PhD Applied Mathematics

Our PhD Applied Mathematics provides you with the opportunity to study areas such as dynamical systems, pattern formation, chaos theory, ordinary and partial differential equations, Hamiltonian systems, stability theory, computational neuroscience, complex systems, complex networks and nonlinear waves. We have staff with expertise in these areas who are willing to supervise PhD students, and you are invited to contact our department to discuss potential research areas and subjects.

Our staff are strongly committed to research and teaching. They are world leaders in their individual specialisms, with their papers published in international journals such as Scientific Reports, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS ONE, Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, Semiconductor Science and Technology, and Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, among others.

Our Department of Mathematical Sciences is genuinely innovative and student-focused. Our research groups are working on a broad range of collaborative areas tackling real-world issues. Here are a few examples:

• Our data scientists carefully consider how not to lie, and how not to get lied to with data. Interpreting data correctly is especially important because much of our data science research is applied directly or indirectly to social policies, including health, care and education.
• We do practical research with financial data (for example, assessing the risk of collapse of the UK’s banking system) as well as theoretical research in financial instruments such as insurance policies or asset portfolios.
• We also research how physical processes develop in time and space. Applications of this range from modelling epilepsy to modelling electronic cables.
• Our optimisation experts work out how to do the same job with less resource, or how to do more with the same resource.
• Our pure maths group are currently working on two new funded projects entitled ‘Machine learning for recognising tangled 3D objects’ and ‘Searching for gems in the landscape of cyclically presented groups’.
• We also do research into mathematical education and use exciting technologies such as electroencephalography or eye tracking to measure exactly what a learner is feeling. Our research aims to encourage the implementation of ‘the four Cs’ of modern education, which are critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.

You will need a good honours degree and a Masters degree in a relevant subject. A well-developed research proposal is also essential.