We deliver high quality collaborative research approaches, grounded in mathematical sciences with an application focus. We do this by working with partners from industry, government agencies and external academic researchers from non-maths disciplines.

Some of our established mechanisms are described below, but we can also explore new ways of working with you.

Integrative Think Tanks (ITTs)

Our flagship week-long workshops bring together SAMBa students, mathematical sciences academics, and external partners to formulate collaborative solution pathways to challenges posed by partners.

ITTs begin with presentations of challenges from partners, followed by discussion and formation of small teams to work intensively on formulating mathematical approaches to those challenges. These formulations are focused on a 3-4 year timescale of delivery and ideally will develop into PhD projects picked up by SAMBa students, or students recruited directly onto the research project.

ITTs offer partners a significant level of immersion and co-ownership of research. It is the beginning of challenging and high impact research, often leading to long-lasting relationships with co-funded research activities.

'The SAMBa approach was a great template for setting up a productive, creative and collaborative atmosphere. The commitment of the students in getting involved with unfamiliar areas of research and applying their experience towards producing solutions was very impressive.' — Dr Mike Marsh, Space weather researcher, Met Office

Find out more about ITTs.

PhD research

Many of our students are co-supervised by non-academic partners in delivering interdisciplinary research. These projects are designed jointly by the student, external partner and academic supervisory team.

The non-academic partner usually contributes to research and associated costs of projects in which they are involved, and hosts the student for placements.

Jointly supervised PhD research delivers high-quality approaches to problems directly relevant to your sector and organisation over three to four years. The research can be protected by confidentiality clauses but must allow for publication of results.

Internships

Students can undertake a secondment during their PhD which is not directly related to their PhD research. This is usually of around three months and may be with international or UK academic partners, or with a partner company.

You will be able to work closely with them on relevant problems to your organisation, whilst developing strong links with the University of Bath. Secondments (salaries and associated costs) are funded by the host organisation.

Informal interactions

The Department of Mathematical Sciences has a long and fruitful history of working with industry. We welcome approaches from new and established partners with suggestions of how we could work with you, or to arrange to visit the department and to attend or speak at one of our departmental seminars.

Our current industrial partners are:

• AstraZeneca
• AVL
• BT
• Cytel
• Diamond Light Source
• DNV GL
• Environment Agency
• GKN Aerospace
• Mango Solutions
• Moogsoft
• Novartis
• National Physics Laboratory
• Office for National Statistics
• PepsiCo
• Roche
• Royal United Hospital Bath
• Schlumberger
• Syngenta
• Willis Towers Watson
• Wood

'We are working with SAMBa students and academics on designing new statistical tools for energy management such as probabilistic load forecasting and spatio-temporal correction. We really like the SAMBa mood, the interaction between people with very different backgrounds, and intense brainstorming!' — Dr Yannig Goude, Project Manager for Statistics of Energy Forecasting, EDF

'The students at SAMBa were engaging and motivated, above all interested in solving real world problems with their skills. As a result of SAMBa we have taken huge strides forward in a new technique in the assessment of arthritis related to psoriasis and the effect of treatment.' — Dr William Tillett, Consultant Rheumatologist, Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases

Our current international academic partners are:

• Centre for Mathematical Modeling, Chile
• Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas (CIMAT), Mexico
• Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
• [Desarrollo, Instituto de Economía y Negocios], Paraguay
• Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, Brazil
• National University of Mongolia, Mongolia
• Networks, the Netherlands
• Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany
• Universidad de Chile, Chile
• Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
• Universidade De São Paulo Instituto De Ciências Matemáticas E De Computação, Brazil
• Universität Mannheim, Germany
• Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics, Germany

'The Department of Chemical Engineering was one of the partners in ITT 6. My colleague Matthew Lennox and I presented the SAMBa students with a challenge to come up with a more intelligent way to screen a vast amount of porous solids for specific adsorption applications. First of all, it was very stimulating to work with a group of students who approached the problem in a very different way from how we as engineers think about it, and they were just amazing. They came up with an approach that involved assigning a barcode to each material and analysing these further. A literature search revealed a manuscript that had just been published in Nature Communications with a very similar approach which at first was disappointing. However, it turned out that the approach the SAMBa students came up with should be more flexible when looking at a variety of applications and we are currently pursuing these ideas further in a reading group project and with large data sets.' — Professor Tina Duren, Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of Bath