University Liaison: Industrial Placements

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a good holiday and success if you had start of year exams. Good luck for those of you having interviews this term.

We are really fortunate to have for this issue, two pieces by Waleed Backler from University of Greenwich about his one year internship with the Department of Health and NHS England and his short PLACE (Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment) assignment at Leeds Teaching Hospitals.

If you aren’t graduating this year and haven’t already applied for an internship, whether for a year out or just for the summer holidays, give it some thought. It gives you valuable work experience and may enable you to start your final year with a job offer in your pocket. Some schemes will have already closed for applications but there will be others out there with longer (or later) deadlines. Talk to your careers service about what opportunities are still available and ask to be notified if any late requests come through. Even if you do not want a graduate role with your internship employer, you will gain valuable experience and have the evidence of the skills you have developed and your proactivity in getting a placement on your CV. An internship also gives you lots to talk about at interviews for graduate jobs in due course.

There are still a three months to go for the 6th Competitive Game, organised jointly by the Société de Calcul Mathématique SA and the French Federation of Mathematical Games, which started in November. The topic for this year is ‘Uncertainties in GPS Positioning’, in partnership with: The French Institute for Transportation Science and Technology, Geolocalisation Team (IFSTTAR/CoSys/Geoloc) and The French Ministry of Transportation, Mission for Tarification Pricing (MEDDTL/DIGITIM/SAGS/MT).

The pdf file with all the data and the submission email details in English can be found at http://tinyurl.com/MathCompGame. The deadline for answers is 30 April 2015. Answers may be sent in English or French using pdf format. I am pleased to declare that all of this (academic) year’s Maths Society grants have been awarded. We will have a new round from September 2015.