Maths on the Move

Stadium maths

Amid much controversy, the 2022 World Cup has begun and the action has now moved onto the football pitches inside the many newly built stadiums in Qatar. But how are these stadiums turned from architectural sketches into real buildings? For this week's episode we delve back far into our archive to hear from Paul Shepherd from the University of Bath, an expert in building football stadiums such as the famous Emirates stadium in London. In this interview, first recorded back in 2007, he tells us about what kind of things are important in building a stadium, how maths is an integral part of the design process, and why his work required him to listen to Belgian techno. The Emirates Stadium, home of the Arsenal football club. (Photo Arne Müseler – CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)   You can hear more about the maths behind famous sporting buildings in our recent podcast How the velodrome found its form. And you can find out much more about the maths behind football and sports, and behind engineering and architecture here on Plus.

Voices from Ukraine: Yuriy Semenov

Yuriy Semenov was forced to leave Ukraine, and his work at the Institute of Hydromechanics at the National Academy of Sciences, due to the Russian invasion of February 2022. He found sanctuary in Britain at the University of East Anglia. In part this was thanks to the Solidarity for mathematicians programme ran by the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI). In this podcast Yuriy speaks to the INI's Dan Aspel and shares his experience of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and why the work of a mathematicians is always possible. We are very pleased to host this episode of the Living Proof podcast as part of our collaboration with the wonderful INI.

Voices from Ukraine: Nataliya Vaisfel’d

Professor Nataliya Vaisfel'd was until recently a mathematician at Odesa I. I. Mechnykov National University. Forced to flee Ukraine after the Russian invasion of her home country in February of this year, Nataliya has since travelled across Europe with her wheelchair-bound mother and their dogs, eventually finding sanctuary in Britain. In part this was thanks to the Solidarity for mathematicians programme ran by the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences. She is now a Senior Lecturer at King’s College London.  In this podcast Nataliya tells her story in conversation with the INI's Dan Aspel. We are very pleased to host this episode of the Living Proof podcast as part of our collaboration with the wonderful INI. This podcast was produced as part of our collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) – you can find all the content from our collaboration here. The INI is an international research centre and our neighbour here on the University of Cambridge's maths campus. It attracts leading mathematical scientists from all over the world, and is open to all. Visit www.newton.ac.uk to find out more.  

Women of Mathematics: Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb

Over the summer we were lucky enough to meet some young female mathematicians who were just finishing up their summer research projects with the Philippa Fawcett Internship Programme and the Cambridge Mathematics Placements programme. On our way to the writing workshops we were running with these women, we walked past six inspiring portraits of female mathematicians from Cambridge. These form part of the Women of Mathematics photo exhibition, which celebrates female mathematicians from institutions throughout Europe. It's been a great pleasure revisiting our our 2017 Women of Mathematics interviews with these mathematicians about their work and their mathematical lives in this special series of podcasts.   Today's podcast is the final one of this series, and we are very pleased to revisit our interview with Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb, now professor of applied mathematics and a very good friend of us here at plus.maths.org. Carola works on the interface between machine learning and the mathematics of image analysis.     You can read more about some of Carola's recent work, including how artificial intelligence can support medical doctors in their work, and the INTEGRAL project, a collaboration with Indian researchers on how machine learning can make sense of the vast amounts of remote sensing data that is available to help conserve forests and improve life in cities. To find a transcript and video of this interview, meet the other female mathematicians, and find out more about the exhibition, see here.

Women of Mathematics: Holly Krieger

In this podcast we are very happy to revisit our 2017 interview with Holly Krieger, one of the six Cambridge mathematicians whose portrait is included in the Women of Mathematics photo exhibition. Krieger works in dynamical systems theory, particularly on chaotic systems. In this interview she told us about the joys of learning and conversations with colleagues.   Holly Krieger (Photograph by Henry Kenyon)   You can find more about Krieger's prize winning work in Dynamic numbers and you see her talk about complex numbers and dynamical systems in our collection Complex numbers: Why do we love them? To find a transcript and video of this interview, meet the other female mathematicians, and find out more about the exhibition, see here.

