This Centre for Doctoral training in Industrially Focused Mathematical Modelling will train the next generation of applied mathematicians to fill critical roles in industry and academia. Complex industrial problems can often be addressed, understood, and mitigated by applying modern quantitative methods. To effectively and efficiently apply these techniques requires talented mathematicians with well-practised problem-solving skills. They need to have a very strong grasp of the mathematical approaches that might need to be brought to bear, have a breadth of understanding of how to convert complex practical problems into relevant abstract mathematical forms, have knowledge and skills to solve the resulting mathematical problems efficiently and accurately, and have a wide experience of how to communicate and interact in a multidisciplinary environment. This CDT has been designed by academics in close collaboration with industrialists from many different sectors. Our 35 current CDT industrial partners cover the sectors of: consumer products (Sharp), defence (Selex, Thales), communications (BT, Vodafone), energy (Amec, BP, Camlin, Culham, DuPont, GE Energy, Infineum, Schlumberger x2, VerdErg), filtration (Pall Corp), finance (HSBC, Lloyds TSB), food and beverage (Nestle, Mondelez), healthcare (e-therapeutics, Lein Applied Diagnostics, Oxford Instruments, Siemens, Solitonik), manufacturing (Elkem, Saint Gobain), retail (dunnhumby), and software (Amazon, cd-adapco, IBM, NAG, NVIDIA), along with two consultancy companies (PA Consulting, Tessella) and we are in active discussion with other companies to grow our partner base. Our partners have five key roles: (i) they help guide and steer the centre by participating in an Industrial Engagement Committee, (ii) they deliver a substantial elements of the training and provide a broad exposure for the cohorts, (iii) they provide current challenges for our students to tackle for their doctoral research, iv) they give a very wide experience and perspective of possible applications and sectors thereby making the students highly flexible and extremely attractive to employers, and v) they provide significant funding for the CDT activities. Each cohort will learn how to apply appropriate mathematical techniques to a wide range of industrial problems in a highly interactive environment. In year one, the students will be trained in mathematical skills spanning continuum and discrete modelling, and scientific computing, closely integrated with practical applications and problem solving. The experience of addressing industrial problems and understanding their context will be further enhanced by periods where our partners will deliver a broad range of relevant material. Students will undertake two industrially focused mini-projects, one from an academic perspective and the other immersed in a partner organisation. Each student will then embark on their doctoral research project which will allow them to hone their skills and techniques while tackling a practical industrial challenge. The resulting doctoral students will be highly sought after; by industry for their flexible and quantitative abilities that will help them gain a competitive edge, and by universities to allow cutting-edge mathematical research to be motivated by practical problems and be readily exploitable.

Though many industrial problems involving gas/liquid flows can be simulated via fairly simple models, there are other cases where the number of different forces and their direction can not be handled by this approach. A typical example is that of flow in a bend. If it is just the pressure drop across the bend that is required, then there are simple methods, more or less accurate, which can be invoked. However, if more detailed information is required, such as how are the liquid and gas disposed about the bend, then more advanced methods are required, methods which hitherto are not available. Calculation methods for multiphase flow are not yet at a stage that they can handle all the problem industry has to solve. Therefore developments have to be produced. However, to achieve these developments there is a need for information from experiment to inform the modeling and to validate the product models. In spite of the extensive multiphase flow literature, such information if often limited and most certainly confined to pipe diameters far smaller than used in industry and with physical properties very different to those which industry is dealing with. The programme of work proposed here aims to push forward developments in modeling and provide experimental observations/measurement to help this development.

Cloud environments are notorious for their lack of stability in performance characteristics, a feature that makes it extremely difficult for owners of time-critical applications to make the decisive step for migration and owners of SaaS to be unable to present performance vs cost tradeoffs to their customers when acting as IaaS customers. CLOUDPERFECT aims at delivering a set of tools and processes that will enable a) Cloud providers to enhance the stability and performance effectiveness of their infrastructures, through modelling/understanding of the overheads, optimal groupings of concurrently running services, runtime analysis and adaptation, thus gaining a competitive advantage b) Cloud adopters to understand the computational nature of their applications, investigate abstracted and understandable QoS metrics for providers ranking, minimize the time of procurement and provider selection processes, automate deployment and orchestration processes, balance their selection between cost and performance to optimize their competitiveness, define according SLA levels (if on the SaaS level) and monitor the maintenance of their SLA c) 3rd parties to act as independent validators of Cloud QoS features, through a constant monitoring, benchmarking and evaluation process, filling a gap in the current brokerage/consultancy domain for performance evaluation and SLA auditing. The innovation action starts from mature existing prototypes derived from previous EC funded projects and aims at extending their TRL levels in order to support a spin-off entity to be created for the role of QoE Assessment Broker and Toolkit Consultant. The project will cover extensive experimentation with relation to the applicability of the envisioned toolkits in 4 facilities, while focusing on two heavy-weight industrial cases such as CFD and ERP/CRM, for which the overall value chain has been represented in the consortium, targeting domains such as manufacturing and telecom.

Fortissimo 2 will drive the uptake of advanced modelling, simulation and data analytics by European engineering and manufacturing SMEs and mid-caps. Such an uptake will deliver improved design processes, better products and services, and improved competitiveness. For the European Union as a whole this means improved employment opportunities and economic growth. The importance of advanced ICT to the competitiveness of both large and small companies in the engineering and manufacturing domain is well established. Despite early successes in this area, there are still many barriers to the uptake of such solutions, not least of which are the initial cost and complexity of adoption, particularly in the context of challenging trading conditions. This proposal targets the ICT Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs (I4MS) action line (Phase 2) and builds on Phase 1 of that initiative. Phase 2 addresses the adoption of next generation ICT advances in the manufacturing domain. At the core of Fortissimo 2 are three tranches of Application Experiments (~35 in total). An initial set is included in this proposal and two further sets will be obtained through Open Calls for proposals. These experiments will be driven by the requirements of first-time users (predominately SMEs) and will bring together actors from across the value chain, from cycle providers to domain experts via the Fortissimo Marketplace. This will enable innovative solutions to manufacturing challenges, leading to new and improved design processes, products and services. A key feature of Fortissimo 2 will be the adaption of the Marketplace to meet the needs of end-users. It will offer a responsive and reliable service to companies which want to access HPC and Big resources and expertise. Fortissimo 2 initially involves 732 months of effort, a total cost of €11.1m and EC funding of €10m over a duration of three years, commensurate with achieving its ambitious goals.