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The Willmore Pure Mathematics Postgraduate Prize being awarded

Our recent Willmore Pure Postgraduate Day celebrated the exciting research in pure mathematics carried out by junior researchers in the Department of Mathematical Sciences.

Featuring whiteboard talks by six PhD students and the award of Willmore Pure Mathematics Postgraduate Prize, we had an enjoyable day learning about and discussing the inspiring new results presented by our speakers.

Talks

There were a range of topics covered by the talks, reflecting the diverse research carried out in the Department. Our six speakers and their titles were:

  • Iolo Jones - Diffusion Geometry of Manifolds: Curvature, Dimension, and Tangent Spaces
  • Rafail Psyroukis - Analytic Properties of Rankin-Selberg Convolutions
  • Mohammad Al-Attar - Stability of Spaces with Curvature Bounds
  • Michael Kohn - Knots, Cobordisms and Khovanov Homology
  • Xintong Wang - Oscillating Asymptotics and Conjectures of Andrews
  • Sam Farrington - Shape Optimisation: from Mythology to the Modern Day

You can follow the links to find out more about our speakers and their research.

Willmore Pure Mathematics Postgraduate Prize

The Willmore Pure Mathematics Postgraduate Prize is awarded annually to one or more PhD students in Pure Mathematics for outstanding achievement and academic potential in memory of Prof Tom Willmore.

This year's winners were Sam Farrington and Guy Parker.

We were pleased to welcome Dr Gillian Boughton-Willmore (former Vice-Principal of St Mary's and widow of Prof Tom Willmore) who presented the prize to one of the recipients, Sam Farrington.

Find out more

Interested in studying for a research degree in Pure Mathematics in Durham? Find out how to apply here.

Our Department of Mathematical Sciences is ranked in the top 10 in the UK in the Complete University Guide 2025. Visit our Mathematical Sciences webpages to find out more about the Department.