SAMBa provided a uniquely supportive yet challenging environment, in which one is encouraged to explore their interests and question their limits
Before joining SAMBa, I completed MMath at the University of St Andrews. My PhD was on “Competing Growth Processes with Applications to Networks” supervised by Dr Cécile Mailler and Professor Peter Mörters.
In my final year, I did a 3-months placement with HSBC, in their spot FX electronic market making team, who subsequently offered me a fulltime job. I am now working for HSBC as a quantitative analyst.
SAMBa made it possible for me to get a PhD in Mathematics, not only by funding my studies, but also by supporting me throughout and actively encouraging to pursue various opportunities which became available in the process.
The ITTs in particular, gave me first-hand experience in formulating industrial challenges as Mathematical problems, delivering the outcome in a clear manner to both technical and non-technical audiences. This skill undoubtedly helped me to do well in my placement.
SAMBa provided a uniquely supportive yet challenging environment, in which one is encouraged to explore their interests and question their limits. The first year of the programme encourages students to gain a wide range of technical skills highly valued by industry, as well as fostering many other transferable skills, such as presentation, team-working and grant proposal writing skills, thus making it a relatively smooth transition for students after their PhDs regardless of whether they decide to stay in academia or go into industry (with anything in between).
I was able to use the SAMBa training in statistics, to support training workshops in Mexico and in fact took a break from my PhD to take on a statistics teaching assistant role.
Shortly after joining SAMBa I broke my neck in a bicycle accident. But thanks to the support from the amazing team, I was still able to make a success of my PhD. The SAMBa environment surrounds you with wonderful people and fantastic opportunities.
The experience and the skill set acquired during my years in SAMBa helped me develop my academic career in a growing inter and trans disciplinary world.
You get a lot of freedom to choose your research area...and there is a wide range of research areas within the department from which to choose
The ITTs can be really fun. The best part is that each time you participate you come out with a head full of new ideas and knowledge. Truly amazing
I found the one-on-one reading courses an incredible opportunity to both learn about a topic in detail, and to get to know a potential area and supervisor before starting my PhD
The SAMBa team understands how to efficiently bridge the gap between the abstract world of mathematics and statistics to industrial research
SAMBa exposes students to a wide range of cutting edge statistical and mathematical research that will be useful to them in their PhD and later career
The ITTs were invaluable in providing experience in collaborating effectively with others on large projects, understanding and synthesising new information quickly, and liasing with academic leads and commercial partners
I joined thinking I wanted to do one type of PhD but ended up doing a completely different one due to the flexibility that was provided in finding/forming a PhD during the masters year
