IMADA: From zero to 100 in 50 years

– It was a dream.

This is how Associate Professor Emeritus Bjarne Toft describes the period before 1972 when the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science (IMADA) was founded at the University of Southern Denmark exactly 50 years ago. The Americans had sent the first man to the Moon, Allende had been elected President of Chile, and the Thy Camp (a communal and social experiment) had been held for the first time.

The University of Southern Denmark dreamed of founding a department of mathematics, but that dream was not shared in Aarhus or Copenhagen, where the two main Danish departments of mathematics were located. One of the arguments was that at the University of Southern Denmark it was not possible to establish a sensible library with the necessary mathematical literature – hence, Odense could not have its own department of mathematics.

– Professor Bundsgaard from Aarhus University suggested that the department be started up in Aarhus instead, and once a sizeable group had been built up and books collected for a library, the department could be relocated to Odense, says Bjarne Toft, who was only the third person to be employed at the department. Today, he can look back on the events of those days 50 years ago, when it all began.

The whole library issue was, according to Bjarne Toft, a very big deal. At a time before the internet and digitised books and periodicals, easy access to literature and in immediate association with researchers’ offices was required. Otherwise, no meaningful research could be conducted or, for that matter, teaching the next generation of mathematicians and computer scientists. The critics were right about that.

All that, however, did not mean that plans for a department of mathematics were scrapped in Odense. Quite the contrary. Thorkild Olsen, who was Head of the library at the University of Southern Denmark, decided to accept the challenge. He contacted Niels Erik Nørlund, who had previously been a professor at the University of Copenhagen and also long-time Director of the Geodetic Institute. At the time, Niels Erik Nørlund was 87 years old and owned what was perhaps the world’s largest private collection of mathematical literature. He was open to the idea of passing on his collection to the library at the University of Southern Denmark, and that’s how it became a reality.

– It was a great collection that included, among other things, all of Niels Bohr’s articles in duplicate with dedications. The department acquired the entire collection, including some amazing map collections, for DKK 450,000. If we wanted to, we could easily cover that amount by just selling a few of the books. There are some real gems in between, such as a first edition of Newton’s 18th-century book on differential calculus, Bjarne Toft says.

Computer science and programming became an entrenched part of IMADA

However, a library of mathematical literature was not enough to call IMADA a department proper. In 1972, the University hired Edgar Asplund and Hans Jørgen Munkholm to develop the department and library while fitting in the teaching at what was then Odense University.

It became the start of a journey that has lasted 50 years.

When drawing up a plan for the department, the two young mathematicians soon decided that the education programme in Mathematics at the University of Southern Denmark should focus on four equal fields: analysis, algebra, geometry and statistics. On top of this, they decided that the programme should always contain computer science and programming – a novel and in those days very modern and visionary idea. These basic principles of the curriculum design at IMADA can be traced right up to the present and are perhaps most evident by the fact that mathematics and computer science still belong together today at the Department.

In January 1974, Bjarne Toft became the third person to be hired, and in April Niels Jørgen Nielsen became the forth. At the same time, Edgar Asplund had been stricken with cancer, which led to his premature death in May 1974. Before his death, however, he had managed to put a lasting imprint on the Department which, over time, evolved into the IMADA of today.

– Asplund and Munkholm demonstrated huge foresight when deciding that one could not study mathematics without taking courses in computer science and programming. In addition, Polish refugee Andrzej Ormicki was hired early on to spearhead the computer science section at the Department. He, too, demonstrated immense foresight in relation to computer development. Among other things, he made sure that for many years the Department always had all the latest computer equipment, Bjarne Toft says.

Some of the computer equipment, which today is obsolete, is on display at the Department.

A changing department

Development proceeded slowly moving forward. As the years passed, more and more lecturers were hired and the number of students increased. It began to look like and be what had been envisioned from the get-go, namely a Department of Mathematics in Odense. Master's degree programmes in Computer Science and Mathematics-Economics came about during the 1980s.

