News

Oxford Mathematics now has up to 50 fully-funded studentships available each year for doctoral degrees. All home, EU and overseas  applicants are eligible to apply – up to 20 studentships each year will be available to applicants regardless of nationality.

Find out more about postgraduate study and research life in Oxford.

The Oxford Master’s in Mathematical Sciences (or 'OMMS') is now admitting students to start in October 2018.  This new master’s degree is run jointly by the Mathematical Institute and the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford.  For the first time we are able to offer students from across the world a masters course that draws on the full range of our research across the mathematical sciences, from fundamental themes in the core to interdisciplinary applications.

This MSc complements a range of other masters’ courses at Oxford - each of which has distinctive features and meets a specialised need.  Click for further details of mathematics and statistics courses at Oxford.

Prime numbers have intrigued, inspired and infuriated mathematicians for millennia and yet mathematicians' difficulty with answering simple questions about them reveals their depth and subtlety.

Vicky Neale describes recent progress towards proving the famous Twin Primes Conjecture and explains the very different ways in which these breakthroughs have been made - a solo mathematician working in isolation, a young mathematician displaying creativity at the start of a career, a large collaboration that reveals much about how mathematicians go about their work.

Vicky Neale is Whitehead Lecturer at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Supernumerary Fellow at Balliol College.

Oxford Mathematician Dominic Vella has won one of this year's prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prizes. The award recognises the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising.

Dominic's research is concerned with various aspects of solid and fluid mechanics in general but with particular focus on the wrinkling of thin elastic objects and surface tension effects. You can see him discussing his work here.

The importance of a University's teaching may seem a given, but it has received additional scrutiny in the last twelve months via the Government's Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and more widely as part of a debate on what Universities should offer their students. Oxford has annual teaching awards, voted by its most demanding assessors, namely its students, and this year plenty of mathematicians - Faculty, Postdocs and Graduate students - featured in those awards. Here is a list of the winners, all of whom demonstrate that we are both a research and teaching University and that the two are inseparable.

Prof. Dan Ciubotaru - MPLS Individual Teaching Award for Excellence in Teaching 
Dr Derek Goldrei,  Prof. Alex Scott, Dr David Seifert, Dr Phil Trinh, Prof. Andy Wathen - Departmental Teaching Award
Jamie Beacom, James Kwiecinski, Chris Nicholls, Lindon Roberts - Departmental Tutor/TA Teaching Award

In recognition of a lifetime's contribution across the mathematical sciences, we are initiating a series of annual Public Lectures in honour of Roger Penrose. The first lecture will be given by his long-time collaborator and friend Stephen Hawking on 27th October @5pm.

You will find the live podcast here (and also via the University of Oxford Facebook page).

Dame Frances Kirwan has been elected to the Savilian Professorship at the University of Oxford. Frances will be the 20th holder of the Savilian Chair (founded in 1619), and is the first woman to be elected to any of the historic chairs in mathematics.

Frances has received many honours including being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001 (only the third female mathematician to attain this honour), and President of the London Mathematical Society from 2003-2005 (only the second female ever elected).

Frances' specialisation is algebraic and symplectic geometry, notably moduli spaces in algebraic geometry, geometric invariant theory (GIT), and the link between GIT and moment maps in symplectic geometry.

Oxford Mathematics in partnership with the Science Museum is delighted to announce its first Public Lecture in London. World-renowned mathematician Andrew Wiles will be our speaker. Andrew will be talking about his current work and will also be in conversation with mathematician and broadcaster Hannah Fry after the lecture. Attendance is free.

28th November, 6.30pm, Science Museum, London, SW7 2DD

Please email @email to attend.

Oxford Mathematician Per-Gunnar Martinsson has been awarded the 2017 Germund Dahlquist Prize by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. The Germund Dahlquist Prize is awarded for original contributions to fields associated with Germund Dahlquist, especially the numerical solution of differential equations and numerical methods for scientific computing.

The prize honors Martinsson for fundamental contributions to numerical analysis and scientific computing that are making a significant impact in data science applications. Specific contributions include his development of linear time algorithms for dense matrix operations related to multidimensional elliptic PDEs and integral equations; and he has made deep and innovative contributions to the development of probabilistic algorithms for the rapid solution of certain classes of large-scale linear algebra problems. 
 
Per-Gunnar is currently Professor of Numerical Analysis at the University of Oxford. Hear more from him in this Q & A.

QBIOX – Quantitative Biology in Oxford – is a new network that brings together biomedical and physical scientists from across the University who share a commitment to making biology and medicine quantitative. A wide range of bioscience research fields are interested in the behaviour of populations of cells: how they work individually and collectively, how they interact with their environment, how they repair themselves and what happens when these mechanisms go wrong. At the cell and tissue levels, similar processes are at work in areas as diverse as developmental biology, regenerative medicine and cancer, which means that common tools can be brought to bear on them.

QBIOX’s focus is on mechanistic modelling: using maths to model biological processes and refining those models in order to answer a particular biological question. Researchers now have access to more data than ever before, and using the data effectively requires a joined-up approach. It is this challenge that has encouraged Professors Ruth Baker, Helen Byrne and Sarah Waters from the Mathematical Institute to set up QBIOX. The aim is to help researchers with the necessary depth and range of specialist knowledge to open up new collaborations, and share expertise and knowledge, in order to bring about a step-change in understanding in these areas. In regenerative medicine, for example, QBIOX has brought together a team of people from across the sciences and medical sciences in Oxford who are working on problems at the level of basic stem cell science right through to translational medicine that will have real impacts on patients.

A look at the list of QBIOX collaborators demonstrates that Oxford researchers from a wide range of backgrounds are already involved: from maths, statistics, physics, computer science and engineering, through to pathology, oncology, cardiology and infectious disease. QBIOX is encouraging any University researcher with an interest in quantitative biology to join the network. It runs a programme of activities to catalyse interactions between members. For example, QBIOX’s termly colloquia offer opportunities for academics to showcase research that is of interest to network members, and there are regular smaller meetings that look in detail at specific topics. QBIOX also has funding for researchers who would like to run small meetings to scope out the potential for using theoretical and experimental techniques to tackle new problems in the biosciences.

The QBIOX website has details of all the activities run by the network, as well as relevant events taking place across the University. If you have events you would like to feature here, just complete the contact form. You can also sign up to be a collaborator and to receive QBIOX’s termly newsletter.