The ATN Industry Doctoral Training Centrein Mathematics and Statistics

摘要

From 2012 the Australian Technology Network (ATN) of Universities (Curtin, UniSA, RMIT, UTS, QUT) will offer a unique programthe Industry Doctoral Training Centre in Mathematics and Statistics (IDTC-M)for producing PhDgraduates in the mathematical sciences. The main features of the new four-year program are: ·the research problem will originate in industry, not academia, and any intellectual property generated will reside in the company ·the student associated with the project may be (i) the traditional stu-dent, that is, a graduate from a cognate Honours program or Bachelor degree with equivalent research experience or (ii) a present employee of the company, identified for upgrading of technical and managerial skills ·the program will contain a considerable coursework and seminar presen-tation component designed to foster camaraderie and networking of the student cohort in addition to the obvious professional and technical skills training ·the student will spend a significant amount of time working at the company site. So what is wrong with the traditional method of training doctoral students in the applied mathematical sciences? Viewed as a supply chain for producing the next generation of academics, the answer is probably 'Not much'. Viewed as a pipeline for producing the problem solvers and R&D managers of Australian industry, there is a problem both with the quantity of supply and the quality.