University of Reading SIAM-IMA student chapter conference 2018

On Friday 11th May, the University of Reading SIAM-IMA student chapter held their annual conference attended by over 30 staff and students with backgrounds in mathematics, statistics and meteorology. There was heavy MPE student involvement, both in the organising committee as well as participation in the conference.

Reading SIAM IMA conference 2018

Keynote talks were given by Dr Mariano Beguerisse Diaz (Spotify and University of Oxford) on continuous-time temporal networks with tie decay, Dr Elsa Arcaute (UCL) on hierarchical organisation and multifractality of urban systems and Dr Philippe Blondel (University of Bath) on drowning in deep data: monitoring soundscapes with Ocean Observing Systems.

Student talks were given on various topics including graphs and networks, compressed sensing and applications in biology and meteorology. Chosen by the student attendees, the first place prize went to Joseph Field from University of Oxford for his talk on Compressed Sensing Reconstruction of Dynamic X-ray Imaging. Matthew Garrod from Imperial College London was the runner-up.

MPE CDT student Matthew Garrod awarded 2nd prize

MPE CDT student Matthew Garrod awarded 2nd prize for his talk on Are Node Locations Informative in Spatial Graphs?

During the poster session over lunch, students were given the opportunity to present their work in an informal setting. Walton Pereira Coutinho from University of Southampton was awarded first prize for his poster on Glider Routing and Trajectory Optimisation in Disaster Assessment, with Carlo Cafaro from University of Reading coming second place.

MPE CDT student Carlo awarded 2nd prize for his poster

MPE CDT student Carlo awarded 2nd prize for his poster on Quantifying the skill of a dynamical relative to a Bayesian model deriving from large-scale variables of sea breeze.

Prizes were awarded at the close of the conference by Erica Tyson (IMA) and Dr Philippe Blondel. The conference was followed by a reception which provided another opportunity for attendees to discuss their ideas. Many stayed for dinner at the town centre to relax and reflect on the day before heading home.

The organising committee would like to thank all of the speakers, presenters and attendees for making the event a success as well as SIAM, the IMA and the University of Reading who all supported the event.

Reported by Maha Kaouri (Student Chapter President)