The Department of Mathematical Sciences will host ten undergraduate students working on a variety of research projects over the summer as part of an internship programme supported by the London Mathematical Society (LMS), the recently-established Bath Institute for Mathematical Innovation (IMI), the SAMBa Centre for Doctoral Training, and a charitable donation.

Summer internships are a valuable experience for students who are considering pursuing a career in mathematics research and they have traditionally been well supported in the Department through the competitive LMS scheme.

This year, four of the 21 LMS bursaries awarded nationally came to the University of Bath.

Jonathan Dawes, the University’s LMS representative and Deputy Director of IMI said: “We are particularly pleased with our success in the LMS scheme this year, reflecting the high quality of our undergraduates and the excellent research being carried out in the Department.”

The additional funding provided by the IMI and SAMBa initiatives allows a broader range of internships to be supported.

IMI particularly encourages interdisciplinary research in collaboration with other University departments, whilst SAMBa is keen to support students who are still undecided about whether to pursue a research career, and is particularly eager to encourage applications from female students.

Kate Powers, who did a summer internship in 2014 and is starting a PhD with SAMBa this year, said: “It was a brilliant opportunity and I would recommend it to anyone seriously thinking of doing a PhD. It has not only confirmed what I’d like to do in the future but has also helped identify an area of research I’d like to pursue.”

Head of Department Ivan Graham said: “It is really heartening to see so much new talent coming through the Department and I am proud that we can enable these promising students to develop their research skills and pursue careers through academia and beyond”.

Our 2015 interns

  • Philip Carter working with Professor Anthony Dooley on Harmonic analysis on SU(3) and quarks
  • Tom Crawley working with Professor Peter Mörters on Fast spread of rumours in preferential attachment networks
  • Benjamin Davidson working with Professor Johannes Zimmer and Dr Lucia Scardia on the Averaging of fast-slow systems
  • James Doran working with Professor Paul Milewski on Chemotaxis models for strong aggregation
  • Alastair Flynn working with Professor Alastair Spence on New Methods for the Neutron Transport Eigenvalue Problem
  • Philip Hanson working with Dr Mark Opmeer on Rational Krylov subspaces for differential operators
  • Emma Houghton working with Professor Andreas Kyprianou on Stable processes through the Kelvin transform
  • Edward Jones-Healey working with Professor David Calderbank on Vertex operator algebras, from theory to examples and applications
  • Stephen Pigeon working with Dr Simon Harris on Spatial branching processes and Markov Chains
  • Luke Shaw working with Dr Ben Adams on A mathematical model to examine the role of vaccination in pertussis epidemiology.