PhD - Learning Activity: Aveiro, Portugal

The demands and challenges in research are rising due to an increase in interdisciplinarity and in complexity of mathematical models. Training courses for PhD students in specific topics provide the chance to get easier approaches to the increasing demands and challenges in research. New forms of cooperation and training are introduced to address this issue. At the University of Aveiro, Portugal a special training courses in the field of applied mathematics were organized.

Course 2017: March 20th to 24th, 2017 | The course focus on: data acquisition, data analysis, and mathematical modeling.

Course 2018: March 12th to 16th, 2018 | The course focus on: Inverse Problems, data analysis, and mathematical modeling.

Course 2019: March 25th to 29th, 2019 | The course focus on: Mathemetical modelling techniques for advanced civil engineering problems; Data acquisition; Data analysis techniques; Machine and deep learning techniques; Conceptual modelling approaches in engineering; Advanced topics in numerical mathematics.

Goals and achievements:

Next to the training of PhD students, the involved project partners bundled their resources and expertise to establish a network and a basis to the course. Besides the knowledge transfer, the participating PhD students had the opportunity to discuss their research topics with international experts from different disciplines and areas, to establish their own networks, and to identify new ideas and topics for their future career.

In preparation of the learning activity new course materials (slides and handouts) were prepared, and datasets preliminary elaborated. It was necessary, because the focus was adjusted. In addition, small programs, exercises and datasets were prepared for the classes in the computer lab in Matlab, Octave, and R. Afterwards results were treated for the supplementation into the database. All the materials were made available to the students via the Moodle platform at the Bauhaus University Weimar.

The lecture materials can be used by the students in their PhD studies and in their future publications. Depending on the gained experience it is planned to support publications authored by the involved PhD students.

Additionally, many of the discussions led to concrete research problems, which are under investigation. As an outcome of the courses, publications were/are coordinated and supported to be published in either peer-reviewed journals or conferences. All publications are/will be listed at the project website.