Industrial Problems Seminar

The Industrial Problems Seminar at the IMA is in its 15th year and still going strong, featuring speakers from a broad spectrum of industry and business. The seminar series, started in 1987 by Avner Friedman, was conceived as a forum by which academic mathematical researchers can learn about research conducted by scientists in industry and learn about new problems where mathematics can have an impact. It also serves as a platform for industry scientist to seek input on their work, and to start collaboration with the IMA community. Until 1997, Friedman wrote up his synopsis of these seminars in the IMA Volumes: Mathematics in Industrial Problems.

Since 1997, the seminar has been organized by Fadil Santosa, IMA Deputy Director. It is now jointly sponsored by the Minnesota Center for Industrial Mathematics (MCIM). Speakers at the seminar typically spend a day at the IMA and MCIM, talking to students, faculty, and IMA visitors, in addition to presenting their talk. The material presented at the talks, along with videos of the presentation can be found at the IMA web site for Industrial Problems Seminar.

Lili Ju spoke about cortical surface flattening at the IPS in February

Talks so far this quarter have ranged from modeling insurance liabilities, through optical transport systems, to neuroimaging. In January, Dr. Stephen Mildenhall, Vice President for Actuarial Pricing at Kemper Insurance, presented a beautiful blackboard talk describing how sophisticated probability theory and modeling techniques has led to the development of a better tool for pricing policies. Steve received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1992 with a thesis on number theory.

A listing of upcoming talk is available along with the summaries and materials from talks already presented at the website.