Teachers from Linköping at the International Modelling Week, Rwanda.

The last two years staff from Linköping University (LiU) have been involved with a fruitful cooperation with National University of Rwanda (NUR). As a part of a SIDA funded project new Master's program in Applied Mathematics has been offered to students at NUR. The program, including course content, have been developed in close collaboration between LiU and NUR staff. Also teachers from LiU have been involved as lecturers for many of the courses and also supervised the Master's students thesis work.

The first group of 14 students were admitted to the program in the spring 2008. After completing the courses the students started their research work with a month long visit to Linköping, in October 2009. This allowed the students to take advantage of the scientific environment at LiU (such as library, computer resources, and access to supervisors) to get started on their Masters thesises. The students continued working on their scientific projects, with the help of NUR staff, during spring 2010. Of the original 14 students 12 have now completed their Masters projects.

The conference International Modelling Week (IMW), August 23-27, in Kigali and Butare, Rwanda, gave the students the opportunity to present their work to an international audience: representatives of universities from the East African Community, South Africa and Linköping University. The scientific work presented by the students were of good quality. Three of the students presenting their work at the conference are now working towards their PhD at the Department of Mathematics at LiU. The other students have started working at educational institutes in Rwanda and contribute to raising the level of mathematical knowledge in the country.

Besides student presentations the IMW conference NUR and LiU staff started the evaluation of the Masters program. Course content and planning were presented in detail. After discussions it is clear that the Masters program has been successful and delivered the promised results. A second group of students will be admitted in spring 2011.

Fredrik Berntsson and Vitalij Tjatyrko, MAI