Event info

Australian Branch of Institute of Mathematics for Industry Kyushu University

Phil Broadbridge*

In 2013, the Institute of Mathematics for Industry1, based at Kyushu University, was selected for federal funding under the national Joint Use Institutes Program. This is the second Joint Use Institute in mathematics, after the RIMS Kyoto, which has been funded by the national government for 48 years. Kyushu University is one of the original four Imperial Universities, and it now has the largest mathematics department in Japan. IMI has established an Australian Branch, based at La Trobe University. IMI was conceived by Professor Masato Wakayama, the founding Director, who is now the university’s Executive Vice-President (Research). Japan produces many more PhDs in mathematics than there will be academic positions in the future, as the nation’s student population is decreasing. Therefore, these highly trained graduates in mathematics should better understand the possibilities of applying their skills to add a competitive edge to industry.

For the IMI to produce industry-attuned graduates, it has required a change in mindset of the university’s mathematicians, something that has been achieved in just two years. Note the use of preposition ‘for’ rather than ‘in’, in the title. Most members of IMI are accomplished in fundamental mathematics. They still conduct curiosity-driven basic research but they also manage to apply their knowledge to arange of interesting industry problems, including automated combinations of facial images for the movie industry, location of the free phase boundaries during fabrication of steel, cryptographic systems for computer security, optimising surface shapes in engineering design, and predicting energy levels of atomic-scale devices that may be used as qubits in quantum computers.

Among the divisions of IMI, there is the Division of Fujitsu Social Mathematics. IMI collaborates with a range of major Japanese companies, some of whom host student interns. It runs an annual Forum for Mathematics in Industry (FMI) as well as a regular industry Study Group Workshop (SGW), and it produces a sequence of books that is published by Springer. Invited speakers at FMI have included Bob Anderssen, Frank de Hoog, John Hearne, Murray Cameron, Graeme Wake, Robert McKibbin, Winston Sweatman, Kerry Landman, Troy Farrell, Reinout Quispel, Robert Norman and myself. It is a pleasure to visit Fukuoka, a mediumsized city with a reputation for good food, hospitality, sports and good climate.

IMI has a strong international outlook, generating regular collaborations around the Asia-Pacific region, as well as with Europe and the Americas. It has quickly established the reputation of being a regional leader in mathematics for industry, helping to form the Asia-Pacific Consortium for Mathematics-for-Industry, under the guidance of Bob Anderssen, the late Professor Geoff Mercer of ANU as founding consortium president as well as Graeme Wake, Robert McKibbin and Winston
Sweatman of Massey University. The inaugural APCfMI committee wrote about this earlier in the Gazette.2 Part of the Japanese interest in our region stems from our good track record in hosting successful events such as the Mathematics in Industy Study Group.3 One of the problem presenters at SGW2014 was the Melbourne Brain Institute’s Dr Paul Abbott, who had previously presented a problem at MISG. This year in late July, one of the presenters at SGW 2015 will be Dr Jeff Hawkins of Pivot Maritime, a Hobart company that specialises in ship motion simulators.