On Tuesday 11 February, the Leeds-Bradford local group hosted two speakers on the theme of 'Reaching out with statistics'. The session explored experiences as a STEM ambassador and on the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences programme.
The first speaker was Dr Laura Bonnett from the Institute of Translational Medicine at the University of Liverpool, who is also the RSS William Guy Lecturer for 2020. Laura spoke, demonstrated and engaged the audience with the many of the statistics outreach activities that she has been involved in developing. Details of the activities are available more information about Laura's work.
The second speaker was Dr Jean Rizk, from the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland and University of Limerick, who spoke about his experiences African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) programme. The programme is training students with educational and scientific resources that are equivalent to their counterparts in more developed countries. The students are equipped with mathematical and statistical tools to work on real-life problems. Jean shared his incredible experience in Cameroon: his work with the students, the projects he supervised, his with fellow tutors, and other extracurricular activities that he introduced to support the students academically as well as with their physical health. Jean also shared a few tips for those who are interested in volunteering next summer.
Abstracts of the speakers talks and their slides are available at the Leeds-Bradford local group’s website, along with all the other local group’s talks for the 19/20 season: sites.google.com/site/rssleedsbradford/home/2019---2020-session. Recordings of the talks will shortly be available on the RSS YouTube channel.