WORKSHOP: UK Mathematics-in-Industry Study Groups, 2008--2012

The Mathematics-in-Industry Study Groups provide a highly cost-effective and proven format for applied mathematicians to interact with real-world problems. Their aim is to stimulate and generate high-quality mathematical research by posing new problems and to give new insights to solve practical problems. This proposal is to underpin the UK element of these activities and to provide funding for five week-long workshops in the UK. These workshops will occur periodically at geographically diverse Universities providing academic staff, postdoctoral researchers and postgraduate students the opportunity to work directly with industrial scientists. The meetings will use a well-established format, being a week long with most of the time devoted to interactive discussion and modelling. The proposal seeks to enhance the format by introducing additional aspects to expand the groups that benefit from these meetings. Central to the workshops are the industrial problems and the workshops will leverage significant funds from both industry and government in order to support this interaction. The Smith Institute, a not-for-profit independent research and technology organisation, will be central in enhancing the breadth of industrial applications, in further expanding the variety of companies that participate and in exploiting of the results from the meetings. The Smith Institute manages the Knowledge Transfer Network for Industrial Mathematics funded through the government's Department of Innovation Universities and Skills (previously the DTI) and is particularly well placed to facilitate the technology transfer aspects of the workshops. Industrial funding of the workshops will be given both by direct contributions given to present problems at the workshops and also through indirect contributions of time and information. The workshops therefore offer an opportunity for funding from many different directions to enhance the role of applied mathematics.The UK applied mathematics community is internationally recognised as being the leader in Study Group activities and is at the forefront of the global expansion in their exploitation. Core members of the Study Groups have helped set up and participate in these activities in countries as diverse as China, India, USA, Canada, Australia and Denmark.The Study Group activities will ensure the UK remains the central international focus for this method of creating cross-disciplinary research interaction to the mutual benefit of academia and industry.