Director's Message

Mathematics Empowers Technology, Innovation Shapes the Future

Since the beginning of the 21st century, mathematics has been deeply and broadly integrated with other disciplines, playing a vital and transformative role in driving technological innovation. The emerging wave of industrial revolution presents mathematics with unprecedented challenges across a range of cutting-edge technological domains. These challenges, in turn, have become an external force accelerating the advancement of mathematical research. In China, the importance of applied mathematics has steadily risen to a strategic national priority. At this critical juncture—when the “springtime” of applied mathematics is just beginning—Fudan University, with strategic foresight, initiated the establishment of the Center for Applied Mathematics and has swiftly moved to implement its institutional framework.

In fact, Fudan University has long been a national leader in cultivating high-level talent in applied mathematics and in leveraging mathematics to drive technological innovation. The university has made significant contributions to the translation of research into technology and to regional economic and social development. Examples include pioneering work in mathematical modeling for electrical logging, valve timing in internal combustion engines, the theoretical foundations of neural networks, intrinsic structures of fluid equations, integrated circuit design, and intelligent decision-making systems—each addressing real-world industrial problems through advanced mathematics.

Building upon Fudan’s rich legacy in applied mathematics, the Center for Applied Mathematics (CAM) is committed to both preserving this tradition and advancing bold innovation. Our mission is to lead the global direction of applied mathematics research; to foster deep interdisciplinary integration between mathematics and other scientific domains; to identify key mathematical problems that have the potential to drive disruptive technological breakthroughs; to translate research outcomes into tangible applications; and to enhance talent cultivation and evaluation systems in applied mathematics.

We firmly believe that, in the near future, Fudan-CAM will be home to teams capable of undertaking major national and regional missions, leading high-impact research directions in applied mathematics, and delivering world-class theories and algorithms that address critical bottlenecks in science and technology.