EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Mathematical Modelling, Analysis and Computation (MAC-MIGS)

Lead Research Organisation: University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Sch of Mathematics

Abstract

The Centre for Doctoral Training MAC-MIGS will provide advanced training in the formulation, analysis, and implementation of state-of-the-art mathematical and computational models. The vision for the training offered is that effective modern modelling must integrate data with laws framed in explicit, rigorous mathematical terms. The CDT will offer 76 PhD students an intensive 4-year training and research programme that equips them with the skills needed to tackle the challenges of data-intensive modelling. The new generation of successful modelling experts will be able to develop and analyse mathematical models, translate them into efficient computer codes that make best use of available data, interpret the results, and communicate throughout the process with users in industry, commerce and government.

Mathematical and computational models are at the heart of 21st-century technology: they underpin science, medicine and, increasingly, social sciences, and impact many sectors of the economy including high-value manufacturing, healthcare, energy, physical infrastructure and national planning. When combined with the enormous computing power and volume of data now available, these models provide unmatched predictive tools which capture systematically the experimental and observational evidence available. Because they are based on sound deductive principles, they are also the only effective tool in many problems where data is either sparse or, as is often the case, acquired in conditions that differ from the relevant real-world scenarios. Developing and exploiting these models requires a broad range of skills - from abstract mathematics to computing and data science - combined with expertise in application areas. MAC-MIGS will equip its students with these skills through a broad programme that cuts across disciplinary boundaries to include mathematical analysis - pure, applied, numerical and stochastic - data-science and statistics techniques and the domain-specific advanced knowledge necessary for cutting-edge applications.

MAC-MIGS students will join the broader Maxwell Institute Graduate School in its brand-new base located in central Edinburgh. They will benefit from (i) dedicated academic training in subjects that include mathematical analysis, computational mathematics, multi-scale modelling, model reduction, Bayesian inference, uncertainty quantification, inverse problems and data assimilation, and machine learning; (ii) extensive experience of collaborative and interdisciplinary work through projects, modelling camps, industrial sandpits and internships; (iii) outstanding early-career training, with a strong focus on entrepreneurship; and (iv) a dynamic and forward-looking community of mathematicians and scientists, sharing strong values of collaboration, respect, and social and scientific responsibility. The students will integrate a vibrant research environment, closely interacting with some 80 MAC-MIGS academics comprised of mathematicians from the universities of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt as well as computer scientists, engineers, physicists and chemists providing their own disciplinary expertise.

Students will benefit from MAC-MIGS's diverse network of more than 30 industrial and agency partners spanning a broad spectrum of application areas: energy, engineering design, finance, computer technology, healthcare and the environment. These partners will provide internships, development programmes and research projects, and help maximise the impact of our students' work. Our network of academic partners representing ten leading institutions in the US and Europe, will further provide opportunities for collaborations and research visits.

Planned Impact

MAC-MIGS develops computational modelling and its application to a range of economic sectors, including high-value manufacturing, energy, finance and healthcare. These fields contribute over £500 billion to the UK economy. The CDT involves collaborations with more than a dozen companies and organisations, including large corporations (AkzoNobel, IBM, Dassault, P&G, Aberdeen Standard Investments, Intel), mid-size firms, particularly in the engineering and power sectors (NM Group, which provides monitoring services to power grid operators in 30 countries, Artemis Intelligent Power, the world leader in digital displacement hydraulics, Leonardo, a provider of defense, security and aerospace services, and Oliver Wymans, a management consultancy firm) and startups such as Brainnwave, which develops data-modelling solutions, and Opengosim which designs state-of-the-art and massively parallel software for subsurface reservoir simulation. Government and other agencies involved will include the British Geological Survey, Forestry Commission, James Hutton Institute, and Scottish National Heritage. Engagement will be via internships, short projects and PhD projects. BIS has stated that "Organisations using computer generated modelling and simulations and Big Data analytics create better products, get greater insights, and gain competitive advantage over traditional development processes". Our partners share this vision and are keen to develop deeper collaborations with us over the duration of the CDT.

Our CDT will achieve the following:

- Produce 76 highly skilled mathematical scientists and professionals, ready to take up positions in academia or in companies such as our partners. The students will have exposure to projects, modelling camps and high-level international collaborations.

- Deliver economic and societal benefits through student research projects developed in close collaboration with our partners in industry, business and government and other agencies.

- Create pathways for impact on computer science, chemistry, physics and engineering by involving interdisciplinary partners from Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh Universities in the supervision and training of our students.

- Organise a large number of lectures and seminars which will be open to staff and students of the two universities. Such lectures will inform the wide university communities about the state-of-the-art in computational and mathematical modelling.

