NJIT Hosts 39th Annual Mathematical Problems in Industry Workshop

By Richard Moore and Mellisa Pascale

The Mathematical Problems in Industry (MPI) Workshop is a yearly event—supported by both SIAM and local organizers—that attracts leading applied mathematicians and scientists from universities, industry, and national laboratories. Throughout the five-day workshop, engineers and scientists from industry and national labs introduce problems that are relevant to their organizations and interact with the academic participants in small working groups to generate possible solutions. These problems span a wide range of applications, from product design to process optimization and even the analysis of large datasets. After an intense week of collaborative research, the teams present their findings on the final day of the Workshop and follow up with a full report in subsequent weeks.

The Department of Mathematical Sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) hosted the 2023 MPI Workshop from June 12-16, 2023, under the direction of NJIT’s Linda Cummings. 56 academic researchers—including 22 students who attended the Graduate Student Mathematical Modeling Camp (GSMMC) at the University of Delaware the previous week—divided into four teams to work on the following problems (click on each title for the corresponding report):

1. Model Inversion for Complex Physical Systems Using Low-dimensional Surrogates (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) 
2. Bulletproofing Bayesian Particle Flow Against Stiffness (Raytheon Technologies) 
3. Chronic Kidney Disease Classification Using Patient Clinical Characteristic Data (Vironix Health) 
4. Bubbles in Flow Streams and Porous Media (W.L. Gore & Associates). 

Participants benefited from numerous opportunities to interact, network, and share their respective experiences, including the MPI banquet on the first evening of the Workshop and a career panel during the following day’s lunch break.

The MPI Workshop and SIAM are grateful to the participating companies for their financial support, without which the event would not be possible. In 2023, SIAM was pleased to support students who participated in both GSMMC and the MPI Workshop via the James Crowley Fund for Student Support. 

The upcoming 2024 MPI Workshop will take place from June 25-29 at the University of Vermont under the direction of Taras Lakoba. Participating companies for 2024 include RTX Corporation, University of Delaware Graduate College, and Vironix Health.

	Richard Moore is the Director of Programs and Services at SIAM.
	Mellisa Pascale is the Programs Coordinator at SIAM.