Case Studies

The first collaboration with Edinburgh Airport was in 2020, when they sponsored the interdisciplinary MSc 'Employability Challenge'. This challenge saw students from the School of Mathematics and the Business School working together to provide optimization solutions for a new parking system.

We have since collaborated on multiple student projects, including PhD competitions and several Operational Research MSc dissertations over the years.

Ember, the UK's first all-electric, intercity bus service, have been collaborating with the School in a range of collaborative research projects. From a 3-month PhD internship, with the aim to develop a solution method, this developed into an Accelerated Knowledge Transfer to Innovate grant (AKT2I) to integrate the initial proof of concept. 

Recently, we have successfully achieved an Impact Accelerated Account project for a Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA), that will develop and implement algorithms, and stress-test the algorithms in collaboration with Ember’s operations team. 

Our relationship with Police Scotland started with an Operational Research MSc project. The project looked at identifying stolen goods by using stolen bike data such as location, date, colour, brand, model and cross referencing this with data scraped from reselling sites to identify potential matches based on similarity in description and time/place. 

Before the project started, Police Scotland spoke at a Knowledge Exchange & Impact seminar, where they presented several case studies that showcased how mathematics could be applied in various policing scenarios.  

One key outcome from this seminar is the founding of a Seed Impact Acceleration Account project. The project has the main objective of developing a strong and long-term partnership between Police Scotland and the Optimization and Operational Research group in the School. As a first step towards this goal, by utilising the data on past incidents, the team aims to develop an optimal data-driven resourcing system for Police Scotland by interfacing a comprehensive simulation model with an optimization model. 

Sopra Steria, a major tech player in Europe recognised for its consulting, digital services and software development, helps its clients drive their digital transformation to obtain tangible and sustainable benefits. It provides end-to-end solutions to make large companies and organisations more competitive by combining in-depth knowledge of a wide range of business sectors and innovative technologies with a fully collaborative approach. 

The School of Mathematics has collaborated with Sopra Steria since 2019 on a range of teaching activities across different study levels.   

The first point of contact was the supervision of MSc dissertation projects in summer 2019. From then, the range of activities include the supervision of six more MSc Operational Research dissertations, two consultancy style projects for the MSc course Methodology, Modelling and Consulting Skills, and the sponsorship of a UK-wide Operational Research Challenge for UG students. The winners of the OR Challenge were also offered a paid summer internship with Sopra Steria.

Sopra Steria have also taken part in our 'Employability Tuesday' series, giving the students an overview of their recruitment process and what a day-to-day looks like for a consultant. As a result, a few of our graduates have successfully joined Sopra Steria as full time consultants after graduation. 

Sopra Steria has also presented at a Knowledge Exchange & Impact seminar, providing insight into the variety and progression of engagement between Sopra Steria and School of Mathematics students, showing how effectively academia and industry can work together. They have also contributed to a panel on this topic at the University of Edinburgh's Learning and Teaching Conference 2023.

Space Intelligence is a NatureTech company specialising in Digital MRV across the tropics to support nature-based solutions to climate change. They create baseline maps of forests using their own HabitatMapper product, which combines satellite data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and decades of scientific expertise. 

Space Intelligence has collaborated with the School of Mathematics since 2019, starting as external industry supervisor for MSc consultancy style dissertations. Through the years, they have also supervised individual projects and hosted a PhD student as an intern for a period of 3 months.  

We have also collaborated with them in an academic consultancy project “Biomass uncertainty."

Two of our recent postgraduates have been recruited by the company in recent years.