History of the structure

Cemosis was created in January 2013 following the call for excellence initiative attractiveness programme 2012 to accompany the arrival of C. Prud’homme as Professor at IRMA in the Modeling & Control team of P. Helluy. On the one hand, it was to open up new topics of research in addition to fusion and plasma physics, which is at the heart of the team, and to develop relations between mathematics and enterprises. This opportunity and the need to develop multi-disciplinary research, in particular in modeling, simulation and optimization in Strasbourg, have naturally led to the creation of Cemosis.

In France in 2013, there were local and national structures for modeling and simulation. At the local level, we can mention MaiMoSiNE in Grenoble, of which C. Prud’homme was one of the founders, CaSciMoDOT in Orleans or ICS in Paris and at the national level the Mathematics Agency in Interaction with the Company and the Company ( AMIES) or the House of Simulation (MdS). Such structures (interdisciplinary and/or industry-oriented) have also been set up abroad: for example, our German neighbors ICSC in Heidelberg, Matheon in Berlin and AICES in Aachen. Mathematicians are at the origin of all these structures in France and abroad and they are the driving forces once put in place.

In 2015, the Study on the Socio-Economic Impact of Mathematics (EISEM) in France made an initial assessment of “the strong contribution of mathematics to the national economy and this study reveals/considers that they will play a major role to meet the industrial and societal challenges of tomorrow “.

Cemosis, along with MaiMoSiNE, is cited in this report and is seen as an orientation to follow for research-industry relations (pages 15 and 42). This report has played an incontestable role in facilitating the discussions and the promotion of mathematics on the Strasbourg site with colleagues, the institution, students and companies alike. In November 2016, Cemosis is recruiting a Research Engineer for an indefinite period funded by the University of Strasbourg. This recruitment foreshadows an important turning point for our structure. During 2017, the MSO network was created under the impetus of AMIES: structures emerged in each region attesting to the issues shared by the mathematical community on relations with companies, society or other disciplines. Beyond the stakes, we could even talk about shared desires. At the end of 2017, Cemosis welcomed the team in charge of the Simseo project in Strasbourg, Alsacalcul Services, whose goal is to promote simulation for small and medium-sized businesses, in order to provide a homogeneous showcase of services around simulation in Alsace. We are writing a 4-year strategic development plan with a transition for Cemosis to become a technological platform of the University. If Cemosis does not have platform revenue such as, for example, the Sertit, the Regional Service of Image Processing and Remote Sensing, it is considered to have high potential by the University and is displayed in as such since the opening of the University’s corporate portal in January 2018.

If in 2010 with the creation of MaiMoSiNE, 2011 that of AMIES and in 2013 that of Cemosis, the context of the development of mathematical relations companies was more the observation of the inexistence or lack of visibility of the interface between mathematics and business, in 2017 it is quite different! The digital revolution of companies, the advent of HPC and cloud computing, the Internet of Things, or additive manufacturing are subjects where mathematics is a key factor.

Cemosis has decided since its creation to have an approach of research-oriented applications, interdisciplinary and collaborations. This approach is supported by these profound (digital) transformations in our society and in companies.

The organization of Cemosis

First of all mathematicians

Cemosis has two basic components: research and training. Concerning Research, it relies mainly on the team MOCO of the IRMA Laboratory, and on the Cemosis Training is based on theMasterCSMI in Scientific Informatics and Mathematics of Information. In addition, there are current colleagues from the Mulhouse Mathematics Laboratory (LMIA) who are also members of Cemosis as well as colleagues with their expertise in other disciplines (computer science and engineering).

A team and an organization

The team is made up of a director, two full-time research engineers, one of whom is in charge of project management with the director, and two project managers (company and inter-disciplinary). a business developer and a group of experts both in connection with other disciplines and with companies. In addition, every year a large number of research engineers (temporary positions), doctoral students, master’s students, trainees, and other collaborators contribute to the activities of Cemosis.

The list of current members is available at http://www.cemosis.fr/team.

