The European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry (ECMI) was founded, largely due to the driving energy of Michiel Hazewinkel on the 14th April, 1986 in Neustadt-Mussbach in West Germany. The founder signatories were A. Bensoussan (INRIA, Paris), A. Fasano (University of Florence), M. Hazewinkel (CWI, Amsterdam), M. Heilio (Lappeenranta University, Finland), F. Hodnett (University of Limerick, Ireland), H. Martens (Norwegian Institute of Technology, Trondheim), S. McKee (University of Strathclyde, Scotland), H. NeURzert (University of Kaiserslautern, Germany), D. Sundstrom (The Swedish Institute of Applied Mathematics, Stockholm), A. Tayler (University of Oxford, England) and Hj. Wacker (University of Linz, Austria). The European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry is dedicated to: (a) promote the use of mathematical models in Industry (b) educate industrial mathematicians to meet the growing demand for such experts (c) operate on a European scale. ECMI is still a young organisation but its membership is growing fast. Although it has still to persuade more industrialists to join, ECMI certainly operates on a European scale and a flourishing postgraduate programme with student exchange has been underway for some time. It is perhaps fitting that the first open meeting of ECMI was held at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Glasgow is and was the industrial capital of Scotland and was, and arguably still is, Britain's second city after London; when this volume appears it will have rightly donned the mantle of the cultural capital of Europe.