- Work with other CDTs both in Edinburgh and beyond to organise a series of workshops for undergraduates, intended to foster an increased uptake of PhD studentship places in technical areas by female students and those from ethnic minorities, with potential impact on the broader UK CDT landscape.

- Organise industrial sandpits and modelling camps which offer the possibility for our partners to present a challenge arising in their work, and to explore innovative ways to tackle that challenge, fully involving the CDT students. This will kick-start a change in the corporate mindset by exposing the relevant staff to new approaches.

- Develop a new course, "Entrepreneurship for Doctoral Students in the Mathematical Sciences" in conjunction with Converge Challenge (Scotland's largest entrepreneurial training programme) and UoE's School of Business. This and other support measures will develop an innovation culture and facilitate the translation of our students' ideas into commercial activities.

Organisations

Publications

10 25 50

Studentship Projects

Project Reference Relationship Related To Start End Student Name
EP/S023291/1 01/10/2019 31/03/2028
2284952 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 30/11/2023 Martin Brolly
2277589 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 31/08/2024 Samuel Bonsor
2278918 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 31/05/2024 Mason Pearce
2278925 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 31/03/2023 Michael Redenti
2279089 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 31/08/2023 Toyo Vignal
2278936 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 30/11/2023 Jonathan Spence
2278010 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 31/05/2024 Niamh Graham
2278824 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 29/02/2024 Rene Lohmann
2277653 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 31/03/2022 Joseph Colvin
2277939 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 30/11/2023 Xue Gong
2278947 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 31/12/2023 Iain Souttar
2284962 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 31/12/2023 Viktoria Freingruber
2277802 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2019 31/08/2023 Aigerim Davletzhanova
2436417 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/08/2024 Andres Miniguano Trujillo
2436448 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/08/2024 Conor Osborne
2436120 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/08/2024 Donald Hobson
2436378 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/05/2022 Ben MacVicar
2435641 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/08/2024 Andrew Cleary
2436431 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/08/2024 Fraser O'Brien
2436511 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/08/2024 Peter Whalley
2435550 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/08/2024 Rebecca Akeresola
2436507 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/12/2024 Maia Trower
2436169 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/08/2024 Johanna Jarvsoo
2435649 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/08/2024 Michael Cox
2435611 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/08/2024 Karolina Benkova
2436161 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/08/2024 Elizabeth Howell
2436342 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2020 31/08/2024 Aikaterini Karoni
2568884 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Mary Eby
2593526 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Christopher Oldnall
2568886 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Lucas Beerens
2568880 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Razvan Lascu
2590986 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Rasheed Ibraheem
2593987 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Lukasz Sliwinski
2593534 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Alexander Richardson
2565944 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Elliot Addy
2593952 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 William Sumners
2566035 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Meritxell Brunet Guasch
2593961 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Sofie Verhees
2593991 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Jiaao Wang
2591000 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Alix Leroy
2590949 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Theo Lavier
2568885 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Bernhard Heinzelreiter
2590989 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Jacob Armstrong-Goodall
2590990 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Liam Llamazares Elias
2568842 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2021 31/08/2025 Anastasia Istratuca
2737525 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/04/2022 31/08/2025 Mahya Meyari
2784893 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 ines Demano
2784978 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Yiming Xi
2784887 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Nicolas Cassia Terrazo
2784892 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Chung Chu
2784882 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Jialun Cao
2784904 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Ria Dunn
2784954 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Ian Powell
2784913 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Brian Hennessy
2784957 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Zakee Sattar
2784967 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Mohammad Tabish
2784962 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Ognyan Simeonov
2784974 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Rowan Turner
2784914 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Kaitlyn Louth
2784922 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Joel-Pascal N'konzi
2784920 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Samuel Naylor
2784915 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2022 31/08/2026 Abhijeet Minz
2784905 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/10/2022 30/09/2026 Sara Helal
2884145 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2023 31/08/2027 Andrea Meda
2884296 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2023 31/08/2027 Motahare Torki
2884093 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2023 31/08/2027 Jessica Codling
2884397 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2023 31/08/2027 Eylul Zorba
2884144 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2023 31/08/2027 Eirini Ioannou
2884340 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2023 31/08/2027 Kaicheng Zhang
2884248 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2023 31/08/2027 Jake Skelton
2884252 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2023 31/08/2027 Keren Tapper
2884165 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2023 31/08/2027 Eleni Michaelidou
2884166 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2023 31/08/2027 Oluwatoyosi Sadare
2884320 Studentship EP/S023291/1 01/09/2023 31/08/2027 Ross Walker