Women of Mathematics: Julia Gog

In this podcast we are very happy to revist our 2017 interview with Julia Gog - Professor of Mathematical Biology and a very good friend of us here at plus.maths.org. Over the last two years we've been working closely with Gog and her colleagues at the JUNIPER modelling consortium, communicating their work on the mathematical front-line of the COVID-19 pandemic.   In this interview, first recorded to celebrate the addition of six portraits of Cambridge mathematicians to the Women of Mathematics photo exhibition, Gog told us about the buzz of mathematical research, and how maths can help you do good in the world. To find a transcript and video of this interview, meet the other female mathematicians, and find out more about the exhibition, see here. And you can read more about the work of Gog and her JUNIPER colleagues here.

Women of mathematics: Anne-Christine Davis

In this podcast we revisit our 2017 interview with Anne-Christine Davis, Professor of Theoretical Physics. Anne was the first female professor in the Maths faculty at the University of Cambridge. In this interview, first recorded to celebrate the addition of six portraits of Cambridge mathematicians to the Women of Mathematics photo exhibition, Davis told us that over her long career she had seen attitudes towards women change for the better. But as you'll hear she had to put up with quite a lot at the start!   To find a transcript and video of this interview, meet the other female mathematicians, and find out more about the exhibition, see here. And you can read more about Davis' recent prize-winning research in our article On the road to dark energy (with chameleons).

Women of Mathematics: Nilanjana Datta

Last week we started a special series of podcasts revisiting the  Women of Mathematics photo exhibition, which celebrates female mathematicians from institutions throughout Europe. When the University of Cambridge hosted the exhibition in 2017, we had the opportunity to interview the six Cambridge mathematicians who's portraits appear in the exhibition about their work and their mathematical lives. In this podcast we revisit our 2017 interview with Nilanjana Datta - now a professor in quantum information theory., who told us why she loves maths and also about some of the challenges she has faced as a female mathematician.   You can see all the Cambridge portraits and find out more about the work and mathematical lives of these women here. And stay tuned to this podcast for the rest of the interviews with these brilliant women of mathematics over the coming weeks. The music in this podcast comes from the band eusa. The track is called Plankton.  

Women of Mathematics: Natalia Berloff

This month we had the pleasure of meeting some young female mathematicians who were just finishing up their summer research projects with the Philippa Fawcett Internship Programme and the Cambridge Mathematics Placements programme. On our way to the writing workshops we were running with these women, we walked past six inspiring portraits of female mathematicians from Cambridge. These form part of the Women of Mathematics photo exhibition, which celebrates female mathematicians from institutions throughout Europe. When the University of Cambridge hosted the exhibition in 2017, we had the opportunity to interview these Cambridge mathematicians about their work and their mathematical lives. In this podcast we revisit our 2017 interview with Natalia Berloff, Professor of Applied Mathematics, who told us why maths is like a treasure hunt, and shared some of her adventures in the world of maths.   You can see all the Cambridge portraits and find out more about the work and mathematical lives of these women here.  And stay tuned to this podcast for the rest of the interviews with these brilliant women of mathematics over the coming weeks. The music in this podcast comes from the band eusa. The track is called Plankton.

AI, babies, and agency

In this podcast, first published in August 2020, we hear from machine learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, who believes that creating a true artificial intelligence will only be possible once machines have something that babies are born with: the ability to interact with the world, observe what happens, and adapt to the consequences of their actions. Yoshua Bengio (Photo copyright: Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation) We'll find out how such agency helps us learn, what it could mean for computers to have it too, and hear about Bengio's work introducing it into an area of machine learning called deep learning. And, in honour of the mathematician Ron Graham who sadly passed away in July 2020, we celebrate our very favourite number, Graham's number, by telling you about it in just one minute. You can find out more about Bengio's take on agency in this series of articles, about machine learning in this article, and about Graham's number in this article. The music in the podcast is by Oli Freke and the track is called Line-1. You can listen to more of Oli's music on Soundcloud. This podcast was produced as part of our collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute (INI) – you can find out more of our work with the INI here.