The Department’s mission is to advance and promote knowledge of mathematics and its applications. We have a unified and connected view of mathematics as a subject of intrinsic interest and one with widespread application and impact.  Our approach is outward looking, with a culture of interdisciplinarity and engagement with industry. Our students are among the best in the UK.  Our undergraduate syllabus, grounded in research, reflects the unity of mathematics and complements our excellent industrial placement schemes.

Our research embraces pure and applied mathematics, probability, and statistics and their interactions. Examples of our connections across research areas include (i) combining the analysis of partial differential equations with their applications to continuum mechanics, mathematical biology, mathematical control theory, and numerical analysis, (ii) links between statistical modelling, probability theory, and numerical analysis, and (iii) connecting analysis with geometry.  The Department has a long tradition of combining rigorous theory with real applications.

The Department has regular specialist seminars in Analysis,  Applied Analysis, Mathematical Biology,  Networks and Collective Behaviour, Control Theory,  Geometry, Statistics, Nonlinear Mechanics,  Numerical Analysis and Probability,  as well as a general “Mathematical Landscapes” colloquium.

In our multidisciplinary and industrially applied research, we foster synergies between research teams, while simultaneously emphasising mathematical rigour underpinning the applications. The department has enjoyed collaborative projects with well over 40 industrial partners in recent years. 

In 2010, the Department moved into a new five-storey building at the heart of the campus, providing bright new staff offices, space for collaborative discussion, and accommodation for support staff. There is also a custom-built lecture room with adjacent social and exhibition space which is used extensively for seminars, meetings and workshops organised by Department members.

Members of the Department are involved also in interdisciplinary research centres within the University. Four of these are directed by members of the Department: the Centre for Networks and Collective Behaviour which is a university-wide collaboration centred in Applied Mathematics, the Centre for Mathematical Biology which encourages and supports collaboration between mathematicians,  biologists, and others from across the University,  the Centre for Nonlinear Mechanics which hosts collaboration between applied mathematics, numerical analysis and areas of application for example in Mechanical Engineering, and the Probability Laboratory at Bath which is led by the probability group, with strong connections to other areas such as analysis and numerical analysis.

More details of the research activities of the Department can be found on their main webpages.

 

The Bath Institute for Mathematical Innovation

“Excellence in research and innovation” is a core goal for the University of Bath, and to help achieve this goal the University has decided to establish and invest in a number of University-wide Research Institutes.  The new Bath Institute for Mathematical Innovation which was founded in 2014 with with Professor Jonathan Dawes from the Department of Mathematical Sciences as its director.

The Institute aims to support the excellent mathematics and mathematically related activity that exists across the University, to develop further the international profile of the University and to extend further our capacity for industrial collaborations in order to produce a step change in the impact and visibility of our research. The Institute was formally launched in March 2015.

 

The Centre for Doctoral Training in Statistical Applied Mathematics (SAMBa)

In March 2014 the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council awarded the Department funding to establish a Centre for Doctoral Training in Statistical Applied Mathematics at Bath (SAMBa). This CDT is supporting five cohorts of four-year PhD studentships, a total of over 50 students). The first students arrived in September 2014.

SAMBa will train a new breed of mathematical researchers at the interface between Applied Mathematics, Statistics, and Probability theory, to engage students with industrial and interdisciplinary problems and hence to equip them to tackle key societal and industrial challenges related to areas such as data science, uncertainty quantification, and large-scale stochastic modelling and simulation. To achieve this we have designed an innovative, student-centred approach at graduate teaching.

 

The Probability Laboratory at Bath (Prob-L@B)

The Probability Laboratory at Bath is one of the largest and most vibrant research groups of its kind in the UK with an outstanding international reputation. The driving principle of the laboratory is to maintain a strong network of international collaborations and to attract a high volume flow of outstanding mathematical talents at the postgraduate and postdoctoral level. This is achieved by providing a highly active and reactive research centre through graduate courses, a high density of esteemed visitors and yearly research workshops on current themes. Coupled with the supervisory role of the experienced and internationally leading researchers permanently based within Prob-L@B, the unit has a long-term vision to self-perpetuate itself through a cycle of cutting edge research, a reputation of being a powerhouse of ideas for young and up-coming minds in probability, and a broad portfolio of research funding. The appointee will be expected to lead the laboratory forward towards this vision.

 

Undergraduate Teaching

Undergraduate teaching activities of the Department encompass various degree programmes at Bachelor and Master level, and service teaching to other departments. Applications are currently buoyant and the department recruits around 300 very well prepared students each year to its ambitious undergraduate programme. The popularity of the degree programme is enhanced by the availability of options which combine advanced studies in Mathematical Sciences with a year either in industry or spent studying abroad. The MMath programme offers four years training in Mathematical Sciences in which students can choose a wide range of options in pure and applied mathematics and statistics and probability, as well as units from other departments. A new MMath with industrial placement option has recently been added to the degree scheme.  The Department also contributes to joint degrees in Mathematics and Physics, Computer Science and Mathematics and (from Autumn 2015), a new joint degree in Economics and Mathematics.

 

Postgraduate Programmes

Departmental postgraduate taught provision includes established Masters Programmes in ‘Mathematical Sciences' and ‘Modern Applications of Mathematics', the latter  including a Mathematical Biology stream. A new MRes programme (which is part of the Centre for Doctoral Training) has recently been added.

Postgraduate research is vibrant with an expanding PhD population, and substantial future expansion planned through initiatives to attract funding from industry and through internationalization activities. A decade ago, the Department pioneered the “Doctoral College”  route to PhD in which students must pass 6 assessed graduate level mathematics courses during the first 18 months of 3.5 years’ funded study.  This broadens and deepens postgraduate provision, providing formal training in areas not necessarily directly related to the student’s research, and it has since been widely adopted in other places. More recently our Doctoral College provision has been strengthened by the EPSRC-supported Taught Course Centre which involves Bath together with the Universities of Bristol, Oxford and Warwick, and Imperial College London. These five institutions share video-linked graduate mathematics courses using Access Grid technology.

Further details of our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes can be found here.