Western University is hosting Industry Problem Solving Week (IPSW) 2015, a four-day event that engages students from Western’s Faculty of Science to collaborate with an interdisciplinary approach to crack a conundrum submitted by industry and government partners.
The majority of the problems contain an element of data analytics. Each participating business was invited to pose a challenge, which was assigned to a specific team today (Tuesday, February 17).
The teams, comprised of approximately 50 undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty from the Departments of Applied Mathematics, Basic Medical Sciences, Biology, Computer Science, and Statistical & Actuarial Sciences, as well as the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Social Science will spend the remainder of the week collaborating on ways to solve the problems and will present their findings on the final day of the workshop, which is this Friday (February 20).
Previous industry partners, like eQol Inc. have gone on to implement strategies developed by past IPSW teams. eQol Inc. develops and delivers home dialysis equipment. Last year, students prepared a cost algorithm using mock patient data and consumables used to determine the best client-based, cost-effective way to deliver those consumables.
Following IPSW 2014, a participating engineering student was offered a graduate internship and was immediately tasked with incorporating real data in the algorithm prototype. This eventually led to research collaboration with Mike Bauer from the Department of Computer Science.
Photography and videography opportunities, as well as media interviews are available.
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