Profile
Brian Tyrrell-Nic Dhonncha
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About Me:
♦️🤍 Queen’s University Belfast ♦️🤍
I live in Dublin with my wife, and commute to Belfast for work. I like cooking and reading fiction. My favourite dish is pasta, and I have too many favourite authors to count. I am a Teaching Fellow in Mathematics at QUB. I teach Quantum Computing and research hand gestures in mathematics.
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My pronouns are:
he/him
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How I use Maths in my work:
I am a teaching fellow at Queen’s University Belfast, meaning my job centres on teaching undergraduate students maths. I am currently teaching a course on Quantum Computing to master’s students; maths is absolutely crucial to understand the quantum world, as many facts about electrons, photons, etc. are very counterintuitive. We need to use logical deduction in order to figure out what properties quantum systems have, as we cannot observe such a small world with the naked eye.
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My Work:
Do you gesture with your hands when you speak? My research is about how people can use different resources to learn and understand maths. One resource we all have is our body — and many theories about our brains says that we understand mathematics by connecting abstract ideas to physical experience.
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Read more
Research has shown that everyone loves to gesture when doing maths. Some gestures are easy to figure out — your younger brother or sister uses their fingers to count, because their brain is still learning how symbols such as “1”, “2”, “3” translate to quantities. Other gestures (especially those used by students and teachers) are harder to figure out, and sometimes the meaning is “metaphorical”. That means that the gesture isn’t about something in real life, but an imaginary thing the gesturer thinks is similar to real life experiences.
My work looks at these gestures, and also how we can use “embodied” resources to support students with dyslexia. People with dyslexia say they have difficulty reading long, complex sentences, and translating their thinking into words. If we can help translate — looking at their gestures — then maths becomes more accessible for everyone.
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My Typical Day:
One of my favourite things about being a lecturer is that there is no typical day. Somedays I prepare lecture notes then teach a class, other days I research and write papers, and other days I talk to colleagues about the running of the maths department. There is one constant, though: lots of coffee.
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Education:
I did an undergraduate degree in maths at Trinity College Dublin; I then went to Oxford for a master’s degree and a PhD (also called a “doctorate”). My PhD research was in mathematical logic, number theory, and algorithms.
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Work History:
After my PhD I was unsure what I wanted to do next. I stayed in Oxford for one more year as a researcher in the Mathematical Institute and a lecturer at one of the colleges. I decided I liked teaching the most, so I went to California (where there are lots of jobs teaching at universities). After two year, my wife and I decided it was time to return home, and I got another teaching job at Queen’s University Belfast.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
maths researcher, book lover, sweet-treat eater
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