On Tuesday 11 February 2020, Wil Schilders presents the EU-MATHS-IN initiative at BCAM, Bilbao, Spain.

EU-MATHS-IN: mathematics for the industry in Europe

Wil Schilders, president EU-MATHS-IN

Knowledge has become the main wealth of nations, companies, and people. Investing in research, innovation, and education is now the key-leverage for competitiveness and prosperity in Europe. At the heart and foundation of this challenge, mathematics plays a crucial role as it provides a logically coherent framework to industry and a universal language for the analysis, simulation, optimization, and control of industrial processes. Mathematics is an essential factor in the industrial creation of value and a driving force for innovations, but often, its contributions are invisible in the final industrial products. The use of mathematical techniques gives a competitive advantage to the industry by suggesting innovative

interdisciplinary approaches. The goal of EU-MATHS-IN is to explore ways of stimulating and intensifying the collaboration between mathematics and industry. European scientific and industrial communities, in close interaction with policy makers, have developed medium to long-term views and analyses of common issues, questions and “good practices” between mathematics and industry in order to envisage strategies for a stronger interaction of mathematicians with large and medium size companies. In this talk, we will provide an overview of EU-MATHS-IN, its structure and its activities, a number of success stories of mathematics for industrial challenges, adressing different areas in mathematics as well as different industrial sectors. In addition, current efforts with regard to a strategic research agenda for mathematics for industry will be presented, as well as some important “marketing” efforts (such as the “Maths Inside” logo and the concept of “mathware”).

About the speaker:

Wil Schilders studied mathematics at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, from 1974-1978, and obtained a PhD in numerical analysis from Trinity College Dublin in 1980. He then worked in industry, namely at the famous Philips Research Laboratories (1980-2006) and in NXP Semiconductors (2006-2010). Since 1999 he is a (part-time) full professor of “scientific computing with industry” at Eindhoven University of Technology. Since 2010 he combines his professorship (4 days/week) with being the executive director of the Dutch Platform for Mathematics. He has been president of ECMI in 2010-2011, was the initiator and chair of ECMI’s Research and Innovation Committee from 2012-2019. He was also one of the founders of EU-MATHS-IN, in 2013, and since 2016 the president of this organisation. In 2019 he was elected “officer at large” (board member) of ICIAM, the world wide organisation for industrial and applied mathematics.