Working together: time and means
Through their needs, the applied sciences are instrumental in creating new mathematical theories. Yet many researchers regret there are not closer links with mathematicians, who are considered as “difficult to interest”. The mathematical methods themselves are not widely disseminated towards applications, a situation that has led to frequent concern being expressed over the limited exploitation of research results. ANDRA, in particular, has stressed that “too little of its research conducted in collaboration with fundamental research becomes operational.”
Several causes have been identified for this shortcoming. Communication is made difficult by differences in vocabulary and dialogue, but also in the centres of interest. In addition, three-year ANR projects are too short to establish a dialogue and identify a problem that interests the two (or even three) communities involved. Such collaboration requires time and effort and invariably a number of unsuccessful attempts. Added to this, there are also difficulties of evaluating projects and recruiting from several different disciplines. France is perhaps an exception, since in the US and England disciplines are not cloistered in Research and training units (UFR) and there is more enthusiasm and curiosity between the different experts. In France, the disconnection between disciplines is not conducive to mixing and interaction.
This being said, even though greater interaction encourages the creation of ideas, it should not be forgotten that it also takes effort and a certain non-conservatism to really work together. Each researcher must remain focused on his or her theme but a balance must be found between this need and the transversality of mathematics in applications. Bringing together individuals geographically and having a critical mass of diverse skills is a prerequisite to successful teamwork, but the first requirement is above all the willingness of people to work together and recognition of the community.
The transfer of methods to the operational sphere, even if that involves considerable developmental work, is vital for promoting the value of research. It is also important to make developments that are interoperable and reusable more available and to allow the scientific community access to data so as to improve the capitalisation of results. INRIA is a large structure that has done a lot in this regard, but there is a serious lack of smaller intermediate organisations, close to the university community. Here, it is worth mentioning the initiatives of the groups ALLenvi and ALListene, and the creation of simulation groups such as those in Paris, or MaiMoSiNE in Grenoble. These are good ideas that should not be left on the shelf and must not be based solely on the dynamism of a few willing participants, likely to run out of energy in the long term. Decisions must be made on real directives and choices and the means to carry them out must be made available. The creation of permanent posts for administrative personnel and engineers will be an important step.
