Oxford Mathematician Sir John Ball FRS has been awarded the King Faisal Prize for Science. Launched by the King Faisal Foundation (KFF) and granted for the first time in 1979, the King Faisal Prize recognises the outstanding works of individuals and institutions in five major categories: Service to Islam, Islamic Studies, Arabic Language and Literature, Medicine, and Science. Its aim is to benefit Muslims in their present and future, inspire them to participate in all aspects of civilisation, as well as enrich human knowledge and develop mankind.
Sir John Ball is Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy, Director of the Oxford Centre for Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations and Fellow of the Queen's College. John's main research areas lie in the calculus of variations, nonlinear partial differential equations, infinite-dimensional dynamical systems and their applications to nonlinear mechanics.
Oxford Mathematician Sarah Waters has been awarded a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship commencing this month. Sarah is an applied mathematician here in Oxford. Her interest is in physiological fluid mechanics, tissue biomechanics and the application of mathematics to problems in medicine and biology. Her work varies from classical applied mathematics problems motivated by physiological applications to highly interdisciplinary work - she collaborates with life scientists, clinicians, bioengineers, theoreticians and experimentalists to develop and solve models that are novel, realistic and provide insights into biomedical problems. The resulting models often lead to theoretical predictions that can be exploited in the laboratory.
Modern science and technology generate data at an unprecedented rate. A major challenge is that this data is often complex, high dimensional and may include temporal and/or spatial information. The 'shape' of the data can be important but it is difficult to extract and quantify it using standard machine learning or statistical techniques. For example, an image of blood vessels near a tumour looks very different to an image of healthy blood vessels; statistics alone cannot quantify this difference. New shape analysis methods are required.
Thanks to funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), a newly created centre combining scientists in Oxford, Swansea and Liverpool will study the shape of data through the development of new mathematics and algorithms, and build on existing data science techniques in order to obtain and interpret the shape of data. A theoretical field of mathematics that enables the study of shapes is geometry and topology. The ability to quantify the shape of complicated objects is only possible with advanced mathematics and algorithms. The field known as topological data analysis (TDA), enables one to use methods of topology and geometry to study the shape of data. In particular, a method within TDA known as persistent homology provides a summary of the shape of the data (e.g. features such as holes) at multiple scales. A key success of persistent homology is the ability to provide robust results, even if the data are noisy. There are theoretical and computational challenges in the application of these algorithms to large scale, real-world data.
The aim of this centre is to build on current persistent homology tools, extending them theoretically, computationally, and adapting them for practical applications. The Oxford team led by Heather Harrington and Ulrike Tillmann together with Helen Byrne, Peter Grindrod and Gesine Reinert is composed of experts in pure and applied mathematics, computer scientists, and statisticians whose combined expertise covers cutting edge pure mathematics, mathematical modelling, algorithm design and data analysis. This core team will in turn work closely with collaborators in a range of scientific and industrial domains.
In this talk Michael Bonsall will explore how we can use mathematics to link between scales of organisation in biology. He will delve in to developmental biology, ecology and neurosciences, all illustrated and explored with real life examples, simple games and, of course, some neat maths.
Michael Bonsall is Professor of Mathematical Biology in Oxford.
7 February 2018, 5pm-6pm, Mathematical Institute, Oxford.
In our Oxford Mathematics Christmas Public Lecture Alex Bellos challenges you with some festive brainteasers as he tells the story of mathematical puzzles from the Middle Ages to modern day.
Alex is the Guardian’s puzzle blogger as well as the author of several works of popular maths, including Puzzle Ninja, Can You Solve My Problems? and Alex’s Adventures in Numberland.
Oxford Mathematician Professor Philip Maini FRS, Professorial Fellow in Mathematical Biology at St John’s College has been elected a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy for his mathematical and computational modelling of biological processes relevant to wound healing and vascular tumour growth, scar formation and cancer therapy. Philip's previous work has included influencing HIV/AIDS policy in India through mathematical modelling. The election will be effective from 1 January 2018.
Today, Thursday 7th December 2017, Oxford Mathematics will be holding its second Graduate Virtual Open Day, from 15:00-16:00 (UK time). This year, the Virtual Open Day will be focusing on taught masters' courses offered at the Mathematical Institute, which will include the following degrees:
MSc Mathematical and Computational Finance
MSc Mathematics and Foundations of Computer Science
MSc Mathematical Modelling and Scientific Computing
MSc Mathematical Sciences
MSc Mathematical and Theoretical Physics
This will be an interactive livestreamed event, where members of faculty will be providing information on the courses mentioned above and also will be answering your queries. If you are a prospective applicant, please e-mail your questions to @email and tweet them to @OxUniMaths and we will attempt to answer as many of these questions during the hour as possible.
In the first Oxford Mathematics London Public Lecture, in partnership with the Science Museum, world-renowned mathematician Andrew Wiles lectured on his current work around Elliptic Curves followed by an-depth conversation with mathematician and broadcaster Hannah Fry.
In a fascinating interview Andrew talked about his own motivations, his belief in the importance of struggle and resilience and his recipe for the better teaching of his subject, a subject he clearly loves deeply.
Andrew Wiles will be giving our first Oxford Mathematics London Public Lecture on Tuesday 28 November at 6.30pm in the Science Museum in London. Andrew will be talking about his current work and after the lecture he will be in conversation with mathematician and broadcaster Hannah Fry.
The event is now full but you can watch it live. It will also be streamed on the Oxford University Facebook page.
The Alan Turing Institute is the national institute for data science, headquartered at the British Library. Five founding universities – Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, UCL and Warwick – and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council created The Institute in 2015. Now we are delighted to announce that four universities - Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Queen Mary University of London - are also set to join the Institute as university partners. The new universities will work with our growing network of partners in industry and government to advance the world-changing potential of data science.
Alan Wilson, CEO of the Institute, commented: “We are extending our university network in recognition of our role as a national institute and because we believe that increasing collaboration between researchers and private, public and third sector organisations will enable the UK to undertake the most ambitious, impactful research possible."
Peter Grindrod, Oxford Mathematics' nominee on the Turing board, said: “We are rightly proud to have launched the Alan Turing Institute in 2015, together with the other founding partners. The Turing is now on a journey to becoming a truly national endeavour, drawing in more universities and researchers and strengthening its international competitiveness. Data science and artificial intelligence will underpin many 21st century industry sectors; and, working with its partner universities, Turing is well placed to take a leading role in support of the Government’s Industrial Strategy.”
