The goal of the workshop is to gather industry representatives, academic researchers, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to work on concrete problems proposed by the industry. The workshop is organized by the Centre de recherches mathématiques, along with GERAD, the CIRRELT (Interuniversity Research Centre on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation) and ncm2, and is sponsored by the MITACS network of centres of excellence. The participants will work in teams, and each team will analyse a problem supplied by a company or a public sector institution. The workshop will provide companies and institutions with mathematical tools for solving problems, and will enable academic researchers and students in applied mathematics to work on real-world problems.
In 2009, the following companies and institutions have proposed problems to be studied during the workshop: CanmetENERGY, Rolls-Royce, IREQ, GIRO, Pratt & Whitney, and FPInnovations.
The Montreal workshop is part of a Canadian tradition, since the PIMS Institute, based in Vancouver, started organizing Industrial Problem Solving Workshops around ten years ago. Information on these may be found at
http://www.pims.math.ca/industrial.
www.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/08-09/FMIPW.
The Canadian workshops are modelled on the "study groups" created by Professor John Ockendon at the University of Oxford (cf. the site www.maths-in-industry.org). The organizers are very grateful to Pratt & Whitney for its monetary contribution to the workshop, and to GAMS for granting them the permission to use its software during the workshop.
