Oxford Mathematician Katherine Benjamin has won the Silver Medal for Mathematical Sciences at the 2024 STEM for BRITAIN poster competition held in the House of Commons on March 4th. Katherine was among 20 researchers in mathematics presenting their work to politicians and a panel of expert judges.
Katherine's poster was entitled: 'Multiscale topology classifies and quantifies cell types in subcellular spatial transcriptomic', and Katherine says, "the poster explored new ways in which we’ve been using maths to help understand complex next-generation genomics data. We use tools and techniques from topology and algebra to identify spatial patterns in the organisation of immune cells under different treatments. The exciting thing is that we can use abstract mathematics to generate real-world testable hypotheses for our collaborators in medicine to study further. This is joint work with a team of mathematicians, including Heather Harrington and Ulrike Tillmann from Oxford Mathematics and researchers from Medical Sciences in Oxford."
STEM for BRITAIN aims to help politicians understand more about the UK’s thriving science and engineering base and rewards some of the strongest scientific and engineering research being undertaken in the UK.