The Summer School has been dedicated to one of the proponents and ?rst Chairman of the Strategy Board of MACSI-net, the late Jacques Louis Lions (see the dedication by Roland Glowinski). MACSI-net is a European Network of Excellence, where both enterprises and university institutions co-operate to solve challenging problems to their mutual bene?t. In particular the network focuses on strategies to enhance interactions between industry and academia. The aim is to help industry (in particular SMEs) alert academia about industrial needs in terms of advanced mathematical and computational methods and tools. The network is mul- disciplinary oriented, combining the power of applied mathematics, scienti?c computing and engineering, for modeling and simulation. It was set up by a joint e?ort of ECCOMAS and ECMI European associations. Thisparticularevent,occurredduringMarch17-22,2003,wasajointe?ort ofthe TrainingCommittee (chairedby VC)andIndustrialRelationsComm- tee (chairedby JP)to alert both Academia and Industry about the increasing role of Multidisciplinary Methods and Tools for the design of complex pr- uctsinvariousareasofindustrialinterest.Thisincreasingcomplexityisdriven by societal constraints to be satis?ed in a simultaneous and a?ordable way. The mastering of complexity implies the sharing of di?erent tools by di?erent actors which require much higher level of communication between culturally di?erent people. The school o?ered to young researchers the opportunity to be exposed to the presentation of real industrial and societal problems and the relevant innovative methods used; the need of further contributions from mathematics to improve or provide better solutions had also been considered.
