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The 140^thEuropean Study Group with Industry (ESGI140)was held from 4^thto 8^thJune 2018 at  the Barreiro School of Technology of the Polytechnic Institute of Setúball (IPS), organized by IPS and coordinated by PT-MATHS-IN.

For the 12th year in a row a Study Group was held in Portugal and this year two companies have benefited from the insights of more than 30 experts in different fields of Mathematics.

One of the companies, Infraquinta, is a water utility that manages the water and wastewater services of a well-known tourist place in Algarve. Given its location, socio economic context and seasonality of demand, the company faces very specific challenges and two of them were tackled during the Sudy Group.

The first one was related to the water tariff structure based on consumption profile in a context of climate changes. The company wants to reinforce mechanisms for predictive planning, based on data analysis, in order to face the forecasted decrease in precipitation, especially in warm season.

The second one was about evaluating the water meters performance, using historical data, in order to find out the meter performance breakpoint and when should water meters be replaced.

The other participating company was Lap2Go, a portuguese timekeeping  company for sport events. They use chips to sort out the results of the participants in the events and sometimes, for the road running events with at least a few thousand participants, they use starting waves as a segmentation strategy. A bad strategy may have a very negative impact in the race, such as promoting traffic jams that slow down the running rythm of each participant and, worst of all, making people fall down. The challenge they posed was on how to come up with an appropriate number of waves and a release time between waves in order avoid the participants accumulation during a race.

The companies’ representatives have collaborated with the academics throughout the week, clarifying the challenges and helping to critically analyse the preliminary results. By the end of the week, both academic and industrial participants were quite happy with the achieved results and some further collaborations have been envisioned.

by Raquel Barreira

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Dr Raquel Barreira

 

is the Vice-Dean at EST/BArreiro IPS.

It has been another very successful year for MI-NET; highlights include the publication of the ‘Handbook for running a sustainable European Study Group with Industry’, and in widening participation, for example Macedonia, Israel, and Slovenia hosting their first Industrial Workshop, Modelling Week, and Study Group with Industry, respectively. We were also delighted to welcome Montenegro to MI-NET in January 2018.

It was rewarding to receive a very positive mid-term progress report, with particularly favorable feedback on collaboration, multidisciplinary research, early-career investigator participation, and on both the numbers of activities and countries involved in the Action.

“MI-NET shows an excellent progress, in line with the outcomes expected after 24 months of implementation. The analysis of the current Action status shows a significant degree of achievement of objectives and outcomes stated in MOU.” [Progress review summary]

Thank you very much for all the contributions to the report, and in particular to Filipa Vance for pulling it all together, and in the words of our Science Officer “managing such a demanding Action”!

The only area of improvement was on dissemination, which forms a substantial part of our activity this year. Katerina Kaouri and Poul Hjorth organised a Science to Business session at the high-profile European Science Open Forum, ESOF 2018, Working Group 2 is currently finalising a Modelling Week Guide, and Working Groups 3 and 4 are compiling a “Mechanisms for enabling industrial maths” handbook, comprising examples of different mechanisms for collaboration and illustrative case studies from MI-NET funded work. Your input to this handbook is very much encouraged, please contact Dr Katerina Kaouri or Hilary Ockendon for more details on how to contribute.

MI-NET’s varied programme of events is on our webpage, and there are still a few STSMs – which need to take place before April 2019 – to be awarded, please encourage your colleagues to apply.

It was great to see so many members of MI-NET at the Management Committee meeting in Limerick in March, and many thanks to MACSI for hosting us. I particularly enjoyed  hearing about the wide range of industrial maths activity going on in each country, the slides of which can be downloaded here. Next Spring, the final Management Committee meeting and a celebration of MI-NET will be hosted by the Institute for Mathematical Innovation.
at the University of Bath alongside the British Applied Mathematics Colloquium (BAMC) 24-26 April 2019. This is a particularly fitting event as it typically attracts many PhD students, post-docs, and early-career researchers. The BAMC planning committee warmly invite MI-NET themed mini-symposia submissions, and contributions to the poster session. Calls will open later in the Autumn, with more details to be circulated as they become available.

As I have recently resigned from the University of Bath, I am pleased to let you know that our Vice-Chair, Prof Dietmar Hoemberg, and I have swapped roles for the final months of the MI-NET grant. Many thanks for all the hard work you are doing in championing industrial maths in your countries, and looking forward to seeing you in Bath in April!

