IPSW 2025: A Week of Collective Intelligence Between Research and Industry

From June 2 to 6, 2025, the 15th edition of the Industrial Problem Solving Workshop (IPSW) took place at HEC Montréal. Organized by the Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM), in partnership with IVADO and GERAD, the event was coordinated by Jean-François Plante, professor at HEC Montréal.

Over five days, around 40 participants, primarily graduate students at the master’s and doctoral levels, accompanied by professors, innovation advisors and company representatives, joined forces to tackle four challenges submitted by IVADO member organizations.

This year’s challenges included:

1. Modeling freight transportation no-shows (Air Canada Cargo)
   Coordinator:  Janosch Ortmann, UQÀM
2. Image recognition for verifying cargo anchor compliance (Air Canada Cargo)
   Coordinator: Rafael Menelau Oliveira e Cruz, ÉTS
3. Modeling international transaction volumes (National Bank of Canada)
   Coordinator: Ting-Huei Chen, Université Laval
4. Mapping the data-valorization research community through collaboration analysis (IVADO)
   Coordinator:  Gilles Caporossi, HEC Montréal

Working in multidisciplinary teams, the students leveraged their expertise in statistics and mathematics to offer concrete solution pathways using real-world data provided by the companies.

Inspired by the UK study group model, IPSW fosters direct exchanges between academic and industrial communities. As a true incubator for new ideas, it allows organizations to test innovative approaches while offering students the opportunity to confront complex, applied problems with their methodological tools.

This 15th edition once again demonstrated the depth of the exchanges, the originality of the ideas, and the promise of the initial results. While some challenges still warrant further exploration, the work accomplished sets the stage for meaningful future collaborations.

Relive the highlights of this edition in photos >>

See you next year for IPSW 2026!