Cemosis brings together(i)an executive committee once a month to discuss, decide and coordinate actions,(ii)an orientation committee once a year which is composed of 4 VP of the University of Strasbourg, a representative of the CNMI INSMI, directors of the IRMA laboratory, the UFR and Labex IRMIA and AMIES as well as a business leader. We have two people from outside the University of Strasbourg in this steering committee: this seems important to us to have a critical external view of all our actions.

Competencies

Cemosis offers expertise in the following areas:

• Modeling, Simulation, and Optimization (MSO)
• High-Performance Computing (HPC)
• Signal and Image(SIP)
• Data Processing and Mining (DPM)

These skills have been recognized by the EISEM report as crucial technologies to ensure the success of collaborations between companies and mathematics. They are also very valuable for multidisciplinary collaborations. These skills are obviously strongly related to computers.

An important aspect of our skills is the development of software for numerical methods, algorithms, and applications. It is an important means of transmitting and sharing our research and our work as part of our collaborations. Cemosis has developed open software platforms such as its flagship software Feel ++ – around which users/developers/ researchers gather to collaborate. Feel ++ is clearly an asset in our interdisciplinary relations and with companies, it comes in support of MSO and HPC expertise and contains many results of our research.

Cemosis develops other software such as AngioTK (software pipeline for the reconstruction of blood vessels from medical images), the H2020 cloud / HPC MSO4SC e-infrastructure or Selalib (plasma physics).

The missions and values ​​of Cemosis

The missions of Cemosis are as follows:

• To be a driving force, an interface and a showcase (i) between mathematics and other disciplines (ii) between mathematical research and academic research with companies;
• Actively participate in the positive change in the image of mathematics in other disciplines, in society and in business;
• Disseminate knowledge associated with Cemosis expertise in the socio-economic world;
• Federate efforts in the areas of modeling, simulation and optimization, high-performance computing and mass data processing in Alsace and more widely in the Grand-Est region;
• Develop strategic partnerships (regional, national and international) with laboratories and companies on flagship projects.

For this, we rely on values ​​and principles shared by all colleagues:

• Mathematics, mathematical modeling, and mathematical methods provide powerful frameworks and tools for solving academic, industrial and societal challenges.
• Conversely, academic, industrial, and societal challenges can feed and help develop mathematics in new directions and provide new unexpected problems.
• In the new digital world and the industry of the future, mathematics through modeling, simulation and optimization, signal and image processing, high-performance computing, data processing, and mining are key technologies.
• Initial and continuing education is crucial in a rapidly changing world (technologically wise).
• Open software platforms to bring together user/developer/ research communities and the agile collaboration environment are critical components of successful collaboration.

The poles of Cemosis

We organized Cemosis in three poles:(i)project,(ii)training and(iii)software and infrastructure. This organization corresponds to the day-to-day operational functioning.

Projects

There are three levels of research projects: (i)short term – up to 12 months – master tutored projects – tutored internship – initial collaborative project – services(ii)medium term – up to 2 years – collaborative project – services(iii)long term – 3 years or more – research collaboration

Different modalities are available for these partnerships or services: tutored master project, PEPS FRIENDS 1 and 2, ANR, FUI, EU, CIFRE Ph.D., industrial contracts. The project selection process, either by contracting with a company or by submitting a proposal to a call, verifies that the project must be in line with Cemosis’ strategic development plan. If Cemosis can not answer a request, it helps to find the expertise within UNISTRA or the network MSO / AMIES.

Training and Events

Cemosis relies heavily on the CSMI Master and its students to build bridges with other disciplines and companies through:

(i)Semester Projects in Master’s First and Second Year in Master’s First and Second Year(ii) second year Internships. Cemosis organizes events such as(i)a regular mathematics math entreprise seminar for the CSMI Master open to L2 and higher students,(ii)the Feel++ user days(iii))SEME (Mathematical Study-Business Week(iv )Master Classes (v)Multidisciplinary Seminars, Workshops and Conferences

Cemosis participates in the organization of events such as:(i)Math Job Forum (FEM) – dissemination of information, research of participating companies

(ii)Schools of summer – eg Cemracs 2015, 2016, Vivabrain summer school in 2017. Finally, Cemosis develops mini-courses around software platforms.

