Participation

The Study Groups under review were the 43rd ESGI at Lancaster University, the 46th ESGI at the University of Bristol, and the 49th ESGI at the University of Oxford.

• Between 2002 and 2004, a total of 171 people participated in the Study Groups, of which 111 were drawn from 25 different UK universities. These participants included 40 UK graduate students, who were fully involved in the Study Group work, presentations, and as lead authors or co-authors of the problem reports. The participants also included 31 industrialists from 20 different companies, 20 overseas academics, and the Faraday Partnership’s team of Technology Translators. There was a core of 21 people who participated in all three Study Groups, and a further 28 participated in two Study Groups. The numbers of participants in each of the events were 66 in 2002, 75 in 2003, and 100 in 2004.
  
  
• The business sectors represented by the participating companies are aerospace, automotive, defence, energy, food, footwear, healthcare, leisure, materials, printing, retail, semiconductors, telecommunications, textiles and transport. Such a wide range underlines the unparalleled breadth of opportunity for mathematical modelling.
  
  
• The Technology Translators worked with companies before the Study Group in order to ensure that problems were presented in ways that would maximize the chances of fruitful interactions. In general, different types of problem generate different types of outcome. Some problems related to current operations and lead to directly applicable insights and results; others were more in the form of scoping studies, and it was equally valuable in these cases to identify the potential barriers to progress; finally, some were more strategic and resulted in the identification of possible approaches to the development of new products and services. It is a major strength of the Study Group format that it is successfully able to handle all three types.