Highlights from the 11th Industrial Problem solving Workshop

A few weeks ago IVADO, The Centre des Recherches en Mathématique and the Fin ML network hosted together the 11th Industrial Problem solving Workshop.

Seven of IVADO’s industrial partners have each submitted a problem and a corresponding dataset for participants to solve. More than 140 participants were given a week to familiarise themselves with the problems and find creative ways to tackle these challenges. Each team was composed of professors, industry professionals, post doctoral researchers, graduate and undergraduate students coming from various academic backgrounds but mainly from data science and mathematics.

We are very fortunate to have an event like this where keen spirited individuals have a chance to work on problems specifically selected for their high degree of difficulty. During that week, participants were tasked to step out of their comfort zone, to challenge preconceptions and to look at the world with a different perspective by letting the data speak for itself.

This year’s edition offered a Visualization Workshop and a Pitch Workshop to help participants better communicate their research observations. All the teams had a chance to present their work during the closing ceremony where the Air Canada team won both the Best Visualization and the Public’s favorite Pitch awards.

We would like to outline the work of Martin Dallaire and Momo Ziazet Junior who both won the Most Valuable Participant prize and the work of Jérémy Rieussec and William Désilets who both won the Most Dynamic participant prize. Each was awarded 500$ in cash prize.

Even if all the problems were not completely solved, we have deepened our understanding of them and created bonds between industry and academia that continue to live on even after the event.

The seven industrial partners are: Environment Canada, Banque Nationale, Société Général, TD Asset Management, IATA, Air Canada and Coveo.