History and Overview

The European Study Group with Industry (formerly known as the Oxford Study Groups with Industry) was started by a small group of applied mathematicians in Oxford over 30 years ago, but today has grown to become Europe's premier industrial mathematics problem-solving conference, and the inspiration of many similar meetings held all over the world. There are usually three week-long ESGIs each year, including one held in the UK during the spring vacation. The 46th European Study Group was held at the University of Bristol's Burwalls conference centre, in the week 31st March to the 4th April 2003 inclusive.

The Format

• First day, morning: There is a sequence of about 6 to 8 short presentations by scientists and engineers working in industry. Each of these speakers discusses an unsolved technological problem of direct relevance to their company. Note:
  • All problems presented are of direct economic relevance to their companies.
  • All problems presented are genuinely unsolved, although usually a small amount of pre-processing has been attempted by the conference organisers to ensure that there are some avenues of attack on each problem.
  
  
• First day (Monday) afternoon: The 60-70 university mathematician attendees break-up into teams. The academics are free to choose which problem they want to work on: many of the old hands work on several problems simultaneously! The first afternoon is mainly a brainstorming exercise plus the opportunity to grill the industrials for further details.
  
  
• Middle days, Tuesday-Thursday inclusive: Intense group-work on each of the industrial problems. Once mathematical models of each problem are written down, attempts are made at their solution by combinations of analytical and computational techniques. The practical consequences of results are always considered, and models are updated cyclically to obtain the best balance between their simplicity and completeness of description. During the middle days there are also: tutorial training lectures on topical areas of industrial and applied mathematics.
  
  
• Last day (Friday) morning: Each problem team presents its results, and the industrialists are invited to comment on the progress achieved.
  
  
• Aftermath: Each team produces a short report and these are bound together in a proceedings volume.