2020-21: 1st Symposium

Wednesday 30th September 2020 - Thursday 1st October 2020

The SMSTC Opening Symposium for 2020-21 was held online on Wednesday 30 September and Thursday 1 October 2020.

The programme includes talks which introduce the four core themes and a selection of supplementary modules. There were also be talks on the PhD process, on teaching/tutoring, and on some of the professional bodies that you might consider joining. Thank you to everybody who contributed!

We will post the presenters' slides here as we receive them.

• Welcome (David Pritchard, SMSTC director)
• The PhD process and how to get through it (Sira Gratz)
• Theme talk: Applications of Mathematics (Richard Scott, Theme Head)
• Supplementary module talk: Combinatorics on Words (Sergey Kitaev)
• Supplementary module talk: Inverse Problems (Anna Kirpichnikova)
• Theme talk: Structure & Symmetry (Sira Gratz, Theme Head)
• Supplementary module talk: History of Mathematics (Michael Barany)
• Teaching and tutoring (Michael Grove)
• Societies, unions and networking (Michael Grove, IMA; Gavin Gibson, Edinburgh Mathematical Society; Kate Pyper, RSS;
  Emily Roff & Josh Fogg, University and College Union)
  See also the UCU Edinburgh PGR welcome pack, UCU St Andrews COVID factsheet, and UCU St Andrews PGR tutor induction.
• Theme talk: Probability & Statistics (Natalia Bochkina, Theme Head)
• Supplementary module talk: Geometry of Gauge Fields (Bernd Schroers)
• Theme talk: Analysis (Heiko Gimperlein, Theme Head)
• What happens next? (David Pritchard)