Outcomes and impact of the Study Groups

With such large numbers of participants, tracking the development of all the new research avenues and collaborations that originate in Study Groups is a major task in itself. Moreover, many activities will naturally develop over a period of a few years, and so are not apparent yet. Among the specific examples of follow-on activity of which we are currently aware are the following:

• Acordis supported two MSc students in operations research at the University of Lancaster, following their scheduling problem at the 2002 Study Group.
  
  
• A CASE project on flow in deformable tubes involving Unilever and the University of Nottingham (and funded through the Faraday Partnership for Industrial Mathematics) got under way in October 2004, following up a problem on microfluidics at the 2004 Study Group. The algorithm developed at the Study Group is in use by Unilever researchers and a team of 3-4 Unilever staff are taking the project forward.
  
  
• The work on Westland's helicopter tail rotor instability problem at the 2003 Study Group led to an undergraduate Masters project (M.Eng.) and an M.Sc. project, both at the University of Bristol.
  
  
• QinetiQ supported a Masters student at Southampton University�s ISVR, and submitted two proposals to EPSRC with Aberdeen University�s Engineering Department. Work at QinetiQ following on from the 2002 Study Group problem of active sensing also resulted in a paper presented to the Institute of Acoustics Conference on Sonar Signal Processing at Loughborough in September 2004.
  
  
• Lein Applied Diagnostics secured a �500k investment since attending the study group � the problem presented on measuring glucose content in the aqueous humor was core to the company's technology and the results were instrumental in determining the company's direction. They have since recruited three staff and one KTP Associate.
  
  
• NATS recruited one extra member of staff to work with the radar team. The Study Group has helped them to focus effort onto the task of distribution independent safety analysis over the last year.
  
  
• Unilever recruited a member of staff at a senior position to drive forward work in agent based modelling of consumers. They also initiated a post-doc project and collaboration with the University of Surrey, are participating in the CABDyN Research Cluster at the University of Oxford and have placed a contract with a small 3rd party spin out company to support this area�in long term research and shorter term delivery.