These — too briefly — were the problems that were addressed at the 2018 UK Maths-in-Industry Study Group held at the University of Bath from 16–20 July.
Around 80 mathematicians from UK and overseas universities worked on these problems alongside the scientists from the participating companies to generate ideas, mathematical models, analysis, computation, visualization and new experiments that all helped shed light on these questions and begin to answer them. It is a no-holds-barred activity, with everyone working and contributing their ideas, from PhD students to senior professors. It also draws on the whole of mathematics, so during the week we used Stefan problems, extreme value statistics, the shallow water equations, differential geometry, Darcy flow, quaternions, Bessel functions, Markov decision processes, machine learning, optimal stopping problems, Bayesian updating, homogenisation, asymptotics, experiments via videoconference and much more besides.
And how did the industrial scientists view the outcomes presented on the final morning of the meeting?
I’m very impressed — it’s been very interesting, good fun and good to have different takes on it. Some of this will be very challenging to people who think about the problem in a static way.
It’s really amazing. I’m very impressed with the collective work.
Thank you very much. It’s been very illuminating and very good to be able to describe and illustrate the shapes.
Very impressed. You managed to cover a lot of ground in a week and the director was very impressed too. It’s definitely going to be useful and it was very impressive to see the graphics.
A massive massive thank you — we brought a whole host of issues and it’s an unbelievable amount of work.
It’s fascinating. There’s a lot of food for thought, and potentially big savings. Nobody has ever looked at the data this way before.
Let’s face it — it’s like opening Christmas presents.
The Smith Institute has more than fifteen years’ experience in supporting the annual UK European Study Group with Industry. If you would like further information about Study Groups and how to participate or have any questions, please contact Judy Reynolds.