Tomorrow’s Mathematicians Today Conference

I was incredibly fortunate to deliver a talk at this year’s IMA Tomorrow’s Mathematicians Today conference, generously sponsored by GCHQ and Taylor & Francis and hosted by the University of Greenwich on 9 February. It was a thoroughly intellectually stimulating day, filled with some very impressive and informative talks from all areas of mathematics. About 100 people attended from around 25 different universities and there were 29 student speakers from 16 universities. The programme can be found at the conference website.

I am a second-year mathematics student at the University of Greenwich, with a particular interest in biostatistics. I was delighted that my paper ‘Medical Statistics with a Focus on Epidemiology’ was accepted and I had the opportunity to speak and be included in this wonderful day.

From the outset, the friendly and respectful dynamic of the day was established. As a first-time speaker at an academic conference, I was rather nervous. However, even before the first plenary talk, I had several attendees come up and say how they were looking forward to my talk which put me instantly at ease.

The structure of the day worked well, with plenary talks scattered throughout to capture a wide audience and niche talks running in parallel sessions which were grouped by mathematics topic. It was wonderful, as a speaker, to have the opportunity to experience attending the conference; all the talks I heard were excellent in both preparation and delivery. I attended talks covering many areas of mathematics, including cluster algebras, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems and Boolean logic.

My talk was in the afternoon, and it aimed to give a flavour of the field of medical statistics. Though just speaking was fantastic, I am grateful that I gained experience by taking questions after my talk as delivering proficient answers on the spot is challenging. The TMT conference has greatly assisted me as a developing academic; I have found an area for my research project next year. Furthermore, I was thrilled to find out that I was nominated as one of the most enjoyable talks of the day through the experience survey at the end!

To conclude our day, the GCHQ prize was announced from the outstanding short-listed papers and presentations; Thomas McDonald won the prize for his paper titled ‘Vortex Visualiser’. Noel-Ann Bradshaw then delivered a fantastic keynote speech detailing her own mathematical journey as well as the importance of machine learning. It was clear that this talk meant a lot to her as she invented TMT with the goal of creating a ‘conference for undergraduates delivered by undergraduates’.

I am immensely grateful that this conference exists and has been successful. It provides undergraduates, like myself, with a platform to research and speak about areas that interest us, as well as being able to learn from each other.