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The Study Group

Organisation of the Study Group
The Study Group runs from Monday to Friday. On Monday the representatives from industry describe their projects of industrial origin and outline what they think needs to be done. Mathematicians then work collaboratively with industry representatives on the problems from Tuesday to Thursday in separate project groups. MISGSA participants join groups and work on which ever project suits their interest and expertise. On Friday there is summing up and report back to industry on the results obtained by each group.

Local participants
All delegates at MISGSA are expected to participate to a high degree in the modelling and problem solving small group sessions.

Moderator
Each project will be managed by a Moderator whose role will be to coordinate preliminary work including literature searches, outline any preliminary thoughts which need to be worked on, elicit contributions from all present, provide summaries throughout the workshop and assist in the preparation of a final technical report for the industrial participants. Moderators will be the leading authors in resulting publications. The travel expenses of Moderators will be paid by MISGSA.

Moderators are not expected to be experts in the field. Potential moderators should be aware that everyone will help and that we are all somewhat out of our depth to start with. The invited guests will contribute to all the problems within their area of expertise. The initial contribution of a moderator is to put together some useful information before the start of MISGSA.

Student Moderator
As well as a Moderator, who is normally a member of staff, each project will have a Student Moderator. This will be an opportunity for a graduate student to learn leadership skills by working closely with the Moderator and contributing to the organisation of the Study Group. A duty of the Student Moderator will be to make the 10-15 minute progress report on Wednesday afternoon.

Graduate A Student prizes
Two prizes of R500 will be awarded to students for outstanding performance at MISGSA. The prizes are open to honours students, MSc and PhD students.

Graduate Student Workshop
A Graduate Student Workshop will be organised on Saturday A 24 January 2009. The aim of the workshop is to prepare graduate students who have had little or no experience at working on problems of industrial origin for the MISG which starts the following Monday.

Financial support
The following persons will be eligible for financial support for local travel and accommodation provided funds are available.:

  • Moderators of problems
  • Student Moderators
  • Members of the Scientific Committee
  • Honours students, higher degree students
  • Post-doctoral Fellows

Participants may apply for financial support on the registration form.

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