Almost 100 partners, professors, students and graduates took part in this year's Mathematics Day, despite the short-notice switch to a digital format due to Corona.
This year, the Mathematics Day was organized and opened by Prof. Dr. Anselm Knebusch and Prof. Dr. Franz-Josef Schneider. After a sympathetic welcome by Prof. Dr. Katja Rade, Prof. Dr. Jochen Brunk reported in his annual review about the latest personnel changes, the current numbers in the study programs and the research activities in the field of study mathematics. Kai Timo Schleicher then gave a brief insight into the SensAR research project, which focuses on the communication of sensory data by means of augmented reality (AR) and its use in the production process.
Directly afterwards, Dr. Helmut Linde (Global Head of Data Science at Merck KGaA) gave exciting insights into the world of artificial intelligence. In his presentation "Making Molecules Smarter - Artificial Intelligence in Use at Merck" he went into the current developments in AI, vividly explained the current use of neural networks and concluded with a comprehensive outlook into the future. After a short break, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rupert Klein (Professor of Computational Fluid Dynamics at Freie Universität Berlin) first addressed the importance of climate models and the role of mathematics in model reduction in his interesting lecture "How Mathematics Helps Structure the Climate Debate". He clearly showed how especially in climate research mathematics can help in dealing with complex data. In lively discussions after the lectures, the speakers clarified open questions and provided interesting food for thought on these highly topical issues.
Afterwards, Prof. Dr. Stefan Reitz awarded the prize of the Stuttgart insurance companies for the best thesis in the mathematics course. The prize winner in the summer semester 2021 is Niklas Glasbrenner with his final thesis "Heuristic solution methods for optimal route planning with a fleet of electric vehicles under consideration of time windows". Congratulations also at this point for his outstanding achievements.
Traditionally, the event was concluded with the resolution of the prize task. Prof. Dr. Paul-Georg Becker solved the tricky task live and awarded a book prize to the two students Umut Kalem and Torben Adelhelm. This year, the finale took place with stimulating conversations in breakout sessions and formed a nice conclusion of the Mathematics Day 2021.