Uffe Haagerup, who would become one of the world’s leading mathematicians, joined the Department in August 1974 as a very young and recent graduate of the University of Copenhagen. The first student to earn his degree from the Department was Knud Clemmensen, an ardent leftist and early environmental activist.

The department evolved in other areas, too. Bjarne Toft recounts an episode in 1974 in which he taught a large class of BSc students in Economics. He gazed across the assembly of young men and said it was indeed a shame that there were no girls present.

– A long-haired guy was sitting in the front row in an Icelandic wool shirt, smoking a pipe. He raised his hand and said it was nonsense because he was indeed a girl. So he – or indeed she – was, Bjarne Toft says, adding that over the years the proportion of female students and staff at the Department grew fast.

Pioneered in robotics

During the 1970s and 1980s, lecturers and researchers had a very large responsibility for the whole department, but they also had more freedom compared to the other Danish departments of mathematics in Copenhagen and Aarhus, which had a more top-heavy management.

This element of being the land of opportunity, while at the same time maintaining a strong focus on computer science and programming, became not only part of the DNA of the Department, but also that of companies in the vicinity of Odense.

In 1975, Professor of Applied Mathematics John Perram joined IMADA. He began promoting educational courses in robotics as early as the 1980s. This became an area of focus for IMADA and SDU as early as the early 1990s, when new and pioneering principles in controlling robots were introduced.

– I would say that IMADA and SDU has put a heavy stamp on much of the pioneering robotics industry that currently exists in Odense. A lot of students from the Department have done really well. These include Niels Jul Jacobsen, who established MiR (Mobile Industrial Robots) and Claus Riisager of Blue Ocean Robotics. The whole robotics industry has had a major impact on the surrounding community. This, along with the educational sector, it is probably where IMADA has had the greatest outward impact, Bjarne Toft says.

Judging by its output, the Department has also been phenomenally successful when considering the many graduates who work in many different companies and institutions with development, research and teaching. IMADA has also made its mark in the financial sector by virtue of the programme in Mathematics and Economics.

New fields of research

IMADA has proven to be a pioneer in other areas, too. In 2008, German researcher Daniel Merkle joined the Department.

Daniel Merkle’s unique field of research exists in the field of tension between chemistry and advanced computer science. Among other things, it’s about understanding what happens in complex chemical reactions when mixing ingredients. This research has applications in a wide range of areas, including in the detection of chemical substances, such as explosives at an airport, in the design of polymers to convert CO₂ and in the design of bacteria that can turn toxic substances into something that is harmless.

– IMADA gave me the opportunity to establish a research field that did not exist back then. It was a freedom that, as a researcher, you don’t find in many places, but I found it in Funen, Daniel Merkle says.

In 2008, when Daniel Merkle was hired, IMADA was still a relatively small department with just 10 to 12 computer scientists employed. However, the departmental management were highly aware of the fact that more interdisciplinary research was needed.

– But there were no set requirements in terms of what to research, and that was unique. I was allowed to develop my own field of research along the lines in which I saw the greatest potential. That opportunity made it extremely attractive for me to come to IMADA, Daniel Merkle explains.

However, the Department did not have the opportunity to shower the newly hired researchers with research funding. Daniel Merkle says that at the time he therefore based all his research on graduate students. That was the opportunity there was, but it was also enough. Over the next 10 years he thus developed what is today called ‘algorithmic cheminformatics’, in which the researchers at IMADA are still world leaders and which today attracts major international investments because this interdisciplinary field has managed to bring the most advanced form of computer science into the chemistry lab.

– At the same time as our success, IMADA has fostered an environment where you have been able to assemble your colleagues from various backgrounds and talk and discuss. I can explain to my colleagues from other fields about an issue whose application they may not understand, but we speak the same language and give each other input from our individual perspectives and research interests. This closeness between disciplines has always been a strength of the Department, says Daniel Merkle.

