Mathematicians at the University of Sheffield have launched a new group for students and researchers who are interested in applied and industrial mathematics.
The new SIAM-IMA Student Chapter is sponsored by Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA).
These organisations’ goals are to help advance mathematical knowledge and its applications, support the culture of mathematics, and build cooperation between mathematics, science and technology.
The University of Sheffield chapter is open to undergraduate and postgraduate mathematicians, as well as students and researchers working in quantitative areas of science and engineering.
Membership is free, and student members of the chapter are entitled to a free SIAM student membership and a discounted IMA membership.
The chapter’s committee includes the following postgraduate students, with support from Dr Dimitrios Roxanas as academic advisor:
- Bryony Moody – President
- Poppy Jeffries – Vice President
- Vinh Vu – Vice President
- Prerna Singh – Secretary
- Rose Archer – Treasurer
To launch the chapter, the new committee hosted the Sheffield SIAM-IMA Conference 2021. The event was aimed at early career researchers and featured 25 talks by postdoctoral researchers, postgraduate students and undergraduates. It was attended by mathematicians from 27 different UK and Ireland universities.
There were four keynote speakers: Dr Aretha Teckentrup and Dr Kostas Zygalakis from the University of Edinburgh, Dr Silvia Gazzola from the University of Bath, and Dr Matthew Allcock, a research mathematician at EDF. There was also a presentation from IMA representative, Erica Tyson.
Other activities at the conference included a session about careers in industry for mathematicians, a quiz hosted by PhD student Joseph Martin and a poster competition, the winners of which were:
- Laura Etfer (Newcastle University) – undergraduate first prize
- Rosie Archer (University of Sheffield) – postgraduate first prize
- Bryony Moody (University of Sheffield) – postgraduate second prize
- Victoria Sanchez-Munoz (National University of Ireland, Galway) – postgraduate third prize
- Elsa Teixera (University of Sheffield) – postgraduate third prize
The event followed a number of other SIAM activities that University of Sheffield mathematicians have participated in. Four University of Sheffield teams took part in this year’s SIAM Financial Mathematics and Engineering Student Programming Competition, and Georgios Moulantzikos and Vinh Vu made the final. Jiachen Qian and Elis Williams took part in the Seventh Annual Stokes Modelling Workshop co-organized by the Student SIAM Chapter of National University of Ireland, Galway.
Bryony Moody, Sheffield SIAM-IMA Student Chapter President, said: ”Myself and the committee are so pleased to have been able to get the student chapter off to a great start with our most recent conference. I know that the SIAM-IMA student chapter will be a great benefit to our undergraduate and postgraduate students alike.
“We are very excited to encourage interdisciplinary research within the School of Mathematics and Statistics, and the wider SIAM-IMA community. Through seminars and other events, we look forward to exhibiting a variety of applied mathematics and statistics to our students. In particular, the focus of SIAM on mathematics in industry will mean that there is knowledge to be gained for everyone and I’m so pleased to be a part of it.”
Dr Dimitrios Roxanas said “Becoming a node in the networks of SIAM and the IMA opens exciting possibilities for the University, the School, our students and our research. It will hopefully result in knowledge transfer, also with industrial partners.
“Our primary mission is to promote applied mathematics and statistics, but we also want to encourage interdisciplinary research and collaboration. The conference was very promising in the latter direction: we had talks from physicists, chemists, neuroscientists and engineers and some of us had interesting discussions with them and found common ground.
“I want to encourage students, both postgraduates and undergraduates to join our chapter, come to our seminars and also social events. The more we grow, the more opportunities we will be able to offer. I also want to encourage pure mathematicians to join our mailing list and attend some events: there are a lot of exciting applications of even the ‘purest’ of pure mathematics: algebraic topology in data science, category theory for natural language processing and measuring biodiversity, algebra and geometry in robotics.”
Anyone interested in joining the chapter can contact one of the committee members or email siamima@sheffield.ac.uk. There is also a mailing list for anyone who wants to hear about future activities and events.