The IMA Small Grant scheme provides grants of up to £600 for individuals or £1200 for event organisation. The following applicants were awarded IMA Small Grants in 2018.
Marianne Freiberger
Carola-Bibiane Schoenlieb
Konstantinos Zygalakis
Derek James Kitson
Melina Freitag
Mike Jeffrey
Adam Barker
Dmitri Finkelshtein
Fatemeh Mohammadi
Raphael Stuhlmeier
Michael Foskett
John Pryce
Leandro Sánchez Betancourt
James Jackaman
Leo Speidel
Maleeha Khawaja
Marta Mazzocco
Derek Moulton
Liz Mansfield
Oleg Karpenkov
Mathew Ryan Tranter
Thomas Woolley
Ahmer Wadee
Finian McCann
Apala Majumdar
Stephen Coombes
John Rhys Ellis
Christopher Overton
Fiona Ruth Macfarlane
Tristan Pryer
Lara Silvers
Alan William Hood
Eduard Campillo-Funollet
Joseph Hilton
A selection of activity report extracts, showing how grant funds were utilised.
The Small Grant contributed to the ICMS workshop on “Gradient flows: challenges and new directions” held at the ICMS Edinburgh from September 10 to 14. The workshop offered a mix of lectures –7 plenaries from renowned experts in the field, 16 talks of different scientific perspectives on gradient flows and 3 short communications by young researchers. A public lecture on ‘Maths is coded in your genes’ was given by Chris Budd.
The workshop aimed at faciliating the communication between different disciplines working on gradient flows. The program allowed for discussions and inter-disciplinary exchange.
Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb
I attended the 10th European Solid Mechanics Conference in Bologna and presented my work as part of a minisymposium on Nonlinear Waves in Solids. This is a large international conference with many of the leading names in the field in attendance. The minisymposium in which I spoke was in honour of Professor Alexander Samsonov, who sadly passed away last year. Many of his collaborators contributed to this minisymposium, such as the organisers of the minisymposium: Professor Jüri Engelbrecht and Professor Alexey Porubov. I have cited several works by Professor Porubov and discussed the direction of our current research with him at this conference, as well as future directions. I would like to thank the IMA for generously supporting my research and related activities.
Matt Tranter
The editors of Plus magazine, attended the International Congress of Mathematicians, which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August. The ICM is the largest mathematics conference, attracting thousands of delegates from all areas of mathematics, and also sees the awards of the famous Fields Medals, the Gauss Price, Nevanlinna Prize, Chern Medal and Leelavati Prize. Plus reported on the ICM for a general audience. Highlights of our coverage include:
A video and podcast interview with David Donoho, winner of the Gauss Prize for his work on revolutionising medical imaging techniques.
A video and podcast interview with Constantinos Daskalakis, who won the Nevanlinna prize for his contributions to computer science, in particular about the complexity of Nash equilibria in game theory
A video and podcast interview with Maria Esteban, President of the International Council for Indistrial and Applied Mathematics
See here for all our coverage.
Marianne Freiberger
I was invited to visit the Wigner Institute for Solid State Physics in Budapest, Hungary by Professor Agnes Buka from the 9th-17th June 2018. During my research visit, I gave two research seminars at (a) the Wigner Institute and (b) the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Veszprem. I initiated a new collaboration with Professor Agnes Buka and Mr Yiwei Wang (Peking University) on the problem of stable nematic liquid crystalline configurations inside shells. This is an experimental problem where mathematical modelling is much needed to understand the temperature and boundary effects on structural transitions.
We aim to collaborate on two specific problems in the near future –
(I) interfaces within a nematic liquid crystal-filled droplet when there is a temperature gradient across the height of the droplet and
(II) the effects of surface tension and anchoring energies on critical transition temperatures in this experimental framework.
We expect to interact with Professor Jakli’s group at the Liquid Crystal Institute, Kent State University during the course of this proposed collaboration.
Apala Majumdar
The Soceity for Mathematical Biology held their annual conference at the University of Sydney from the 8th-12th July 2018. Before the conference began there was a one day workshop for early career researchers to give advice on life in academia, looking for jobs and funding oppurtunities. I attended this workshop and was able to meet other PhD students who were attending the conference. During the conference itself I presented my work in a 15 minute contributed talk entitled ‘Mathematical modelling of the immune response to cancer: An individual based approach’. I also attended the ‘Women in Mathematics Lunch’ where a panel of women in different stages of academic life answered questions from the audience. Throughout the conference I was able to attend talks and network with mathematical biologists from all over the world, specifically those who also study the dynamics between cancer and the immune systm.
Fiona Macfarlane
Workshop on Mathematical and Astronomical Practices in Pre-Enlightenment Scotland and her European Networks St Andrews, 23-24 November 2018
This 2-day meeting was very successful, despite the weather, which led many participants to query why anyone had ever thought of basing an observatory in St Andrews. Ample time for discussion was built into the programme and this was praised by a number of participants for its stimulating nature. One session visited St Andrews’ Special Collections to view and discuss rare mathematics books held there. We also had the opportunity to inspect the 17th century clocks ordered by James Gregory to equip the observatory he planned in St Andrews. The programme, and abstracts of all the talks are openly available on the meeting website:
Alan Hood