Joanna Jordan
September 2018

This September, for the third year in a row, the COST Conference on Mathematics for Industry in Switzerland will be hosted by the Institute of Applied Mathematics and Physics, the Institute of Data Analysis and Process Design and the School of Management and Law at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences ZHAW in Winterthur, Switzerland. The focus of the event this year will be on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) in industry and finance.

The COST Action MI-NET supports the initiative by sponsoring the conference as in previous years. In 2016 and 2017, the conferences have brought together academics, young researchers, students, and engineers from industry. Therefore, they had a chance to get an overview, to discuss applications, implementations, and existing challenges of the latest technologies.

The conference has grown from 60 participants in 2016 to over 190 participants in 2017. This second year has seen participants from all-over Switzerland, including the French and Italian speaking parts. 50% of our speakers came from within Switzerland, with the remaining 50% from mostly European countries.

In recent years artificial intelligence has gained widespread importance and can be seen in many different fields, ranging from self-driving cars to customer recommendation systems. Therefore, such conferences can cause a notable impact on different fields of industries because researchers and engineers attending events can find solutions to their challenges, and start collaborations more efficiently.

Researchers from different fields have found together and connected with the industry. Several new COST initiatives have been supported by those researchers in fields such as statistics and energy.

Consequently, MI-NET has had great impact on the distribution of “Mathematics for Industry” across Switzerland and future research as well as co-operations in that area.

Author: Pocevicius Matas

 

ESGI 139 jointly organized by the Technological Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITMATI) and Spanish Network for Mathematics & Industry (math-in), will be held on 9-13 July in Santiago de Compostela (Spain).

Across a five day workshop, this ESGI will provide a forum for industrial scientists to work alongside academic mathematicians on problems of direct industrial relevance. The 139th ESGI, brings experts from Applied Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research together to promote the Mathematical Technology transfer to Industry actively seeking research and development projects where mathematics is of particular relevance.

Problems will include:

• Solidification and mechanical coupling in microfracture propagation- REPSOL
• Improving the efficiency of a retort furnace- ECOMT

• Order reduction in dynamic systems using machine learning – REPSOL

• Predictive maintenance in a pellet production factory – biomasa forestal

• Equivalent thermo-mechanical modelling of the ceramic cup of a Blast Furnace – ArcelorMittal

All the information concerning the event will be continuously updated on the organiser’s website.

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Attendance is free, but prior registration is required.

The registration deadline is July 5^th, 2018.

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COST Action TD1409, Mathematics for Industry Network (MI-NET) co-organizes and co-funds this event.

This week, scientists from Kaunas University of Technology Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (KTU MGMF) hold the European Study Group with Industry (ESGI) or Workshop on Mathematical Solutions in Business and Industry in Palanga, Lithuania.

This year the scientists are solving problems presented by these companies: Finpass, SEB, DPD, Aon and SBA Concern.

28 scientists were separated into 5 groups. Each group is solving one problem. Scientists came from different universities and organizations: Howard Science Limited (UK), Oxford University (UK), Belarusian State University (Belarus), Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (Iran), University of Oldenburg, Vilnius University (Lithuania), Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Lithuania), Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania).

For more information please visit the organiser’s website.

 

 

Mathematical modelling is playing an increasingly important role in the field of medicine through the use of models and simulations.  These represent a useful tool to complement theoretical and experimental work and have the potential to inform personalized approaches for treatment.

Controlled drug delivery systems have become common in the clinic.  These systems combine a platform or carrier with a drug in such a way that the drug is efficiently released to a target tissue or organ, while maintaining the drug concentration within a therapeutic window. Whilst many such systems have achieved successful results clinically, there remains a number of scientific and technological challenges and an opportunity for further fine-tuning and optimization. Addressing these challenges requires a multi-disciplinary approach.

Dr Sean McGinty, at the University of Glasgow, is hosting a 3 day workshop to bring together theoretical and experimental researchers, industrialists and clinicians working broadly in the area of drug delivery, so that the problems that persist may be identified from an ‘end-user’ point of view, new challenges laid down and successfully tackled.

