MSc (by Dissertation) Mathematical Biology

Our MSD Mathematical Biology uses novel mathematical and computational techniques to solve problems in the biological, ecological and environmental sciences. At Essex, we have supervised projects in the following areas:

• animal movement and behaviour
• population dynamics
• plankton ecology
• fisheries and natural resource management
• bioinformatics techniques

You are also invited to contact our School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science to discuss other potential research areas.

Holders of such a PhD are ideally placed to continue a scientific research career, as there is currently a shortage of mathematical expertise in biological, ecological, and environmental research.

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, with their papers appearing in learned journals such as: American Naturalist, Ecology, Journal of Mathematical Biology, Journal of Theoretical Biology, and Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Our School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science is genuinely innovative and student-focused. Our research groups are working on a broad range of collaborative areas tackling real-world issues.

• 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 also offer a PhD and an MPhil in this subject.