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.
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.
We have an exciting series of Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures this Autumn. Summary below and full details here. All will be podcast and on Facebook Live. We also have a London Lecture by Andrew Wiles on 28 November (details will follow separately). Please email @email to register for the lectures below.
Closing the Gap: the quest to understand prime numbers - Vicky Neale
18 October, 5.00-6.00pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Mathematical Institute, Oxford
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Maths v Disease - Julia Gog
1 November, 5.00-6.00pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Mathematical Institute, Oxford
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The Seduction of Curves: The Lines of Beauty That Connect Mathematics, Art and The Nude - Allan McRobie
13 November, 5.00-6.00pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Mathematical Institute, Oxford
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Oxford Mathematics Christmas Public Lecture - Alex Bellos, title tbc
6 December, 5.00-6.00pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Mathematical Institute, Oxford
Medicines are key to disease treatment but are not without risk. Some patients get untoward side effects, some get insufficient relief. The human genome project promises to revolutionise modern health-care. However, there are 3 billion places where a human’s DNA can be different. Just where are the genes of interest in sufferers of complex chronic conditions? Which genes are implicated the most in which disease in which patients? Which genes are involved in a beneficial response to a medicine? Which genes might be predictive of drug-induced adverse events? Collaborative industrial research by Oxford Mathematics' Clive Bowman seeks to tackle these areas to enable drug discovery companies to develop appropriate treatments.
The Royal Society Industrial Fellowship research at the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (OCIAM) extends stochastic insights from communication theory into producing easy-to-interpret visualisations for biotech use. Interacting determinants of the illnesses or adverse syndromes can be displayed as heatmaps or coded networks that highlight potential targets against which chemists can rationally design drugs. All types of measured data can be used simultaneously and dummy synthetic indicators such as pathways or other ontologies can be added for clarity. Heterogeneity is displayed automatically allowing understanding of why some people get a severe disease (or drug response) and others a mild syndrome, as well as other variations, for example due to someone’s ethnicity.
Helped by this mathematics the hope is that the right drug can be designed for the right patient and suffering alleviated efficiently with the minimum risk for the individual. For fuller detail on Clive's work please click here.
The image above shows a drug adverse event example (please click on the image). Clockwise from top left: Drug molecule (by Fvasconcellos); heat map showing patients with severe (red) or mild (blue) syndrome in multidimensional information space (courtesy of Dr O Delrieu); two aetiological subnetworks to syndrome; 3D animation display of results with dummy indicator variables.
Oxford Mathematician Ulrike Tillmann FRS has been elected a member of the Council of the Royal Society. The Council consists of between 20 and 24 Fellows and is chaired by the President.
Founded in the 1660s, the Royal Society’s fundamental purpose is to recognise, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity. The Royal Society's motto 'Nullius in verba' is taken to mean 'take nobody's word for it'.
Ulrike specialises in algebraic topology and has made important contributions to the study of the moduli space of algebraic curves.
