What we do

Here you can read about our flagship activities and mechanisms:

Impact facing research

CAMaCS operates as a single point of reference to support academics to establish and drive research towards impact with the long-view in mind. This can be done via multiple strategic approaches, for example:

Promoting strong pan-campus engagement, matching skill set to opportunity in the spaces of data-driven, mathematical and AI modelling, building teams and hosting discussion to explore some of the many interdisciplinary grant calls with fast turnarounds.
Supporting dialogue with industry and pursuing different forms of research collaborative relationships, whether via PhD funding, long-term collaborative project funding, consultancy contracting, or other forms of knowledge exchange.

Examples of CAMaCS engagement areas:

Industrial applied mathematics: including applications of fluid dynamics, solid mechanics, and PDEs to solve problems held by diverse partners with physical modelling needs.
Distributed socio-technical systems: including applications of network science, agent-based systems, and nonlinear dynamics to challenges faced by partners in e.g. transportation systems, urban science, financial regulation, energy grids, and social sciences.
Applied statistics/data science: including impactful and ethical applications of data science to social and technological problems such as those in the Data Science for Social Good initiative.

Research added value

CAMaCS has two flagship schemes to add value to impact facing research:

Innovation Research Associates (InRAs): InRAs are a new type of researcher working to support multiple projects in the space of “impactful research”. InRAs serve as a research intermediary for hand-in-hand impact driven research collaborations between academics and external partners. This provides the gift of time and research support that would otherwise come as relatively costly investment. Through their principal role in undertaking quantitative/AI modelling, as well as acting as a scientific intermediary between mathematical/AI researchers and other academics/stakeholders/partners, InRAs are included in grant proposals and industry-funded projects.
Impact Fellowship Scheme (IFS): CAMaCS recognises that there are times in the lifecycle of impact delivery which need the specific focus of academic leads, e.g. “getting impact over the finish line”. The IFS is a robust scheme that will allow colleagues to bid for time buy-out at critical junctures along the pathway to impact. Details of this scheme will follow soon.

Problem formulation & knowledge exchange

The nature of industrial and societal challenges are highly convoluted, often requiring interdisciplinary knowledge engagement. The last 15 years has seen successful experimentation with problem-formulation or sandpit-type workshops. Whilst allowing for a process of knowledge exchange, the output is a question or series of questions, formulated in a way that is technically precise within the framework. This has proven to be meaningful to both academic and non-academic partners alike. With both parties equally intellectually invested, these events open the door to deep and long-lasting engagement, allowing the cultivation of impact.

Visual depiction of inputs and outputs from problem formulation workshops

Each year, CAMaCS will lead a series of problem formulation workshops for the benefit of Warwick academics, InRAs, PhD students and postdocs as well as opening the doors to industrial partners and other modelling stakeholders. These will be open to colleagues from across campus where there is the potential to open the door to long term impact. CAMaCS will experiment with a variety of different formats for these events.

Training & public engagement

CAMaCS incorporates the perspectives of external partners into undergraduate courses, postgraduate training, and CDTs. Graduate students are encouraged to work on CAMaCS projects as part of their PhDs as well as through special internships, building on a firm foundation already laid down by the MathSys and HetSys CDTs as well as the Mathematics, Statistics and Computing Sciences CDTs.

CAMaCS complements externally facing engagement activities across participating departments through an online outreach programme to market the value of Warwick Mathematical and Computing Sciences research to the public and to potential project partners. This involves working with staff and students to create videos, curate a social media identity, write blog posts, enter competitions, write case studies, design reusable outreach content, and to organise public lectures and events.