4TU+.AMI has three main goals: to foster innovative research, to support mathematics education, and to build a vibrant community within the five partner institutes. These three goals lie at the heart of our strategic plan, and we strongly believe that collaboration, both between the partner institutes and with the other 4TU centers, can lead to long term impact in research, innovation and education.
Stella Kapodistria (TU/e), Scientific Director of 4TU+.AMI, emphasizes that collaboration and networking are at the core of 4TU+.AMI’s mission. "We are an agile and dynamic community of more than 250 mathematicians, bringing together mathematical talent across our partner institutes to drive innovation. By supporting both top-down consortia in cutting-edge areas and bottom-up initiatives for young researchers, we ensure that applied mathematics continues to make an impact—in research, education, and society."
Collaboration in research
We actively encourage and fund cross-institutional collaboration through so-called Strategic Research Initiatives (SRIs). These are collaborations between mathematicians from the universities of Delft, Eindhoven, Groningen, Twente and Wageningen, centered around a central research topic with a concrete goal. One of the goals is to initiate cooperation on a new specific research topic and to jointly write grant proposals. SRIs have a timespan of around 2 years. At the moment we have five ongoing SRIs, four on applied mathematics topics and one on research in education. We see clearly new communities emerging and establishing themselves in the Dutch research and innovation landscape. The SRIs typically organize workshops, summer schools, and smaller brainstorm events to discover new collaborative research topics.
The youngest gem: ‘Sequential Decision-Making’
Our youngest SRI, entitled 'Real-World-Inspired Sequential Decision Making', started just last year and has already great momentum! In August 2025, the first meeting of the Dutch Sequential Decision-Making Community took place at EURANDOM, Eindhoven University of Technology. With this first meeting, they have laid the foundation for a sustainable network that connects theory with practice and strengthens collaboration across disciplines. They have ambitious plans for the future, and 4TU+.AMI will support them as much as possible.
The rising stars: ‘Research in Education’, ‘Model Reduction’, and ‘Waves’
In 2024 three new SRIs started; one on research in mathematics education (MEReP) and two on research topics with a broad range of applications: model reduction, and waves. In an era marked by rapid technological advancements and evolving societal challenges, the role of mathematics education has never been more crucial. Since mathematics education is one of the key focus areas of 4TU+.AMI we invited experts on mathematics education to form an SRI and explore how a 4TU+ wide collaboration can support the mathematics community.
The physical processes of interest to contemporary science and engineering are growing ever more complex. Think of aerospace and fluid mechanics, electromagnetics, acoustics, geophysics, and biomedical imaging. Our two SRIs on Model Reduction and on Waves aim to understand such complex physical processes and develop mathematical techniques which will enable us to understand them better and develop new technologies.
The established: ‘Bridging Numerical Analysis and Machine Learning’
Machine learning is a field which has been growing at a high tempo. The Netherlands plays a vital role in this field with leading research groups and strong industries. In 2022, the SRI ‘Bridging Numerical Analysis and Machine Learning’ was started and brought together expertise from different groups, such as medical machine learning, physics-driven neural networks, data-driven modeling, and scientific computing. They have managed to create a strong community which is already established and recognized on a national and international level.
Collaboration between research and industry
All of our applied mathematics SRIs aspire to build strong collaborations with industries. 4TU+.AMI facilitates this process by introducing the researchers involved within the SRIs to the Dutch innovation landscape. We have strong collaboration with national organizations like Platform Wiskunde Nederland and Math4NL. Wil Schilders, interim director of Math4NL: "The SRIs are a unique instrument for strategically connecting the mathematical expertise within the 4TUs with societal and industrial challenges. In the short term, they stimulate cross-disciplinary collaboration and deliver innovative methods that are directly relevant to industry, education, and policy. In the future, they will build a sustainable network of cross-fertilization between disciplines, where mathematical thinking serves as a powerful catalyst for data-driven innovation and sustainable progress, and where the position of applied mathematics as an engine of innovation is further strengthened."
The next step in the 4TU+.AMI strategic plan is to strengthen such contacts and collaborations.