Profile

I’m from Australia and moved to the UK to do a PhD in maths (I’m now a doctor!). During my PhD, aside from my research I was also involved in a number of projects where we wrote biographies and recorded videos to show people how cool and diverse we could be – check them out here https://www.seresearch.qmul.ac.uk/pce/ediresources/ and here https://www.qmul.ac.uk/maths/our-community/equality-diversity-and-inclusion/a-mathematician-like-me/.

I have had a lot of hobbies which change when I get bored. For example, I used to be really into roller skating, knitting and crochet, and playing Legend of Zelda on my Switch. During my PhD I also learned how to speak German and now want to learn Spanish and other languages!

I do something called “topological data analysis”. The “topological” means that I use abstract shapes to represent “data” points and then use mathematical tools to measure and “analyse” these shapes and say something about the data.

In my PhD, I used extremely weird and abstract mathematical structures to work out whether “holes” in shapes like crystals were real or not. In my current work, I take pictures of medical data, and find different tools to describe how different cells are behaving, interacting and changing.

When I’m at work, I’m doing a bunch of different things depending on the day or the week: sometimes I’m writing code to test out some new maths I’m working on, sometimes I’m analysing and interpreting the cool data I get to work with, sometimes I’m reading about the cool new maths other people are doing to see if it’s useful to my work, sometimes I’m writing about my research, sometimes I’m in meetings with my colleagues and supervisor discussing my work or getting to hear about the work they’ve been doing, and sometimes I just go for a walk around to clear my head whenever I’m stuck on a problem!