APLIMAT Conferences started in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 2001; from then on, they have grown from 42 papers to 192 papers in 2007; from 67 participants to 246 participants (24 countries) in 2007. Nowadays, the conference has become an international forum where researchers and practitioners examine key issues in the field of applied mathematics and in the field of pedagogical methodology in mathematics education at technical and economics universities. As well as participants from universities and industries share ideas, knowledge and experiences among different disciplines.

Purpose

The purpose of Aplimat Conference is to promote discussions and interactions between researchers and practitioners focused on disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary issues, ideas, concepts, theories, methodologies and applications. We are particularly interested in fostering the exchange of concepts, research ideas, and other results which could contribute to the academic arena and also benefit business, and the industrial community.

What is Aplimat 2008?

Aplimat 2008 is an international forum for scientists and engineers, researchers and educatiors, theoreticians and practitioners in the fields of applied mathematics. The forum focuses into specific disciplinary research, and also in multi, inter, and trans-disciplinary studies and projects. One of its aims is to relate disciplines, fostering analogical thinking and, hence, producing input to the logical thinking.

Conference fields

- Algebra and its application
- Differential equations and their applications
- Engineering applications and scientific computations
- Financial and actuary mathematics
- Fuzzy mathematics and its applications
- Geometry and its application
- ^new Mathematics and Art
- ^new MATHEMATICA^® modeling and computations
- New trends in mathematics education
- Modeling and simulation
- Statistical methods in technical and economic sciences and practice

A Metaphor

Through Aplimat conferences, we are trying to relate the analytic thinking, required in focused conference´s sessions, with the synthetic thinking, required for analogies generation, which calls a for multi-focus domain and divergent thinking. We are trying to promote synergic relationships between analytically and synthetically oriented minds, as it is found between left and right brain hemispheres, by means of the corpus callosum. Then, Aplimat conference might be perceived as a forum, trying to bridge analytical with synthetically oriented efforts, convergent with divergent thinking, and focused specialists with non-focused or multi-focused generalists.

Why Aplimat 2008?

There are many good focused conferences in any one of the major themes of Aplimat Conference. There are also very good conferences even in the more specific areas included in the major themes of Aplimat Conference. There are also good general conferences, which have a wider scope and are more comprehensive. Each one of these kinds of conferences has its typical audience. Aplimat 2008 will bring together both kinds of audiences, so participants, with a focused research, will be able to:

1. Present their focused research in a specific area for scholars/researchers specialized in their paper discipline and, perhaps, for specialists from other related disciplines and generalists with a more comprehensive intellectual outlook.
2. Get feedback from researchers with the same specific background, as is usual in focused conferences.
3. Get possible feedback from scholars/researchers in related disciplines, thereby opening the possibility of analogies generation, new applications to/from different discipline, business or industrial areas; and, possibly, new models for re-thinking anew some of their research problems.
4. Organize sessions where papers from related areas are presented, in order to increase the probability of getting the benefits mentioned in (3).
5. Attract speakers with a wider intellectual interest in order to get a more comprehensive conceptual framework and to give context to their research effort.

This would allow specialists and focused researchers, to see the forest besides the tree of their discipline, and to be aware about the neighboring trees. Aplimat 2008 participants, with non-focused or multi-focused research or with a comprehensive intellectual, industrial or business interest, will be able to:

1. Present their research, ideas, reflections, new concepts or industrial innovations to a similar or a specialized audience, so suggestions about possible improvements could emerge and possibly new research or development projects could come out into view.
2. Present ideas that would require multi-disciplinary or interdisciplinary efforts to be researched or developed in action-research programs.
3. Constitute international, multi- and/or inter-disciplinary teams or workgroups in order to conduct research requiring synergic relationships among different kinds of talents, cognitive styles, intellectual faculties and/or research/industrial interests.
4. Create new research areas, based on both: a general framework and various disciplines or focused research areas.

Invited Sessions can be organized in a specific or a general theme. These Invited Sessions may grow to Focus Symposia, workshops, satellite events, micro-conferences or even conferences by their own in the context of Aplimat or as independent or associated spin offs from Aplimat. We will try to adopt this idea at second in this year. Invited Sessions with high quality papers might be selected for multiple-authors book publications.