Between 4 and 11 September, the University of Science, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City (HCMUS) hosted the Southeast Asian Mathematical Society School on Applying Mathematics to Real-World Problems. More than fifty students took part, from Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia.

Tim Myers, a CRM researcher who works on industrial mathematics, was one of four organisers and taught one of the four courses.

For Myers, it started with a report. In 2022, a review committee chaired by Sir John Ball evaluated the Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics (VIASM). Its report praised the institute’s international standing and made nine recommendations, two of which could serve as a brief for this school. One asked VIASM to widen its impact on neighbouring countries, for instance by helping mathematicians across Southeast Asia work together through networks such as the Southeast Asian Mathematical Society (SEAMS) and the Centre International de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées (CIMPA). The other was about applied mathematics: more of it, and closer ties with industry.

In early 2025, Myers met Prof. Joaquim Correia (Universidade de Évora) at a meeting of the European Mathematical Society’s Committee for Developing Countries, where both are associates. The EMS committee had twice named VIASM one of its Emerging Regional Centres of Excellence. The two talked about the report and its recommendations, and about helping Vietnamese applied mathematics along. That September, Myers attended the board meeting of the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) at VIASM in Hanoi, which CRM covered at the time, and went on to HCMUS to lecture on study groups with industry. Both institutions wanted to start a study group. After discussion, the organisers settled on a gentler first step: a modelling week.

The school’s stated goal follows the review’s recommendations closely. It set out to stimulate “groups to start researching in specific industry areas”, and more broadly to get young mathematicians working on real problems.

Four courses ran through the week: moving boundary problems (Myers), conservation laws (Joaquim Correia, U. Évora), stochastic processes (Gaël Raoul, CMAP, École Polytechnique) and infectious disease modelling (Lê Thị Minh Thảo, IST Lisbon). There were also talks on image restoration and clinical genomics. Students worked together on research projects throughout, presenting them on the final day, and Tuesday brought a round table on the role of study groups in developing applied mathematics.

According to the organisers, the week also introduced the study group model and gave it a trial run, with a specific target: an industry-connected applied mathematics group inside the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at HCMUS. Study groups put mathematicians in a room with companies and turn whatever the companies are stuck on into research problems.

The meeting was organised by Prof. Lê Minh Hà (VIASM), Prof. Joaquim Correia (U. Évora), Dr Hoàng Văn Hà (HCMUS) and Myers, with funding from CIMPA and SEAMS (both mentioned in the 2022 review) and the EMS Committee for Developing Countries. Assoc. Prof. Trần Lê Quan, president of HCMUS, opened it.

Both VIASM and HCMUS wanted a study group before the school existed. They now have a week of groundwork, and fifty-odd young applied mathematicians across six countries who have met each other.