This workshop celebrated the remarkable success of the Applied Nonlinear Mathematics Research Group in the Department of Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol, UK, started by John Hogan more than 20 years ago. As with much research from the group, there was an eclectic, interdisciplinary nature to the meeting, with speakers from Physics, Engineering Bioscience and Mathematics.

The meeting was opened by Sir Eric Thomas the Vice Chancellor of the University of Bristol, who reminded the audience that when Hogan joined the Engineering Mathematics Department in 1992, it was a very different place with the University sector in the UK slowly emerging from a prolonged period of under-investment. Through canny politics, which included naming his research group after the then UK research council's current funding initiative, in a few short years John was able to make some inspired hires and obtain sustained funding to build the Applied Nonlinear Mathematics Group into one of the strongest groups in applied dynamical systems throughout the world. Indeed, SIAM still uses for publicity the photograph of more than 20 participants from the Bristol Group at a Snowbird meeting in the early 2000s.

The meeting itself saw a series of plenary talks from Chris Budd, David Chillingworth, Stephen Coombes, Frederic Dias, Enric Fossas, Paul Glendinning, Phil Holmes, Robert Mackay, Nigel Mottram, Tom Mullin, John Ockendon, Steven Shaw, Gabor Stepan, Michael Stiassnie, Marco Antonio Teixeira, Jean-Marc van den Broeck and Marian Wiercigroch. Topics included many of the diverse interests from John Hogan's career; water waves, piecewise smooth systems, liquid crystals, engineering mechanics and much more beside. In addition there were talks on MEMs (Microelectromechanical systems), metamaterials, cockroaches, machine tooling, neuroscience, friction and the fundamentals of complexity science. An even greater array of topics in applied nonlinear mathematics were covered in lively poster session, with posters from PhD students to full professors, followed by dinner in the Lord Mayor of Bristol's Mansion House.

Group picture.

In a sense, this meeting was the latest in a series held in Bristol that began 13 years ago with the influential "Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, Where do we go from Here?" which spawned an edited volume of the same title (click here for a book review in the Dynamical Systems Magazine from October 2003). For the present meeting, there will be an edited volume of the IMA Journal of Applied Mathematics due out next year, inspired by some of the talks. As with that first workshop and all intervening ones though, the key memory for those who were there was the air of informality, collaboration and fun.

Long may the tradition continue!

Alan Champneys