The purpose of the annual 4TU.AMI Community Event is to bring together members of the five partner applied mathematics institutes (AMI) in order to get to know colleagues and catch up with old ones, explore common research or teaching interests, invite collaboration, and receive updates on current 4TU.AMI funded projects, including the so-called Strategic Research Initiatives or SRIs.
Each year the community event is hosted at one of the five universities affiliated with 4TU.AMI, which forms a great occasion to learn about the expertise and facilities in the various partner institutes. This year, the event was hosted at Wageningen University & Research and it was an event full of many new ideas and fruitful discussions.
The day consisted of a keynote lecture given by Jasper Engel (WUR-Biometris) who talked about The Monte Carlo Risk Assessment (MCRA) platform. The 4TU.AMI SRIs gave overview talks of recent developments, the Innovation Committee of Platform Wiskunde Nederland (PWN) presented their whitepaper (which can be read here) on Mathematical Innovations in Agriculture, and Wil Schilders (TU/e, Director of PWN) represented Math4NL, a national wide organisation which aims to strengthen the interaction between mathematicians and society, and discussed how SRIs can contribute to societal and industrial challenges. Moreover new 4TU.AMI staff members introduced themselves by giving a short pitch. Last but not least, we had an amazing tour around the campus and the Netherlands Plant Eco-phenotyping Centre (NPEC) .
Mathematical research driving force behind innovation
The morning started with Jasper Engel, senior researcher at WUR Biometris, who gave the keynote lecture on his research regarding “The MCRA toolbox of models and data to support harmonized chemical risk assessment”. The MCRA toolbox was developed by Biometris and is currently owned by RIVM, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment . It is a tool for human health risk assessment, which is also implemented on a European level by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). MCRA is used by all member states to assess risk related to plant protection products (i.e. pesticides and chemical compounds) and to increase food safety.
After the lunch a very interesting tour around the campus and the Netherlands Plant Eco-phenotyping Centre (NPEC) was organized. In the tour it became quickly clear why WUR is a leading power concerning food and plant innovation. In their state of the art laboratories and greenhouses they can perform various experiments and do research on plant growth.
Four of the 4TU.AMI SRIs gave a short overview of the work being done and the future plans. The older SRIs have already managed to set up communities of researchers in the Netherlands, for example about model reduction, numerical analysis and machine learning. The more recent SRIs keep the momentum high and are working towards their summer events, a summer school on Waves: Modeling, Analysis and Numerics, and the First Meeting of the Dutch Sequential Decision-Making Community.
George van Voorn (WUR and PWN) and Wil Schilders (TU/e and PWN) represented the Innovation Committee of PWN and Math4NL and showcased future opportunities for collaborations with industrial partners. The Innovation Committee of PWN has worked in the previous year to build connections with the agricultural sector and investigate how mathematics can contribute to challenges they face. Their results are summarized in a whitepaper and were presented during the Community Day. In his role as interim director of Math4NL Wil Schilders discussed with the 4TU.AMI SRIs how they can contribute to societal and industrial challenges.
It was great to see both the interest the yearly Community Event has generated and how many new ideas were discussed during the day. We would like to thank Wageningen University for the hospitality and the organisation committee consisting of Carel Peeters, Pariya Behrouzi, Marco Saltini, Peter van Heijster and Stella Kapodistria for all their work and efforts.