Overall as part of the 2014/15 Vacation Scholarship Program 56 scholarships were awarded to students from all across Australia. These scholarships enabled students to conduct research during their summer holidays, across a wide range of areas in mathematics.
Projects and Reports
Projects ranged from pure projects like ‘Quasi-primal Cornish Algebras‘ and ‘Geometry of Minkowski space’ to applied projects like ‘Modelling the Use of Supplemental Oxygen to Combat Surgical Site Infection‘ and ‘Workload and Performance – The Development and Application of Predictive Models for the Australian Wheelchair Rugby Team‘.
Full list of projects with accompanying reports here.
Big Day In
The 2015 Big Day In was opened by Professor Gary Froyland and followed by a very inspiring lecture by Dr Federico Frascoli, talking about his inspirations and offering some advice to the students thinking of pursuing academic careers.
Before the presentations started students got to ask questions of a career panel comprising of some well established academics and industry professionals.
- Dr Federico Frascoli, Swinburne University of Technology
- Professor Gary Froyland, Deputy Director, AMSI
- Michelle Roldan, Crown Resorts
- Marcel Jackson, La Trobe University
- Tori McFarlin, Biarri
- Dr Maria Athanassenas, Defence Science and Technology Organisation
Students all got the opportunity to present their own research at the two day, event hosted by AMSI at the University of Melbourne. This conference gave most students their first opportunity to present research in front of academics and their peers. The presentations were all really well received with book prizes awarded for the best presentations on each day.
2015 Big Day In program here.
Blogs
As well as the Big Day In presentation students wrote blog posts with the purpose of improving their ability to present their research to the general public. These blogs were of a similarly high standard to the research reports and were all posted on the AMSI website and distributed by social media.
See all the blogs here.
Feedback
The event was enjoyed by all involved and received some great feedback!
“It gave me a great insight into what being a researcher involves, as well as giving me the opportunity to meet fellow students and supervisors.”
– John Tait, RMIT
“The two things I enjoyed most about this experience were, the opportunity to do independent research with the aid of an excellent supervisor and the opportunity to see such a variety of high level research being undertaken by undergrad students.”
– Shmuli Bloom, Monash University