EDT: Team Training Mathematical Scientists Through Industrial Collaborations

该项目的目标是转变数学科学方面的博士培训，使其包括为学生提供可销售的技能和经验的活动。在正式论文研究开始之前，学生将开发数学和统计方法来解决其他科学和工程领域中出现的问题。该项目资助的16名博士生将在第二年的两个学期里致力于由来自行业、政府实验室或研究机构的外部合作伙伴提出的跨学科研究问题。学生们将以2-3名学生、一名数学和一名统计教师导师以及我们的一名外部合作伙伴组成的小组进行工作。这些研究项目将取代学生在第二年的正常助教职责，并将提供整个研究过程的机会，从开始的开放式问题描述到最终结果。在为期一年的研究经验结束后的夏天，学生们将处于有利地位，可以继续在外部合作伙伴的组织实习，从而获得最终可能在毕业后带来就业机会的经验。具体目标包括：(1)通过与工业和跨学科研究人员的联系，扩大学生寻求解决现实世界应用问题的机会；(2)增加学生解决他们不熟悉的应用问题的信心；(3)提高学生在研究团队内和与更广泛的受众交流的能力；(4)拓宽数学博士毕业生的职业道路范围，增加实习、工业研究职位或国家实验室博士后职位的学生数量和比例。这些团队将包括一些学生，他们的论文主题可能不涉及强大的建模或计算组件。我们将利用EDT项目作为一种招聘工具，以增加申请博士项目的合格美国学生的数量，特别是女性和代表性不足的少数族裔。该项目的网址是www.utdallas.edu/edt。六个外部合作伙伴已经同意在这个项目上进行合作。在与外部合作伙伴的协商下，我们开发了广泛的研究问题，以补充UTD教师导师的优势。拟议的项目包括：(1)非常规油气开采中微地震震源估计的不确定性量化；(2)传染病预测；(3)锥束计算机断层成像，为癌症放射治疗获取患者解剖数据；(4)用于国防应用的多传感器跟踪；以及(5)用于先进制造的等离子体处理系统的建模。在一年一度的启动活动之后，我们将举办一次深入的研讨会，学生和教职员工将在其中学习与所选项目直接相关的基本理论、实例和计算技能。这一年的剩余时间被分成一到四个月的时间段，在此期间将确定研究目标，形成问题的原型并加以解决，并将结果传播给外部合作伙伴和项目外的其他人。

The goal of this project is to transform doctoral training in the mathematical sciences to include activities that provide students with marketable skills and experiences. Prior to the start of formal thesis research, students will develop mathematical and statistical approaches to tackle problems arising in other areas of science and engineering. The 16 doctoral students supported by the project will spend two semesters of their second year working on an interdisciplinary research problem posed by an external partner from industry, a government lab, or a research institution. Students will work in teams consisting of 2-3 students, one mathematics and one statistics faculty mentor, and one of our external partners. These research projects will replace the students' normal teaching assistant duties in their second year and will provide exposure to the entire research process, from starting with an open-ended problem description to obtaining final results. In the summer after this year-long research experience, the students will be well positioned to continue work at the external partners' organizations as interns, thereby gaining experience that could ultimately lead to employment opportunities after graduation. Specific objectives include: (1) Broadening opportunities for students to pursue the solution of real-world application problems through connections with industrial and interdisciplinary researchers; (2) Increasing students' confidence to tackle applied problems with which they are not familiar; (3) Increasing students' ability to communicate within research teams and to wider audiences; (4) Broadening the range of career paths for mathematical sciences Ph.D. graduates, and increasing the number and proportion of students who do internships, take industrial research positions, or take postdoctoral positions at national labs. The teams will be chosen to include some students whose dissertation topics may not involve strong modeling or computational components. We will use the EDT project as a recruiting tool to increase the number of qualified U.S. students who apply to the Ph.D. program, especially women and under-represented minorities. The web site for the project is www.utdallas.edu/EDT. Six external partners have agreed to collaborate on this project. In consultation with the external partners, we have developed broad research problems that complement the strengths of the faculty mentors at UTD. Proposed projects include (1) uncertainty quantification for microseismic source estimation in unconventional oil and gas recovery; (2) infectious disease forecasting; (3) cone beam computerized tomography to acquire patient anatomy data for cancer radiotherapy treatments; (4) multisensor tracking of multiple moving targets for defense applications; and (5) modeling of plasma processing systems for advanced manufacturing. Following an annual kick-off event, we will hold an in-depth workshop in which students and faculty will learn fundamental theory, examples, and computational skills of direct relevance for the chosen projects that year. The remainder of the year is broken into one- to four-month time periods during which the research goals will be defined, the problem prototyped and solved, and the results disseminated to the external partner and others outside the project.