Working with SAMBa

Find out how you can collaborate with students and academics who are at the forefront of statistical applied mathematics.

How to get involved

Impact is an important part of our mission. We partner with a diverse worldwide community including industry, government agencies and academic researchers from non-maths disciplines, to deliver high quality collaborative research approaches that are grounded in mathematical sciences with an application focus.

Some of our established mechanisms are described below, but we can also explore new ways of working with you.

Get in touch with us to discuss how we can work together: samba@bath.ac.uk

Integrative Think Tanks (ITTs)

Our flagship week-long workshops bring together SAMBa students, mathematical sciences academics, and external partners to formulate collaborative solution pathways to challenges posed by partners.

ITTs begin with presentations of challenges from partners, followed by discussion and formation of small teams to work intensively on formulating mathematical approaches to those challenges. These formulations are focused on a 3-4 year timescale of delivery and ideally will develop into PhD projects for SAMBa students, or students recruited directly onto the research project.

ITTs offer partners a significant level of immersion and co-ownership of research. It is the beginning of challenging and high impact research, often leading to long-lasting relationships with co-funded research activities.

The SAMBa approach was a great template for setting up a productive, creative and collaborative atmosphere. The commitment of the students in getting involved with unfamiliar areas of research and applying their experience towards producing solutions was very impressive.

— Dr Mike Marsh, Space weather researcher, Met Office

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Integrative Think Tanks

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PhD research

Many of our students are co-supervised by non-academic partners in delivering interdisciplinary research. These projects are designed jointly by the student, external partner and academic supervisory team.

The non-academic partner usually contributes to research and associated costs of projects in which they are involved, and hosts the student for placements.

Jointly supervised PhD research delivers high-quality approaches to problems directly relevant to your sector and organisation over three to four years. The research can be protected by confidentiality clauses but must allow for publication of results.

Internships

Students can undertake a secondment during their PhD which is not directly related to their PhD research. This is usually of around three to six months and may be with international or UK academic partners, or with a partner company.

You will be able to work closely with them on relevant problems to your organisation, whilst developing strong links with the University of Bath. Secondments (salaries and associated costs) are funded by the host organisation.

Research

We have kick-started a wealth of exciting collaborative research projects with industrial partners, that range from short exploration projects to multi-million pound externally-funded programmes such as the AI for Collective Intelligence Hub and MaThRad. Many of our students are co-supervised by non-academic partners in delivering interdisciplinary research. One of the major successes of ITTs is that the ideas generated are truly collaborative and ownership is shared between all the researchers involved. This means that each ITT continues to deliver long after the event has taken place.

Career days

We invite our partners to join us at SAMBa annual career days where PhD students can find out more about their organisations and upcoming internship or job opportunities

Informal interactions

The Department of Mathematical Sciences has a long and fruitful history of working with industry. We welcome approaches from new and established partners with suggestions of how we could work with you, or to arrange to visit the department and to attend or speak at one of our departmental seminars.

Intellectual property

Based on previous experience, we do not expect IP issues to be a significant barrier to industrial participation in SAMBa. The University has wide experience in collaboration with industry and can be very flexible with respect to intellectual property arrangements and ownership.

SAMBa PhD students make presentations both internally and to larger audiences and are encouraged to present their work at conferences. If it is important that certain aspects of a project remain confidential, this should be agreed before the start of the project.