Software and IT Services

Drawing on the IRMA engineering team and MOCO’s expertise, Cemosis has developed a collaboration platform hosting research projects and related software as well as courses.

The principles are as follows: (i) the mathematical core of the software is openly available and deployed rapidly and (ii) depending on the collaboration, the resulting application can be open-source or closed. Same for the associated data.

Finally, Cemosis is in charge of the service offer for the Strasbourg super-computer to companies.

Partnerships and Success

We present some examples of collaborations illustrating different aspects of our work at Cemosis.

E-Infrastructure MSO4SC: Mathematical Modeling, Simulation & Optimization for Societal Challenges with Scientific Computing

Cemosis participates in the European project MSO4SC which aims to “provide mathematical technologies and its applications to solve societal challenges as a service through an infrastructure online oriented HPC “.

Cemosis contributes the integration of Feel ++, identified as a Mathematical Framework in MSO4SC, as well as two pilot applications associated with flagship collaborations of Cemosis:(i)Eye2brain and(ii)Hifimagnet. The first is an international collaboration (France, Italy, USA) whose objective is to develop a reliable and efficient calculation framework of the Eye / Brain system allowing computer-assisted interpretations of clinical data. The second is a collaboration with CNRS large equipment, the LNCMI, on the modeling and simulation of intense magnetic fields (recent record in France of 37T in Grenoble, partly using some of our work). These applications are based on Feel ++ and its toolboxes (CFD, CSM, FSI, Heat) which are also available.

The figure below presents the layer differences of the MSO4SC e-infrastructure.

Layers of the MSO4SC e-infrastructureMSO4SC

The offer is to greatly simplify access to HPC and powerful frameworks through a web portal called MSO Portal. We are currently thinking of offering services to businesses through the Strasbourg super-computer. We have already contacted various structures such as GENCI to discuss the exploitation of this e-infrastructure.

This project was funded by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program of the European Union under grant agreement no. 731063.

Axessim

An industrial success of Cemosis is that of the collaboration with the company AxesSim, specialized in the development of electromagnetic simulation software. From the internship to the CIFRE thesis in business and multi-annual R & D projects, this collaboration has provided the company with significant competitive advantages for itself and its customers (THALES, Dassault Aviation, SAFRAN, CEA, …) , for example on the study of the interaction of Radar waves in the aeronautical field or the simulation of sensor antennas on the surface of the human body. New methods of calculation that make the best use of new computer architectures have been developed.

This project was originally funded by a pre-AMIES math-business PEPS.

Hager

With the proliferation of photovoltaic panels and the possibility of selling its energy production in Germany, new problems have emerged: the massive rejection of energy causes disruption of the power grid or the waste of energy due to energy. energy not consumed or not sold. The goal of our collaboration with the company Hager was first to control the stored energy via batteries and to control the rejection of energy on the grid through the electrical signature (E-Roadmap) that the house must satisfy on critical parts of a day. We have contributed the modeling of the device, the mathematical formulation and the implementation of the energy management algorithm of the device denoted EMG in the figure below showing the whole device.

To carry out this project, we collaborated with the University of Burgundy and in particular Jean-Baptiste Caillau who is specialist in optimization and optimal control. This is a good example of what the MSO network can do for business-to-business relationships: if not all skills are gathered on a site, we can use a node in the network to provide the missing expertise. PEPS 1 AMIES funding has facilitated this collaboration.

High level of device architecture implemented by Hager for the German market.

Load curve classification

In order to better understand the consumption of each of its customers, Électricité de Strasbourg has put in place load curve measuring devices. The charge of each customer is calculated for 30 minutes and the curve has been recorded. By crossing this information with the outside temperature, the type of customer (individual or professional), the type of heating, it is possible to predict the load of the network.

The purpose of the collaboration is to obtain an unsupervised classification of the population.

The forms and periodicity of the curves, the correlation between different days or dependence between the load and the external factors are all factors taken into account to achieve the classification. This work was initiated during the industrial study group in Strasbourg in 2014.