After two remote workshops (in 2020 and 2021) the Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM) and the Institute for Data Valorization (IVADO) are pleased to announce that they will hold an in-person workshop on August 22-26, 2022. The participants (company representatives, professors, and students) will gather in teams, each of which addressing a problem submitted by a company. The workshop will allow academic researchers to study real-world problems and companies to benefit from expertise in the mathematical sciences (including data science, optimization, financial mathematics, natural language processing, and so on). This kind of workshop is an incubator of collaborations between universities and companies and the workshop organizers expect that these collaborations will continue after the workshop. Industrial problem solving workshops (called “study groups” in other parts of the world) were first designed by British researchers more than 50 years ago before spreading to many countries, for instance Canada, France, other European countries, and Asia and Australasia.

To submit a problem (if possible before February 15, 2022), please write to Odile Marcotte, Special Advisor for Partnerships at the CRM, using the address marcotte@crm.umontreal.ca . Each participating company must eventually write a problem description (click here for some examples), make a presentation at the beginning of the workshop, and choose a representative who will spend one week at the university in order to answer questions about its problem and evaluate the proposed solutions. Since 2019 the workshop proceedings have been published in the Cahiers du GERAD collection and the organizers wish to thank GERAD for its support of the Montreal IPSWs.