ITTs were pioneered and developed in 2015 by staff in the Centre for Doctoral Training for Statistical Applied Mathematics (SAMBa). They provide training to SAMBa students, but they also generate ideas that can be jointly pursued between academics and industrial partners, and lead to direct impact in terms of applications and research.

Concept

ITTs are facilitated, week-long, off-campus workshops involving around 80 participants.

They include postgraduate students, academics from mathematical sciences, application-focused researchers, and collaborators from around the world.

Participants are presented with high level challenges from non-mathematical partners. They work in small groups to formulate them into mathematical problems.

It is not the aim of an ITT to solve problems, but to identify and to test preliminary routes to a solution and the mechanisms to take them forward. Follow up from ITTs can take many forms and each will be tailored to the individual partner and ideas that are generated. Many ideas become long-term projects (as PhD studentships or research grants), some are picked up as short-term projects (through reading courses, or student secondments, for example). Taking forward ITT outputs is a collaborative process and each one is different.

In practice

ITTs take place twice a year, in January and June. Each ITT welcomes two partners that are identified at least four months before the event to enable preparatory work to take place.

The ITT build-up takes place through a student-led symposia series, where partners give SAMBa students and other ITT participants a preliminary overview of the challenges that they would like to bring to the ITT.

In collaboration with academic staff, students identify the background information that is required to prepare for the ITT. This could include expert lectures, training in software, or mini-courses. The programme is organised by the students themselves.

Impact and outcomes

One of the major success factors of ITTs is that the ideas generated are truly collaborative and ownership is shared between all the researchers involved. This means that each ITT continues to deliver long after the event has taken place. You can read more about these here.

Outcomes of previous ITTs include:

• jointly funded studentships
• joint research proposals
• student projects
• reading courses
• consultancy work

Previous ITTs

• ITT1 with BT and DNV GL, January 2015
• ITT2 with Amec Foster Wheeler and EDF, June 2015
• ITT3 with Airbus, GKN and the Met Office, January 2016
• ITT4 with AstraZeneca and the NHS, June 2016
• ITT5 with Roche and Syngenta, January 2017
• ITT6 with the Department of Chemical Engineering and Schlumberger, June 2017
• ITT7 with the National Physical Laboratory and the Environmental Agency, Feb 2018
• ITT8 with the Department of Biology and Biochemistry and the Office for National Statistics, June 2018
• ITT9 with Willis Towers Watson and Diamond Light Souce, January 2019
• ITT10 with AVL and PepsiCo, June 2019
• ITT de Mexico, August 2019

Other workshops

• Quantum Innovation Lab from the EPSRC CDT in Quantum Engineering, March 2017
• UCL Mathematical Sciences Industrial Sandpit, May 2017
• BUC3, May 2016
• BUCX, August 2017
• International Research Collaboration Initiative, Ulaanbaatar, November 2016
• Delivering training for data-informed policy in Ulaanbaatar

'We are working with SAMBa to improve the efficiency of our drug development, by optimising the size of our clinical trials and making better use of the data we collect. Working with SAMBa students and academics is very rewarding and they add new ideas to help our business. I was very impressed with the Think Tank, and pleasantly surprised at how much was achieved in such a short space of time. I would recommend this approach to any potential industry partners looking to breathe new ideas into their business.' — Dr Alun Bedding, Statistical Science Director, AstraZeneca