Why Research?

“Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems” is a quote by the famous mathematician Rene Decartes. In my opinion, this really captures the purpose behind today’s research; in particular, the immediacy of its application that has an impact on a society and mankind’s long term progress. This in short equates my motives for being on the MathSys programme.

Background

• I completed my undergraduate degree in Mathematics (BSc) in 2014 from Coventry University and studied modules that orientated around mathematical modelling and control.
• My final year project supervised by Dr Ralph Kenna involved network analysis as inferred from it's title: 'A network analysis of the Gospels'. This involved compiling social networks from the written narrative of two of the Gospels (Matthew and Luke) from the bible and comparing their statistical properties.
• In the summer of 2014, I successfully completed a 2 month internship, supervised by Dr Pádraig Mac Carron in the Applied Mathematics Research Centre (AMRC) at Coventry University.
  • This contributed to the ongoing research in the AMRC on social networks in literature and mythology. Similar methods used in my final year project was used to compile and analyse social networks from two texts. One a post-modern novel called ‘The Magus’ and the other a French epic based on the battle Battle of Roncevaux in 778 entitled 'the song of Roland'.

Research Interests

Having gained an insight into the vast breadth of things that mathematics can be applied to has nurtured in me an interest for applied mathematics in complex problems and systems. In particular applications that involve networks.