Speaker:  John Stockie

URL for Speaker:  http://people.math.sfu.ca/~stockie/

Location:  LSK 460

Intended Audience:  Public

Industrial mathematics is a field that spans a broad spectrum of activity ranging from applied R&D performed by mathematicians employed in industry, to purely academic research projects undertaken by university mathematics professors. In this talk, I will survey several research projects I have been involved with that fall under the heading of what I’ll call ”mathematics *for* industry”, which relates specifically to direct collaborations between university mathematicians and non-academic partner organizations. These projects encompass a diverse collection of mathematical techniques (ranging from simple algebra to partial differential equations, finite volume methods, inverse problems and homogenization theory) as well as applications from many scientific disciplines (such as fluid mechanics, image processing, atmospheric science and plant biology). In the process, I will attempt to characterize the job of an industrial mathematician and to identify the qualities and skills that are most desirable for anyone interested in making significant contributions to research at the interface between university and industry. I also hope to convince you that industrial collaborations can be a rich source of challenging and novel mathematical problems for academic mathematicians.