Background.
The seeds for MAIT were planted in 2004, when Stephen Halperin, dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences initiated the idea of offering a professional Masters program through the Norbert Wiener Center for Harmonic Analysis and Applications. He enlisted Professor John Benedetto, director of the center, to assemble a team of advisers to assist in the creation of the program, which was officially launched in the Fall of 2005. The educational mission of the program was, "to present working scientists with a coherent package of rigorous, state-of-the-art, and genuinely applicable mathematical techniques, developed to a large extent in order to resolve current industrial and government scientific problems." In mathematical terms, this meant that MAIT courses would focus on ideas from the realm of applied harmonic analysis, but be fluid enough to change in order to accommodate the development of different advanced techniques and to follow the evolution of the subject and the technology. Toward that end, courses were taught by a mix of regular full-time mathematics and engineering faculty of the University of Maryland, and lecturers culled from outside of academia, who were skilled practitioners of the techniques they discussed in class. Such lecturers were carefully selected from several local industrial partners and government labs.