Month: July 2017

In the Cube3 gallery space in the Portland Square Building on the campus, there are two portraits of Professor David McMullan (Associate Head of School ) and Dr. David Wilton (former head of Mathematics). Dr. Wilton is currently chair of the Plymouth Astronomical Society.

The pictures were painted by the local artist Jo beer. There is more information about the exhibition here.

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This week the center for mathematical sciences has hosted a student from Callington Community College, who is studying for GSCEs, for work experience. The student was interested in learning more about quantum mechanics.  The list of his activities is here.

The ultimate goal was to learn enough physics to work with IBM’s quantum computer in the cloud.

The staff in the mathematical sciences at Plymouth University have a number of different components to their job descriptions. It is obviously important to be an excellent teacher, but another part of the job description is maintaining  international leadership in a research field. There are other hidden part of the job too , such as administration.

If external support can be found, staff can take a sabbatical, typically for a year,  at another institution, so that can concentrate on their research. Dr. Antonio Rago from CMS is visiting CERN for the year 2017-2018 to work on research full time. He is working in the theory division of CERN.

Dr. Daniel Robertz from CMS is presenting a talk at the 23rd Conference on Applications of Computer Algebra  in Jerusalem. The title of the talk is: Towards a symbolic package for systems of nonlinear difference equations.

Abstract:

Difference algebra has been studied in analogy to differential algebra. However, concepts such as characteristic sets for differential systems have not been developed in the same generality for difference systems yet. In particular, methods such as the Rosenfeld-Gröbner algorithm, regular chains and Thomas decomposition for differential systems are not  available for difference systems. Among the
many applications of difference algebra is, e.g., the consistency analysis of finite difference schemes for partial differential equations.
This talk presents results of trying to transfer the concept of differential Thomas decomposition to systems of nonlinear difference equations and develop a symbolic package for systems of nonlinear difference equations. It reports on joint work with Vladimir Gerdt

A student from Plymouth High School for Girls has been working with Julian Stander and Luciana Dalla Valle on developing an R software graphical tool to display data for the twenty geographical regions of Italy.

The following article was orginally circulated in the staff bulletin.

Two Theoretical Physics Lecturers have just returned from China after sharing their research with a number of high-profile organisations. Dr Ben King gave lectures on strong field physics at the National University of Defence Technology (NUDT) summer school in Changsha, and was also invited to collaborate with researchers at the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Centre (CARDC), where he spent one month working on quantum electrodynamics in intense fields. Meanwhile, Dr Tom Heinzl went to Shanghai to present his research and sit on the committee of an International Review Meeting thanks to sponsorship from the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The meeting’s purpose was to discuss and review the scientific opportunities for the ‘Station of Extreme Light’ (SEL) at the Shanghai Coherent Light Facility (SCLF), and explore the conceptual design and technical approach towards a 100-petawatt laser.

This month Dr. Matthew  Craven is talking at the  Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2017)  in Berlin.

The titles of Matthew’s talks are below

• Exploring the (Efficient) Frontiers of Portfolio Optimization
  Matthew J. Craven, David I. Graham
• BBIOS: A Characterization of Evolutionary Algorithm Stability
  Matthew J. Craven, Simon P. Martin

Although the current teaching has finished for the year, this doesn’t mean that the staff can start a long vacation, only to resurface again in the middle of September.  The summer time is a good time for staff to concentrate on research and network by presenting their work at international conferences.

Also, the summer is a good time to start to plan for the next year’s teaching. Tomorrow the staff in the school, from Computing, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering will meet together for a day long meeting at Plymouth University’s Marine Station.

As well as updates on planning from the School Executive, the meeting will include talks and workshops on: making the most out of lectures lasting two hours, and how to use skype and webinars in teaching.

As well as the cool river front location, the food is normally pretty good.

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Next week (3^rd – 7^th July) Dr Jenny Sharpe  is organizing a work experience week for year 10 and year 12 students in mathematics. There are 18 in total (13 year 10 and 5 year 12). They will be supervised during the week by two undergraduate students on the  Maths with Education program.

Their timetable for the week is:

As well as presentations, the visiting students will work on:

Word Trail Puzzles: create some new word trail puzzles, other students to trial them and offer feedback.

·         Campus Maths Trails: create math trails (Primary and Secondary) around the Campus. Other students to trial them and offer feedback.

·         Feedback Analysis: analyse and prepare a report on the feedback data for the year 5, 7, 8 and 9 masterclasses.

·         Maths Activities: Trial new Maths Activity Boxes, then prepare final resources

·         Code Wheels: Make 150 code wheels

·         Teaching Material: Find new questions for topics in MATH051 book. Wordy, application examples – with full solutions – could make podcast of solution?

Year 12:

·         Presentation: Prepare and present an interactive session for the year 10 students “Why study A level Mathematics?”

·         Teaching Material: Prepare (in Word) an outline of topics in MATH052 based on lecturer’s notes.

There are many software and technology companies in Plymouth and the surrounding areas. Until recently many of the different people involved didn’t know about each other. However, in the last few years there have been some events to coordinate and network.

For example, this year there is a conference called “Digital Plymouth” which brings together people working in various aspects of digital technology. Dr Craig McNeile from CMS is presenting a talk with the title:

High Performance Computing applied to Particle Physics at Plymouth University