Willmore Pure Postgraduate Day 2026

The day, held on 16 October in the Kenworthy Room at St Mary's College, featured talks by seven speakers and the award of the Willmore Pure Mathematics Postgraduate Prize. We had an enjoyable day learning about and discussing the new results presented by our speakers.

Talks

The talks covered a wide range of topics, from number theory and geometry to topology and its applications, reflecting the diverse research carried out in the Department. Our speakers and their titles were:

• Sam Shepherd – Some manifestations of the Siegel–Weil formula 
• Saheb Mohapatra – Can polylogarithms keep a secret?
• Leon Dahlmeier – Topology of a Smile: Persistent Homology in Dental Imaging 
• Adam Barber – Inscription Problems
• Dan Disney – Making Saddles out of Spheres 
• Julio Quijas-Aceves – Phylogenetic rank: Embedding graphs into the product of trees
• Francesco Salerno (Scuola Superiore Meridionale) – Symmetrization and stability for the k-Hessian equation 

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 Professor Tom Willmore.

This year's winners were Loic Cosyns and Dan Disney. Dan Disney was congratulated on the day by Dr John Bolton (unfortunately Loic Cosyns was not able to attend).

The day is kindly sponsored by Dr Gillian Boughton-Willmore, former Vice-Principal of St Mary's College and widow of Professor Willmore.

Find out more

• Learn more about postgraduate degrees at the Department of Mathematical Sciences.
• Discover our research areas.