From the creation of organ models in real time directly in the operating room to the redefinition of soil characteristics for plants up to ship turbines or the design of a dishwasher: applied mathematics now knows no borders, it is used to improve and redefine the world surrounding us like never before. The first European Math 2 Product conference currently being held in Taormina, Sicily, is dedicated to these frontiers.
“We are in the century of mathematics”, says Gianluigi Rozza, an expert in numerical analysis from SISSA in Trieste and co-organizer together with Simona Perotto from the Milan Polytechnic and Matteo Giacomini from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, of the conference dedicated to relations between mathematics and industry which opened today in Taormina and which sees the presence of some of the major international scientists in the sector, such as Charbel Farhat of Stanford University and winner of the Gordon Bell Prize in 2002 – a sort of Nobel in supercomputing – and Irene Arias, an expert in computational models from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
Thanks to the computing power made possible by the improvements of recent years, mathematics can now express itself as never before, finding applications in literally every area. A concrete possibility is the creation of digital twins, i.e. copies practically identical to any real object, with the difference, however, of being able to manipulate it at will, test new solutions, foresee changes over time. A solution that has applications in every sector: from the operating room, for example by providing the surgeon with a virtual replica of the organ on which to operate, to modeling machinery costing hundreds of millions of euros that take years to actually create. Or, again, to analyze enormous quantities of data, for example to analyze a genome or reconstruct the structure of vital proteins, or again to redesign materials to bring out otherwise impossible properties, the so-called metamaterials. “Mathematics has become the leading discipline of innovation, the tool that allows us to face hitherto unthinkable challenges. Mathematics has always been important but never like now”, added Rozza, also scientific director of the startup Fast Computing. “One of the great challenges now – added Rozza – will be that of sustainability, i.e. in a historical phase in which there is a sort of real race, computing power becomes increasingly important to be able to optimize. The amount of energy required by supercomputers is enormous, we must learn to do the same but consuming less”.
Source: Ansa
I am a journalist with over 6 years of experience working in the news industry. I currently work as an author for Global Happenings, and my coverage focuses on Technology news. I have written for various publications, including Reuters, The New York Times and The Guardian.
