What do airline timetables and fluid dynamics have in common? Or the glass industry and Tetris? Not a lot on the face of it, but for Isazi Consulting, they are just two problems that the company’s collective of mathematicians, physicists and engineers have had to apply their minds to.

The company was founded in 2012 by Dario Fanucchi, a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, Obakeng Moepya, an expert in the field of global optimisation for fraud detection, and Ashley Anthony, a geophysicist. The aim was to provide opportunities for people wanting to pursue a career in advanced mathematics outside of the academic environment. All too often, graduates of maths and physics get snapped up by corporates – Anthony found himself working in a bank at one stage – to leverage their skills in specific areas of the business, but this often means sacrificing the ability to pursue more interesting projects.