The Anile-ECMI Prize is given to a young researcher for an excellent PhD thesis in industrial mathematics successfully submitted at a European university. It was established in honour of Professor Angelo Marcello Anile (1948-2007) of Catania, Italy and consists of a monetary prize of 2500 Euros and an invitation to give a talk at the ECMI 2021 conference on Wedneday 14 April.
In her DPhil (PhD), Bernadette investigated the use of topological data analysis for biological data. She developed methods to quantify the unique features of tumour blood vessel networks. Using persistent homology on experimental data from different imaging modalities, she validated known treatment effects on the networks and showed how the effects of radiation treatments alter the vascular structure.
In her thesis, Bernadette further applied persistent homology to functional networks from neuroscience experiments. To overcome computational challenges that are a major limitation in applications of persistent homology to real-world data, she researched the use of local computations of persistent homology and her results indicate that these can be used for outlier-robust subsampling from large and noisy data sets. In addition, she demonstrated that such computations can detect points located near geometric anomalies in data sampled from intersecting manifolds. This work has recently been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).
Bernadette developed her research in close collaboration with Oxford Mathematicians Heather Harrington, Jared Tanner, Vidit Nanda, and Helen Byrne as well as Mason Porter (UCLA), biological collaborators from Oxford Radiation Oncology and industrial researchers from Roche.
In her current postdoc at Oxford Mathematics' Centre for Topological Data Analysis, Bernadette is looking at applying persistent homology to quantify the output from mathematical models of angiogenesis.
It is a cliche that crises create opportunities. But they certainly demand innovation (and a lot of hard work). In Oxford Mathematics, in line with many others departments and universities, we have had to switch from in-person teaching to online in most cases. This has been 100% the case in terms of undergraduate lectures which normally take place in large lecture theatres where a whiteboard, a marker pen (or two or three) and a mathematician take centre stage.
However, the online world is a much more varied place. Lectures tend to be shorter (though the courses are the same length), some lecturers write as they go using tablets while some use pre-prepared slides. Some are in shot, some are not. However, as you can see from the image above and the lecture below, some lecturers, in this case André Henriques (and also Artur Ekert in other lectures), are trying different approaches, taking advantage of latest technologies. The lightboard is not new, but this might be its teaching moment.
Then again, the important thing is that the teaching is up to scratch. You can judge for yourself via the lecture below. You can also watch a range of student lectures on our YouTube channel as we show what we do and the increasing variety of ways we do it.
The Oxford University Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Student Chapter 3 Minute Thesis Competition saw 10 of our postgraduates present their latest research to a panel of our judges. Topics included Langland's Grand Unified Theory; Quantum irreversibility; and using magnets and maths to deliver stem cell therapy.
You can watch the competition via the video below.
To gain an insight in to mathematical student life under lockdown, we asked Oxford Mathematics and St Peter's College 2nd Year Undergraduate Matt Antrobus to provide us with one-minute updates over the course of last term.
So he did in a very personable and honest way, describing the maths he is doing, how he is doing it and how much work is involved. Matt also reflects on the stark fact that over half his time in Oxford has been under the cloud of Covid.
Round up, the Oxford Mathematics Annual Newsletter, is a calculated attempt to describe our lives, mathematical and non-mathematical, over the past 12 months. From a summary of some of our research into the Coronavirus to a moving tribute to Peter Neumann by Martin Bridson, via articles on diversity, fantasy football and of course our Nobel Prize winner (pictured), it throws a little light, we hope, on what we did during the year that was 2020.
The Newsletter goes out to over 12,000 Oxford Mathematics alumni around the world and to anyone else who may be interested of course. Arguably the most expressive part of the Newsletter is a wordless photo montage. Why not have a look?
Our 'Fantastic Voyage' through Oxford Mathematics Student Lectures brings us to four 3rd Year lectures by Dominic Joyce on Topological Surfaces. These lectures are shown pretty much as they are seen by the students (they use a different platform with a few more features but the lectures are the same) as we all get to grips with the online world. Lectures on Linear Algebra, Integral transforms, Networks, Set Theory, Maths History and much more will be shown over the next few weeks.
Below is the fourth lecture of the course, but you can watch all four of Dominic's lectures via the Playlist as well as over 30 other student lectures on the YouTube Channel.
Incidentally 'Fantastic Voyage' is a classic bit of 60s sci-fi about a submarine crew who are shrunk to microscopic size and venture into the body of an injured scientist to repair damage to his brain. It's a tenous link but we like it so, if you are interested, check it out.
Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture
Tuesday 16 March 2021
5.00-6.00pm
Jon Keating will discuss the statistics of rare, extreme events in various contexts, including: evaluating performance at the Olympics; explaining how glasses freeze; illustrating why computers are more effective than expected at learning; and understanding the Riemann zeta-function, the mathematical object that encodes the mysterious distribution of the prime numbers.
Jon Keating is Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Oxford and a Fellow of The Queen's College.
In the bleak, school-less midwinter, James Munro and his student crew have been keeping the maths going for high school students who want to step aside from the curriculum for an hour or so and peek round the corner at University Maths. Cue novels, (yes there is literature as well), dragons and your favourite graph.
The Oxford Online Maths Club is live and free for everyone, wherever you are, every Thursday at 16:30pm UK time. There are maths problems, puzzles, mini-lectures, and Q&A via the chat. It’s interactive, casual, and relaxed, with an emphasis on solving problems, building fluency and enjoying mathematics.
Oxford Mathematician Georgia Brennan has won a silver medal in the Mathematical Sciences category at STEM for Britain 2021 for her poster (extract in the image) on 'Mathematically Modelling Clearance in Alzheimer’s Disease: A Mathematical Drug Trial for the UK’s Protein Pandemic'.
STEM for Britain 2021 is a major scientific poster competition and exhibition which has been held in Parliament since 1997 (online this year), and is organised by the Parliamentary & Scientific Committee. Its aim is to give members of both Houses of Parliament an insight into the outstanding research work being undertaken in UK universities by early-career researchers.
Since 2010 UNIQ has been providing in person and, since 2018, digital Summer Schools for State School students in the UK. As a free access programme we prioritise students with good grades from backgrounds that are under-represented at Oxford and other highly selective universities.
231 UNIQ 2020 students have now received offers from the University of Oxford and we look forward to welcoming them here as Oxford undergraduates in September 2021. Each year 1 in 3 UNIQ students who apply to Oxford get offered a place, as compared to 1 in 5 state school students.
This year we are merging UNIQ Digital with the online summer school to offer one UNIQ programme to 2,500 students. UNIQ 2021 takes into account the disrupted learning students have suffered over the past year: the programme starts in April and offers sustained support for students over several months.
Oxford Mathematics together with Oxford Statistics will once again be a big part of UNIQ this year. Our main lectures are on Matrices & Markov Chains. So why not Enter the Matrix? (And if you don't know how to enter then you haven't been born, quite literally if you are in Year 12...).
