCallum and Francis Wright were present on behalf of Queen Mary University.

John Shakell, Simon Thompson and Elizabeth Mansfield were present from the University of Kent. Steve Linton and Ursula Martin attended on behalf of University of St. Andrews and Queen Mary respectively. Marc Conrad Joined from the University of Luton and Mike Dewar came on behalf of Numerical Algorithm Group (NAG).

In this session the meeting looked at UK institutions where there was some computer algebra presence, but which where not represented at the meeting. The most notable of these was the Bath group. Here there is a current project to look at problems arising with branch cuts led by James Davenport and Russel Bradford with research assistant James Beaumont.

Dan Richardson works on zero equivalence and related problems. Nicholai Vorobjov has interests in computational geometry. People on the system side include John ffitch and Russell Bradford. Geoff Smith works in group theory.

Other places where there is, or has been some activity in computer algebra include Bangor(Ronnie Brown), Birmingham(Stan Houghton), Cambridge(Arthur Norman), Derby(Peter Larkin), Edinburgh(Cal Curtis), Reading(Andrew Adams), Southampton(Ray D'Inverno), Southampton Institute(Brian Dupee).

There remained a feeling in the group that there is a need to involve more people in the UK in Computer Algebra, or the very least to increase awareness. it was thought that there might usefully be more undergraduate courses in computer algebra, and there was a brief discussion of what such a course might ideally contain. The following topics were all suggested as possible ingredients:

• polynomial arithmetic leading to Groebner bases
• Gcds and polynomial factorisation and cryptography
• Symbolic integration
• Computational group theory

It was apparent that this subject has plenty to offer to undergraduates.However, the problem often is to find a class of viable size with the necessary background in both Mathematics and Computer Science.

It was pointed out that there is a large group of users of algebra systems and it was suggested that suitable seminars might inspire some of these users to become interested in computer algebra itself. It was agreed to try to do this, and Marc Conrad said that he would soon have an opportunity as he was scheduled to give a seminar at York.

Dr. Linton agreed to run a conference on computational group theory at the University of St. Andrews in early September.
Another Idea was to run a workshop to adjoin the joint BMC/BAMC meeting Easter 2004.

The meeting members agreed to again draw these to the attention of people at their own institutions who might be interested.