Academic Career

Does where you do your Bsc in Maths matter if you want have a career as an academic? What about MSci or MMath? Its just I am worried that now that I have been turned down by Oxford after the interviews, that I may not have a chance as an academic.

Tbh most Russel Unis (+Bath) would give you a extremely good path on the round to becoming an academic! So would others though for that matter... plus some unis are more "researchy" so to speak

Just curious- why did you withdraw your application for Oxford after receiving an interview?

Because they said they couldn't give me an offer so I thought I'd save some trees by withdrawing so no more correspondence/letters need be sent to me. PS. all you're other unis look really very good though so don't worry!!! You'll be made a Mathematician of yet!!!

Thank you for the support and the advice. At least now I won't have any regrets about not even trying.

I absolutely agree with what has been said so far. Even if you still desire an oxbridge degree, you can go for a Masters or even PhD at oxford or cambridge after your BSc-and you've got plenty of time to work towards that. So no regrets at all. In fact, it will be more productive for you at that stage because you will know exactly which area of mathematics you wish to specialise and so more focused. The competition for oxbridge is so wild that so many able candidates get rejected. Keep working hard anshul95, the sky is your limit!

Just to say that in this context (Maths) its not really appropriate to talk about "Oxbridge". There is Cambridge and {Warwick, Oxford, Imperial}, the relative merits of the last three for maths research being to some extent a matter of opinion. Your choice of department for your MMath will to some extent determine your later choices, generally people are drawn towards areas of maths that are strengths of the department in which they study as an undergrad.

Ok I see - do you know which unis besides Nottingham that have strong research into mathematical biology? (epidemiology and population dynamics are my primary interests)

Are you at Nottingham? If so, you should try to speak to Helen Byrne.

Ok I see - do you know which unis besides Nottingham that have strong research into mathematical biology? (epidemiology and population dynamics are my primary interests)

Oh, just realised you are the OP and you haven't even been to uni yet! In which case you have plenty of time to decide! I mean you won't encounter these subjects for a few years and realistically it will not be until graduate level until you would start to do some serious math biology work. More often than not these days means taking a four-year integrated doctoral training programme at one of the places named by BillLionHeart and actually getting some background training in biology and experimental techniques alongside your mathematical training.

Just to say that in this context (Maths) its not really appropriate to talk about "Oxbridge". There is Cambridge and {Warwick, Oxford, Imperial}, the relative merits of the last three for maths research being to some extent a matter of opinion. Your choice of department for your MMath will to some extent determine your later choices, generally people are drawn towards areas of maths that are strengths of the department in which they study as an undergrad.

Yes certainly she is a star. The Cicada group at Manchester work on the mathematics of systems biology with the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre, of course you will know about Maini's group at Oxford http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/groups/mathematical-biology/links/groups (OP I see why Oxford was a good choice for you, see also links there to their collaborators) There is a strong group at Bath http://www.bath.ac.uk/cmb/mathBiology2010/, a systems biology group at Warwick http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/systemsbiology/, and there are a number of groups working in mathematics of biomedical engineering (eg medical imaging, bio/medical fluid dynamics, biomechanics -- a bit off topic from what you said), and of course biostatistics and medical statistics (which do intersect with epidemiology of course)

I'm glad someone raised this topic. I have been researching around mathematical medicine/biology a lot. Is this field likely to grow in the coming years? Is Biology truly math's next physics. Is Mathematics Biology's next microscope? Is there anyone into this field on this forum to shed more light?

The biggest growth area is in bioinformatics and work related to genomics and data-rich applications due to advances in biotechnology, e.g. whole genome sequencing. Other areas in which measurement data is available have also undergone expansion, e.g. clinical imaging. The money is in anything where large quantities of data can be collected.

Theoretical mathematical biology has expanded somewhat in recent years but the usefulness of the research in these fields is still subject to much debate (especially amongst practising biologists and clinicians!). There are many reasons but basically we actually do not know that much about the details of many biological processes we are trying to model -- if you do not know what agents and processes are involved math modelling is obviously going to be a bit of a struggle!

Is Biology truly math's next physics is a bad question to ask. Biology is physics -- unfortunately the physics involved in biology is more like the physics involved in meteorology (but probably even more complex!). The systems are large and involve many interactions between multiple agents and processes on different temporal and spatial scales together with no end of internal and external factors which could be involved (some of which maybe unknown). Just as in meteorology, there are biological models that can do a good job of predicting general trends and global patterns in systems but ask a more detailed and practical question and the crude approximations used by these models begin to breakdown (and lets not even begin to think about what our models do when we subject them to a realistic perturbation! ). Hence, my comment (above) about research funders now preferring budding math biologists to actually get experience of working in biology and with biologists during their doctoral training so then you can get into the habit of understanding biology, experimentation and identify aspects of a biological (sub-)system which is amenable to accurate modelling and can be validated.

Basically, the theoretical side of math biology field will grow but just not at the same rate as the applied side that deals with data. It will take us (and the biologists) a long time to work everything out and along the way we are probably going to need to pick up some engineers, computer scientists, physicists, etc because we won't have all the tools and skills to tackle all the problems alone. For the genomics guys, there is big money in academia and industry right now and for the foreseeable future.

P.S. Also beware of paradigm shifting technological advances! For example, I think the field of population dynamics (mathematical epidemiology in particular) is going to fundamentally change in the next decade or two as whole genome sequencing becomes more affordable and quicker and we are able to monitor the spread of infectious diseases by measuring the evolving genetics of the biological organisms involved.

The biggest growth area is in bioinformatics and work related to genomics and data-rich applications due to advances in biotechnology, e.g. whole genome sequencing. Other areas in which measurement data is available have also undergone expansion, e.g. clinical imaging. The money is in anything where large quantities of data can be collected.

Theoretical mathematical biology has expanded somewhat in recent years but the usefulness of the research in these fields is still subject to much debate (especially amongst practising biologists and clinicians!). There are many reasons but basically we actually do not know that much about the details of many biological processes we are trying to model -- if you do not know what agents and processes are involved math modelling is obviously going to be a bit of a struggle!

Is Biology truly math's next physics is a bad question to ask. Biology is physics -- unfortunately the physics involved in biology is more like the physics involved in meteorology (but probably even more complex!). The systems are large and involve many interactions between multiple agents and processes on different temporal and spatial scales together with no end of internal and external factors which could be involved (some of which maybe unknown). Just as in meteorology, there are biological models that can do a good job of predicting general trends and global patterns in systems but ask a more detailed and practical question and the crude approximations used by these models begin to breakdown (and lets not even begin to think about what our models do when we subject them to a realistic perturbation! ). Hence, my comment (above) about research funders now preferring budding math biologists to actually get experience of working in biology and with biologists during their doctoral training so then you can get into the habit of understanding biology, experimentation and identify aspects of a biological (sub-)system which is amenable to accurate modelling and can be validated.

Basically, the theoretical side of math biology field will grow but just not at the same rate as the applied side that deals with data. It will take us (and the biologists) a long time to work everything out and along the way we are probably going to need to pick up some engineers, computer scientists, physicists, etc because we won't have all the tools and skills to tackle all the problems alone. For the genomics guys, there is big money in academia and industry right now and for the foreseeable future.

P.S. Also beware of paradigm shifting technological advances! For example, I think the field of population dynamics (mathematical epidemiology in particular) is going to fundamentally change in the next decade or two as whole genome sequencing becomes more affordable and quicker and we are able to monitor the spread of infectious diseases by measuring the evolving genetics of the biological organisms involved.

are you an undergrad/graduate doing mathematical biology? If so which uni are you studying at?