Design and Implementation of an Industrial Mathematics Degree Course

The reform of the Italian academic organisation gave the to mathematics community the opportunity to create new degree courses where elements of informatics and computational mathematics are introduced together with the classical mathematical courses. The aim is to give the students the necessary tools and methods to apply their mathematical knowledge to the solution of real problems arising from scientific and industrial applications; in the third paragraph we briefly describe the economic and industrial situation that characterises Bologna and its geographical area and some of the connections of mathematics with local industries and their demands. A three-year course of Informatics-Computational Mathematics started in Bologna at the beginning of the current academic year (2001-2002): all the teaching and research skills of the mathematicians of Bologna (in particular in the area of computational and applied mathematics) converge towards the local industrial demands and the needs for a new interdisciplinary research. In order to achieve a high level characterisation, it is necessary to create collaboration among the teachers in the definition of the courses programs and in their realisations, because the solution of real problems requires a unitary knowledge of different mathematical and informatics instruments. We report in particular the experience of the informatics and computational courses.