Retreat at The Burn 2023

for postgraduate students at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews

Schedule

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

The schedule for the 2022 trip is also available for reference.

Day 1: Monday, 16 January

Jump to: Day 2 | Day 3

Day 2: Tuesday, 17 January

Jump to: Day 1 | Day 3

Day 3: Wednesday, 18 January

Jump to: Day 1 | Day 2

Talks

The talk descriptions are order alphabetically by the speaker's first name.

Amber Cowans: Remote sensors for biodiversity and community structure

The growth of remote sensors has wide applicability in the assessment of biodiversity, helping us better understand the structure of ecological communities, with important implications for effective ecological management and restoration. This talk will outline some popular data collection tools and statistical models applied to unde rstand community diversity. We will then zoom in to explore an example of a multispecies occupancy model applied to understand elements of ecological structure in a South African carnivore population.

Amlan Banaji: Orthogonal projections of fractals and the digital sundial

If a fractal in the plane is projected orthogonally onto a line, how can its dimension change? Amlan will survey some classical and recent results about this problem, and explain that Kenneth Falconer used related ideas to prove the existence of a digital sundial.

Kate Mowbray: Particle energisation in collapsing magnetic trap models for solar flares with a braking jet

Solar flares are among the most explosive events that take place in the solar system. Observations show us that in these flares, particles can be accelerated to very high energies. Part of this particle energisation may be explained by collapsing magnetic trap (CMT) models, where the magnetic field collapses down towards the sun, accelerating particles that are trapped in the magnetic loops. To better match observations of flares, our model includes a braking jet, a jet of plasma flowing downwards towards the sun which is slowed by the stronger magnetic fields in the sun's lower atmosphere. Kate will explain the motion of particles in magnetic fields in order to show how CMT models can energise particles and will discuss some unexpected results from the braking jet model.

Maria Tsalakou: Practical computation with semigroup presentations

Maria will attempt to explain, through an example, why practical computation is a valuable tool for the development of new theoretical results in semigroup theory.

Announcement (14 October 2022)

We are pleased to announce that the 2023 retreat to The Burn for maths and stats postgrads will be taking place on 16–18 January 2023.

The aim of the retreat is to provide an opportunity for postgraduate students from the various maths and stats research groups to meet one another, share ideas and practise their presentation skills in a relaxed environment. It will take place at The Burn, a holiday accommodation in Angus. You may present a talk (non-academic topics welcome!), hold a workshop, chair a roundtable discussion, or simply sit back and watch the presentations. Meals, accommodation and transport will be provided free of cost, though you will have to pay for what you get at the bar.

This is the website for the trip, which we will use to collate updates and publish the schedule of the trip.

We'll send out a form in a couple of weeks to gauge attendance and preferences for retreat activities, but in the meantime we'll be happy to answer any questions you might have about the Burn retreat.