Program Overview

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Our PhD Applied Mathematics provides you with the opportunity to study areas such as dynamical systems, pattern formation, chaos theory, ordinary and partial differential equations, Hamiltonian systems, stability theory, computational neuroscience, complex systems, complex networks and nonlinear waves. We have staff with expertise in these areas who are willing to supervise PhD students, and you are invited to contact our department to discuss potential research areas and subjects. Our staff are strongly committed to research and teaching. They are world leaders in their individual specialisms, with their papers published in international journals such as Scientific Reports, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS ONE, Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, Semiconductor Science and Technology , and Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science , among others. Our Department of Mathematical Sciences is genuinely innovative and student-focused. Our research groups are working on a broad range of collaborative areas tackling real-world issues. Here are a few examples:

• Our data scientists carefully consider how not to lie, and how not to get lied to with data. Interpreting data correctly is especially important because much of our data science research is applied directly or indirectly to social policies, including health, care and education.
• We do practical research with financial data (for example, assessing the risk of collapse of the UK’s banking system) as well as theoretical research in financial instruments such as insurance policies or asset portfolios.
• We also research how physical processes develop in time and space. Applications of this range from modelling epilepsy to modelling electronic cables.
• Our optimisation experts work out how to do the same job with less resource, or how to do more with the same resource.
• Our pure maths group are currently working on two new funded projects entitled “The Calabi problem for smooth Fano threefolds” and “Stability of Brunn-Minkowski inequalities and Minkowski type problems for nonlinear capacity”.
• We also do research into mathematical education and use exciting technologies such as electroencephalography or eye tracking to measure exactly what a learner is feeling. Our research aims to encourage the implementation of ‘the four Cs’ of modern education, which are critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.

We offer an MSD and MPhil in this subject, and part-time research study is available. You can also start this course in either October, January or April. Why we're great.

• Our Department of Mathematical Sciences has an internationally excellent reputation in areas such as algebraic geometry, group theory, semigroup theory, differential equations, optimisation, probability, applied statistics, bioinformatics and mathematical biology.
• Our staff are strongly committed to research and teaching. They have published several well-regarded text books and are world leaders in their individual specialisms.
• Our department is ranked 31st for research power in the Research Excellence Framework 2021.

Our expert staff

If you are undertaking your research within our Department of Mathematical Sciences, then joint supervision across other Essex departments and schools (particularly with our School of Life Sciences, and with our School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering) is possible. Some of our current students have a supervisor based in our Department and another in one of the departments or schools mentioned above. You will be expected to meet with your supervisor at regular intervals and have a formal supervisory board meeting every six months (or once-a-year if studying part-time) to review progress. At the end of your PhD you may be publishing your research in academic journals. Our PhD students have had papers accepted and published in journals such as: Ecology, Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, Mathematical Modelling of Natural Phenomena , and The North American Journal of Economics and Finance .

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Specialist facilities

The Department of Mathematical Sciences is based in the University’s state-of-the-art STEM Centre. Research students have a dedicated work space and PCs, with access to software such as MATLAB, Gap, SageMath, Python and R. All University of Essex research students have access to our innovative and unique scheme, Proficio. Postgraduate research students are automatically enrolled on Proficio , which provides a variety of training courses, and a fund of up to £2,500 per student for conference attendance and relevant external training courses. Our department is part of MAGIC , a consortium of 22 UK universities which share PhD-level Mathematics courses, giving you access to a wide array of specialist training opportunities.

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Your future

Many of our former PhD students have gone on to work as academics in prominent institutions across the world, such as the University of Cambridge, University of Nottingham and many other international universities. Some have also remained at the University of Essex, working as postdoctoral research fellows, research impact officers, or lecturers. Other graduates have joined organisations like the Met Office, the Ministry of Defence, and companies based in the City of London. There is a high demand for those with a numerate background in all sectors of the economy, so our graduates are sought after in the UK and abroad.