The scope of the workshop includes (but is not limited to):
♣ Design, testing and optimisation of  drug delivery systems and drug delivery strategies
♣ Identification of drug release mechanisms
♣ Controlled release formulations
♣ Biomaterials, smart polymers and hydrogels
♣ Clinical and industrial challenges
♣ Personalisation and patient-specific modelling
♣ Nanoparticles, microspheres, liposomes and quantum dots
♣ Antibody therapeutics
♣ Pharmacokinetics/Pharmacodynamics (PK/PD)

Mathematical, computational and experimental approaches are all within scope.
This event will build on the highly successful first edition of MEDDS (Coimbra, 2016), as well as recent symposia at ECMI2014 (Mathematical Modelling of Drug Delivery) and ECMI2016 (Applied Mathematics in Stent Development), with an added emphasis on industrial and clinical participation.  To this end, the workshop will feature an evening problem solving session where interested delegates can tackle a problem brought by industry.
Keynote speakers:
David Saylor (FDA, USA), Paolo Netti (University of Naples Federico II, Italy), Keith Oldroyd (Golden Jubilee National Hospital, UK)

Who Should Attend?

• Academics working on drug delivery from any discipline: e.g. mathematicians, chemists, biologists, engineers, …
• Clinicians
• Industrialists

Key Dates

• 15 April 2018: Abstract Submission Deadline

• 1 May 2018: Notification of Acceptance

• 17 August 2018: Registration closes

 

For full details please visit the workshop website

Originally published by COST http://www.cost.eu/media/cost_stories/maths_helping_industry

COST is helping to strengthen the ties between mathematics and industry across Europe. The Mathematics for Industry Network – MI-NET – has been putting mathematicians and industrialists together since 2015, improving best practice thanks to touch points between the two groups throughout COST’s member states.

Academics working in mathematics, from undergraduates to professors, are applying their knowledge to help solve real-world issues affecting industry. Problem-solving workshops provide solutions, while training and secondments are ensuring that younger researchers are reaping the benefits of these ever-improving ties.

MI-NET supports European Study Groups, week-long workshops where practical answers are found for industrial problems using mathematics via brainstorming sessions. Between 60 and 80 mathematicians will look at a problem that, on first sight, has nothing to do with maths. Questions tackled have included, “How do you optimise shoe box size?”and “How can you make a better cup of coffee?” , with answers and strategies devised using the academics’ expertise in mathematics. The Action’s funding is expanding the maths-industry exchange across the continent, as the Chair of MI-NET, Dr Joanna Jordan of the University of Bath’s Institute for Mathematical Innovation, explains.

“ I was thrilled that MI-NET could enable the first Study Groups ever to be held in Italy and Cyprus ,” she says.  “The first Israeli Modelling Week for postgraduate students took place in July of 2017, and Slovenia hosts its first Study Group in the following September. It will look at an exciting and varied array of real-world problems, from fraud detection in subsidised school meals, to predicting the quantity of meat sold by food manufacturers.”

“This widening participation and the increase in the number of countries across Europe actively involved in industrial mathematics has been the biggest benefit of MI-NET,” Dr Jordan adds.  “I’m delighted that 31 countries are members of MI-NET, which includes 15 of COST’s Inclusiveness Target Countries (ITCs).”

MI-NET is enabling maths to address problems of real social and economic value, and is supporting the development of the next generation of industrial mathematicians. Dr Jordan took part in Study Groups during her PhD and declares: “I found them hugely inspirational. I’m delighted that through MI-NET we can offer this opportunity to more students across Europe.”

MI-NET has worked with a variety of high-calibre industrial partners, including IBM Research and toy manufacturer Engino. Dr Jordan says that they have been “pleasantly surprised” that their issues can be solved by joining forces with mathematicians, but MI-NET is eyeing new challenges with areas such as agriculture and parts of social science yet to use maths as a problem solver.

“We want industrialists to think of mathematicians as their first port of call when tackling new challenges,” she adds. “It’s also important that the Short Term Scientific Missions enable early career investigators to research at an institution or company during a vital phase of their careers.”

MI-NET holds calls for new activities every quarter. It aims to have hosted one event in each of its 31 member countries by the time MI-NET funding ends in 2019. Also in the pipeline is a Study Group handbook, a step-by-step guide to running workshops that will see MI-NET leaving a legacy.

COST Action website: http://www.cost.eu/COST_Actions/tdp/TD1409

Project website: https://mi-network.org/