The Wrocław University of Science and Technology (WUST) was founded in 1945 on the basis of the German Königliche Technische Hochschule Breslau and scientific traditions of the Lvov Polytechnic. Since the very beginning of its existence it has been an important centre of technical education. Today it belongs to the best technical universities in Poland. It consists of 16 faculties. WUST has about 2000 academic teachers and 34 thousands students.
Mathematics was an important part of the WUST since its founding in 1945. In that time some of math courses were taught by professor Hugo Steinhaus (1887-1972). Professor Steinhaus was a well known Polish mathematician especially because of his theorems in functional analysis. But he was less known as an applied mathematician collaborating with representatives of different sciences and industry. In 1948 he founded in Wroclaw the first Polish interdisciplinary seminar on applications of mathematics.
For almost five decades (1968-2014), mathematics was an integral part of the multidisciplinary Faculty of Fundamental Problems of Technology at the WUST. Finally, in 2015, mathematics became its own entity as the Faculty of Pure and Applied Mathematics. At present, it consists of 86 faculty members, including 16 full professors and 18 associate professors, being one of the largest mathematics faculties in Poland.
The quality of the mathematics faculty at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology has been ranked among top ten in Poland by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education for many years (among top three, when speaking of technical universities). This fact, together with innovative academic programs, has always attracted many excellent students. At present, the Faculty teaches over 600 math students, which is response to the demands of the booming job market for math graduates. The Faculty also teaches math courses for students who major in other branches of science and engineering. Moreover, high quality research is conducted in many branches of pure and applied mathematics, from analysis, differential equations and their applications, probability and stochastic processes, through statistics, to financial and actuarial mathematics.
The Faculty of Pure and Applied Mathematics offers undergraduate, graduate and PhD programs. Since January 2016 the Faculty of Pure and Applied Mathematics is divided into two departments: Department of Pure Mathematics and Department of Applied Mathematics. Department of Applied Mathematics offers undergraduate and graduate programs: Engineering and Master on Applied Mathematics. Master Program is given in English. In 2013 ECMI inspectors evaluated that Master program and gave positive opinion. Since February 2014 the WUST is the official ECMI teaching center.
It should be mentioned that in 1990 was created the Hugo Steinhaus Center (HSC). At present the HSC is strictly connected with the Department of Applied Mathematics. The goal of the HSC is to organize, encourage and support research and education in mathematical techniques as applied in science and technology. Random and chaotic phenomena provide the unifying intellectual theme of the Center, and represent an area where certain frontiers of mathematics, economics, natural sciences, and engineering can fully overlap on problems that are fundamental and yet have practical implications in finance and technology. A feature of the Center is a synthesis of viewpoints of mathematicians, economists, computer scientists, physicists, chemists and engineers, working in the Center on equal footing. In a natural way the HSC propagates the ECMI ideas. At the end it should be emphasized that mathematicians from the HSC keep close contacts with different Wroclaw groups on applied mathematics.