No Nobel Prizes, but still world leading

In other fields, too, researchers at IMADA have established themselves as world leaders. This is especially true in quantum mathematics, where Professor Jørn Ellegaard Andersen has pioneered the research area and where researchers from the world’s leading universities come to Odense to do their research at a level of utmost excellence.

According to Daniel Merkle, it is only natural that IMADA will never evolve into a department of Mathematics and Computer Science that is a leader in all fields, but he is pleased that the researchers at the Departments are not simply good, but the best in the world, in some extremely specific areas.

We are not the Max Planck Institute, Harvard or MIT. These institutions have created a whole machinery around creating Nobel Prize winners. We are researchers, but in our fields we are second to none. This is also what we tell our students and that becomes part of their self-understanding, Daniel Merkle says.

The students, of whom there are 750 today, benefit from the fact that IMADA has some of the world’s leading researchers in their specific disciplines. Daniel Merkle says that researchers at the Department are also highly committed to not just educating their students, but make them excel.

– Among other things, it is about making it clear what computer science is very early in the programme. It’s not about programming and computer games; it’s about abstract thinking. Once students understand that, it opens up a whole new world of opportunities in both research and jobs, and those competencies are at a premium, he says.

World leader in developing new computer languages

The revolution in computer science has seen an increasing international demand for what students from IMADA can do and what researchers are pioneering.

Another area of research in which the researchers from IMADA are world leaders is microservices. Microservices can be used, among other things, when different digital services need to talk together, which happens, for example, when using Google, watching Netflix or having to authorise a bank transaction with the MitID verification app.

In 2014, Italian researcher Fabrizio Montesi was hired at IMADA with the specific purpose of developing the Department’s profile in programming under the auspices of microservices. Fabrizio Montesi researches the development of computer languages with a particular focus on bringing computer languages as close to people’s way of thinking about software structures as possible. The idea is to make software systems more comprehensible and thus make it easier for humans and machines to communicate.

– This is yet another research area that we excel in at IMADA and where we have helped to make computer languages that have left their mark on the world, Fabrizio Montesi says.

Fabrizio Montesi has also developed what is called ‘choreographic programming’, which is a pioneering method to ensure that different computer systems collaborate properly by coordinating with each other over computer networks. The method has applications in cybersecurity, among other things. Choreographic programming fuses the math with computer science, and at IMADA they’re not simply good at stuff like that, but among the best in the world. Since Fabrizio Montesi joined IMADA, the department has attracted even more experts in microservices, choreographic programming, cybersecurity and related fields.

Indeed, the opportunity to develop his research field into becoming the frontrunner in the international elite was also what attracted Fabrizio Montesi to IMADA in 2014.

– There was an entrepreneurial spirit that I didn’t see anywhere else. They were willing to give a young researcher like me the opportunity to pursue my extremely ambitious research, and having mathematics and computer science under the same roof allows you to create synergy between the two areas, which strengthens the research within both of them, he says.

Sending ace students into the job market

Although IMADA in 2022 looks nothing like IMADA in 2014 or, for that matter, IMADA in 2008, when Daniel Merkle was hired, or IMADA in 1972, there are still a number of common features that have manifested themselves over the decades.

Among other things, IMADA is still characterised by the fact that it is the department of opportunity. This applies both to the researchers and students who frequent hallways on a daily basis.

Fabrizio Montesi reports that the whole organisation encourages students to tailor their own education programme, just as he himself was allowed to tailor his own research when he was hired.

He’s also delighted that the students at IMADA can always just knock on professors’ doors for a chat about this or that.

– Due to the mix of quality, diversity and the close environment of the education programme, a great many of our students land fantastic jobs when entering the job market. They are also advancing quickly in their careers and we also do a lot to help them get off to a good start, Fabrizio Montesi says.

When thinking back on the past 50 years at IMADA, Bjarne Toft can’t help but smile at how things have changed.

– We struggled through the first pioneering years, and it was fun, interesting, and developing to be a part of, although we also occasionally had to call upon outside help to teach those things, we wanted to teach our students. Now it is IMADA which is helping the outside world, and we can really be quite pleased with that, he says.