Professor James Davenport and Dr Russell Bradford have been awarded the grant for the project, which will allow the department to continue its collaboration with the leading Ontario Research Centre for Computer Algebra (ORCCA) at the Universities of Western Ontario and Waterloo.

The continuation of this collaboration between the institutions will allow the team from Bath to extend research in the field of ‘connectedness’ - with the aim of achieving a major breakthrough in computational geometry.

Professor Davenport said: “Connectedness, as in ‘can we get there from here’, is a fundamental concept, both in actual space and in various abstract spaces.

“This research grant will fund the continuation of our collaboration with the Ontario Research Centre for Computer Algebra, and will allow us to explore this field and advance on previous research we have carried out.

“We have appointed a research student who will join us in October, and are now looking to take on a postdoctoral researcher to complete the group.”

The outcome of the project will have implications for Bath's longstanding research in formula simplification, and also for questions associated with robot motion planning.

Professor Davenport has recently visited the Universitatea de Vest in Timișoara in Romania, where he was one of four international research leaders representing the computer algebra community at the award of an honorary doctorate to Professor Stephen Watt, a leading researcher in the field of computer algebra from the Ontario Research Centre for Computer Algebra.

Professor Davenport is internationally recognised as the main author of the first textbook in the field of computer algebra. He is also the first Research Chair of ORCCA, which performs fundamental research and development in mathematical software, focusing on computer algebra.