Southampton PhD student wins national research talk award
Keith Daly, a second year PhD student in Applied Mathematics at Southampton has won the best postgraduate research talk award at the 2009 British Applied Mathematics Colloquium (BAMC).
The BAMC is the largest annual meeting of applied mathematicians in the UK attracting over 300 researchers. The 51st annual event was held from 7th-9th April at the University of Nottingham. Contributions from Early Career Researchers are particularly encouraged. Each year, awards for the best postgraduate talk are awarded by a panel of judges formed from distinguished senior researchers in the applied mathematics community.
Keith is working with Dr Giampaolo D'Alessandro (Mathematics) and Dr Malgosia Kaczmarek (Physics) on the mathematical modelling of the transfer of energy between light beams (optical beam coupling) propagating in anisotropic materials, for example, liquid crystals. This phenomenon is normally modelled in two limiting cases, "thin" or "thick" materials, i.e. short or long interaction length of the beams. Keith’s talk on "Regime independent coupled wave equations in anisotropic photorefractive media" discussed a new mathematical model valid for all possible interaction lengths. The work involved analytical calculations as well as numerical simulation.
All PhD students at Southampton are actively encouraged to give presentations at an international conference, and are normally supported financially to do so.