Mathematics as a Technology: Challenges for the next 10 Years

No doubt: Mathematics has become a technology in its own right, maybe even a key technology. Technology may be defined as the application of science to the problems of commerce and industry. And science? Science maybe defined as developing, testing and improving models for the prediction of system behavior; the language used to describe these models is mathematics and mathematics provides methods to evaluate these models. Here we are! Why has mathematics become a technology only recently? Since it got a tool, a tool to evaluate complex, "near to reality" models: Computer! The model may be quite old - Navier-Stokes equations describe flow behavior rather well, but to solve these equations for realistic geometry and higher Reynolds numbers with sufficient precision is even for powerful parallel computing a real challenge. Make the models as simple as possible, as complex as necessary - and then evaluate them with the help of efficient and reliable algorithms: These are genuine mathematical tasks.