What prior knowledge do students need?

This summer school is for postgraduate students and young researchers in both academia and industry working in biomedical engineering, biophysics or related areas. The course is aimed at participants who have either a physical or life science background and multidisciplinary activities will be an important feature of the Summer School. Tutorial activities will be managed so that these are appropriate to the knowledge and experience of the individual participants.

The school aims to teach students to apply mathematical principles learnt as undergraduates to real world biomedical problems, which  can be complex and not routinely performed.

A certain amount of mathematical knowledge is expected before starting the course, and applicants are expected to know most of  the following mathematical concepts. If in doubt please contact us:

• Functions: graphing, function of a function, inequality, discontinuity, symmetry, multi-valued functions, trigonometric and hyperbolic functions, inverse functions, partial fraction expansions.
• Co-ordinate geometry: cartesian and polar co-ordinates, rotation and translation of axes, conic sections.
• Vector algebra: basic concepts, scalar and vector products, shortest distance between two lines, vector equation of a plane, differentiation of vectors.
• Linear algebra: matrices and determinants, matrix vector equations, matrices as linear transformations.
• Complex numbers: complex arithmetic, polar and exponential form, De Moivre's theorem, roots of complex numbers.
• Differential and integral calculus: differentiation, maxima and minima, function of a function, total derivative, chain rule, integration.
• Series and limits: sequences, types of series and tests for convergence, Maclaurin and Taylor series.
• Differential equations: order and degree of differential equations, first and second order differential equations, separation of variables.

In order to achieve maximum benefit from the Summer School a selection of mathematical problems is available here which participants are encouraged to complete prior to attending. Details are also given of recommended texts and self tutoring material.