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

首席研究员和她的同事们组织了一个关于工业数学问题的研讨会。这种形式遵循牛津大学应用数学家在1968年引入的一种形式，这种形式在英国、加拿大、欧洲和其他许多国家经常被复制（每年有8-10个这样的研讨会）。该格式由工业科学家/工程师对一些问题的初步介绍组成。然后，听众被分成几个小组，在3-4天的时间里分别研究每个问题。口头报告会在一周结束，然后在几周后就每个问题提交书面报告。研讨会的参与者包括30-40名研究生和约30名教师，预计至少有6个来自工业界的问题，这意味着每个问题都由10名应用数学家来解决。研讨会之前是一个学生建模营，它遵循类似的格式，除了每个问题都由一名教师提出。其中一些问题可能已经部分地由教师主持人解决了，而另一些则没有，夏令营的目的是让学生参与者进入密集小组工作的文化，并在开始新的一周时给他们信心，因为所有参与者都开始解决新的、实际重要的问题，知道他们的经验和努力将证明是富有成效的。除了在提供问题答案方面取得了大量成功的记录（这些记录在一个网站上进行了分类，在这个网站上可以在许多相当不同的应用领域获得来自最近研讨会的250份个人报告的印刷品）之外，这次活动还有多个目标：在工业和学术科学家之间建立更紧密的联系；对学生和教师进行工业数学应用要求的教育；在小组参与项目中对学生进行培训（这是工业界的惯例），以及与教师一起工作的经验，以及在需要结果的实业家衡量进展的情况下参与起起落落的密集工作的经验。提交给研讨会的问题包括一个来自半导体公司的问题，用于模拟新设计的纳米级晶体管的电流流动；两个来自生物技术公司的问题，涉及具有不必要内部振动的医疗设备；另一个问题需要为微阵列分析进行统计建模。

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.