Archive for Centre for Doctoral Training
why don’t you wear a suit?!
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel, University life with tags baby Trump, black Friday, CDT, Centre for Doctoral Training, department of statistics, Des Moines, French Navy, Iowa, John Cairns, journalism, MAGA, objectivity, Oxford, OxWaSP, PhD students, Racoon River Brewing Co., Solidarity with Ukraine, Trump administration, University of Oxford, US politics, USA, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, White House on March 4, 2025 by xi'an
HW AMS & EPSRC MAG-MIGS CDT seminar
Posted in Statistics with tags ABC convergence, Bayes Centre, Centre for Doctoral Training, Edinburgh, EPSRC, Heriot-Watt University, Maxwell Institute Graduate School, misspecification, Scotland, University of Edinburgh on October 10, 2019 by xi'an
Some explanation for all these acronyms! I am giving a Actuarial Mathematics & Statistics (AMS) seminar at Heriot-Watt (HW) University, in Edinburgh, tomorow. But in the (new) Bayes Centre, at the University of Edinburgh, rather than on the campus of Heriot-Watt, as this is also the launching day of the Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) on Mathematical Modelling, Analysis, & Computation (MAG) shared between Heriot-Watt, and the University of Edinburgh, funded by the EPSRC and located in the Maxwell Institute Graduate School (MIGS) in its Bayes Centre. My talk will be on ABC convergence and misspecification.
MASDOC
Posted in Statistics, University life with tags Birmingham, Centre for Doctoral Training, EPSRC, graduate program, MASDOC, PhD thesis, University of Warwick on January 14, 2011 by xi'an
On Wednesday, I went to the University of Warwick to take part in a meeting about their new MASDOC programme. This programme was launched last year with the support of the EPSRC in three U.K. universities, Warwick, Lancaster and Cambridge (for math). It prepares graduate (fifth year) students for conducting a PhD in Mathematics or Statistics by providing them with extra tutoring and by creating a “cohort” of students working together on research topics. For the first year, the cohort was made of eleven students selected among applicants from both the UK and abroad. Besides a solid volume of courses in Mathematics, Probability and Statistics, MASDOC has the students working in small teams on an applied math problem (e.g., data assimilation, biomembranes, brain imaging) in order to (a) determine a reserarch programme and (b) propose a solution. The teams switch between (a) and (b) which is a neat good idea. The students are also given a common working room in order to increase their team abilities. When discussing with them, I was quite impressed by their maturity and involvement, as they already had a vision of their research interests. In fact, they have somehow gained one year ahead of the average student in terms of decision-making and planning, if not in terms of contents. Of course, this approach to graduate training is rather elitist in that it cannot be extended to all first-year graduates, however it is a worthy investment by EPSRC and the selected universities for building a core of PhD students and future academics with a broader spectrum, a more mature approach to research and teamwork, and hence a higher efficiency now and later. As a side issue, the MASDOC programme is also pushing for exchanges between institutions at the graduate and PhD levels, which is always a plus. Especially when considering the possibilities offered by the Paris graduate school of mathematical sciences.
