Manchester Postgraduate to present her work at the House of Commons
Mary Aprahamian, a postgraduate student in Numerical Analysis in the School of Mathematics, has been shortlisted for the 2014 SET for BRITAIN competition and will display her poster at the House of Commons on the 17th March 2014.
The overall aim of SET for BRITAIN is to encourage, support and promote Britain's early-career scientists, engineers, technologists, and mathematicians who are the driving force of UK’s research and development, and ultimately of UK plc. These researchers are a vital asset for the future of the UK.
Mary’s poster presents her research on efficient methods for the ranking of the nodes of very large complex networks. Using novel numerical techniques, Mary aims to determine, for example, the most communicative and most influential individuals in large groups of connected people, such as communities in social networks like Twitter and Facebook.
Asked to comment on her research and award, Mary said, ‘I have always been fascinated by how powerful and universal Mathematics is. Since starting work on this project I have been particularly excited about the direct implications of our research to seemingly non-mathematical problems arising from real world applications. It is a great source of inspiration knowing that my research is also of high impact in various other fields of study, such as human interactions and psychology, gene regulator networks in Biology and modern marketing techniques. I feel tremendously excited and honoured to be given the opportunity to present my work at the House of Commons and I am looking forward to meeting Members of Parliament and other early career scientists.’
Mary is currently studying for a PhD in Numerical Analysis under the supervision of Professor Nick Higham.