ECMI – European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry is a consortium of academic institutions from Europe and industrial companies which act cooperatively with the aim of promoting and supporting mathematical modelling in activities which are of social and economic importance. They also educate mathematicians for solving real problems and thus increase the number of mathematical experts in respective fields of applied mathematics.

This renowned organisation has recently announced their new Vice President and they appointed Dr Nataša Krejic, Full Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Informatics, who will take over the new position on January 1st.

Prof. Krejic conducts research in numerical mathematics and optimisation with applications. In the course of her research career, she was a visiting researcher at the University of Campinas in Brazil on several occasions, participating in the projects financed by Sao Paolo Research Foundation, Brazil, Erasmus Mundus researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology (Holland, 2009), senior researcher at the Central European University in Budapest (2009) and Sigma Agilee scholarship holder at the Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. She published more than 60 scientific papers and five textbooks. In 2004, she received the successful researcher award from the Ministry of Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia and Charles Broyden award in 2016. She mentored seven doctoral dissertations. She was the project leader in two research projects and she is the editor in three international mathematical journals.

This choice is a result of the activity of our Department of Mathematics and Informatics within this consortium. The Department became a full member of the ECMI educational node in May last year with the Master Programme in Applied Mathematics and it is the only full member outside the European Union, and together with the Sofia University forms the only full educational node in Eastern Europe. ECMI committee gave high scores to this programme, recognising it as modern and promising, opening up opportunities to follow modern trends in applied mathematics and being harmonized with high standards of ECMI.

As a full member of this big European mathematical family, the Department of Mathematics and Informatics gained numerous advantages. ECMI regularly organizes all forms of meetings, conferences for teachers and students, winter and summer schools for students, meetings aimed to model real problems (so-called Modelling Week), publishing calls for various projects, posting job announcement for European companies, etc. Students can share their experiences and knowledge via courses in applied mathematics. Most importantly, the students of this master programme will also receive ECMI certificate after fulfilling some additional requirements, in addition to the master degree certificate from University of Novi Sad, which will open up a door to Europe for them. Three years ago, the Faculty of Sciences hosted the 99th Meeting of the European Study Group for Solving Current Problems in the Industry which was organised in collaboration with the European Consortium. Over 50 mathematicians from Serbia, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Poland participated and jointly solved problems of six Serbian companies. The workshop created opportunities for future scientific projects and further cooperation of the Faculty of Sciences with the present companies, as well as the cooperation among the participating universities.

Next year, the Faculty of Sciences will host ECMI Modelling Week, and will welcome numerous master students from ECMI universities, and the students will work on real problems that can be solved by applying mathematical modelling.