104 Tom Salisbury
those conversations quite natural. The CIM program’ s goal is to continue doing that, and to replicate this success in some of the other fields where mathematics can be applied.
Recently these efforts have been supported by the Institute Innovation Platform( IIP), a collaboration between the mathematics and statistics institutes and NSERC. For Fields this funding has helped secure an Industry Liaison Officer( Tyler Wilson) and two academics seconded part-time( myself, and Pawel Prelat from Ryerson). We have pursued academic-industry liaison in two ways: through organized events; and through conversations with individual researchers and companies.
Events can take many forms. There are several seminar series that attempt to spark academic-industry conversations, either during a talk or presentation, or( what is more likely) during the networking reception that follows it. The Quantitative Finance seminar is a long-running example. It has been bringing researchers and practitioners together once a month for over 22 years, and has had a major impact on the mathematization of finance in Ontario. The Working Lunch seminar is the newest such example. It invites practitioners from a broad range of firms to make presentations about their sector and discuss potential directions for related research while having sandwiches at Fields. We have also run a number of Innovation Days, during which entrepreneurs share their views on opportunities for innovation and directions for research.
At the other end of the event spectrum are traditional conferences on topics of interest to industry. Somewhere in the middle lie the very successful Industrial Problem Solving workshops. These start with groups from industry posing problems on Monday. Then teams of students and faculty work intensively for the rest of the week, reporting back to the posers on Friday. Despite the short time frame, interesting