Western (U.S.) Workshop on Mathematical Problems from Industry; Summer 2009, Claremont, CA

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

De PillisDMS-0909213 The principal investigator and her colleagues organize aworkshop for industrial math problems. The format follows oneintroduced by Oxford University applied mathematicians in 1968,which has been replicated frequently in the UK, Canada, Europe,and in various other countries (there are 8-10 such workshopseach year). The format consists of an initial presentation of anumber of problems by industrial scientists/engineers. Theaudience is then organized into small groups to work separatelyon each problem for 3-4 days. An oral reporting sessionconcludes the week, followed by a written report on each problemsome weeks later. The participants in the workshop consist offrom 30-40 graduate students and about 30 faculty, and with anexpectation of at least 6 problems from industry this means thateach problem is worked on by 10 applied mathematicians. Theworkshop is preceded by a student modeling camp which follows asimilar format except each problem is presented by a facultymember. Some of these problems may have been partially addressedby the faculty presenter, others not, and the aim of the camp isto bring the student participants into the culture of intensivegroup work, and to give them confidence in starting the week whenALL the participants start on NEW, practically-important problemsknowing that their experience and hard work will prove fruitful. Apart from a substantial record of success in providinganswers to the problems (this is catalogued at a web-site wheree-prints for 250 individual reports from recent workshops areavailable in many, quite diverse, application areas), there aremultiple goals for the event: establishment of closer connectionsbetween industrial and academic scientists; education of studentsand faculty about the requirements of industry in the use ofmathematics; training of students in group participation projects(the norm in industry), and the experience of working alongsidefaculty and joining in the ups and downs of intensive work whereprogress is measured by an industrialist in need of a result. Problems committed to the workshop include one from asemiconductor company for modeling current flow in a new designnanoscale transistor, and two from bio-tech companies, onerelating to a medical device that has unwanted internalvibrations and the other needing statistical modeling formicro-array analysis.