Sam graduated from University of Edinburgh in 2014 after completing an Math in Mathematics. His final year dissertation concerned the construction of Ramanujan graphs, a kind of spectrally optimal expander graph. Whilst not studying math Sam enjoys cycling, rock climbing and the occasional dram of whisky.

Research project title:
Two-species contact processes

Supervisor(s):
Tim Rogers, Peter Mörters

Project description:
Recent work in the physics literature has explored the ‘two-species contact process’ as a model of staged infections. The work has a biological interpretation in terms of host-parasite invasions, for example, when a growing colony of bacteria is under threat from a developing bacteriophage infection. Past studies have focused mainly on simulations on Z2. Sam was interested in exploring the possibility of obtaining mathematically rigorous results for models of this type but evolving on random graphs. He further made use of existing branching methods as a novel approach to the problem.