This summer the department offered summer projects for second year students. We got in touch with some of the students who have already finished their projects and their supervisors to hear of their experience

Robert Scudamore was one of the project students

Robert Scudamore worked on a project in number theory supervised by Professor Martin Widmer. He says:

"For the project I chose, I have been investigating properties of polynomial functions, which has led to some fascinating areas of Number Theory. The premise of the actual project featured content that I had never encountered before, but the initial material provided gave a very thorough introduction and was a great starting point from which to explore other areas of the project. While the particular project I did was quite structured and linear, it led on to exploration of other topics in wider Number Theory, especially in discussion with students tackling other projects. The support has been great throughout and has helped me to really get to grips interesting areas of mathematics beyond what I'd previously studied. As someone who is hoping to carry on to a mathematics masters next year, opening these projects up to third years has been fantastic, allowing me to continue studying and working alongside the department into the summer."

Hafsa Akhtar and Atalanta Lytton-Clark worked on a summer project on teaching material supervised by Professor McKee. They report:

"We have been working together on a project that provides online links between past exam questions and lecture notes for the first-year linear algebra course.  A big part of this has been learning to use the document preparation system LaTeX, which has been great fun, and should be useful for all sorts of things in the future.  It has been great working as a pair: we have been able to bounce ideas off each other and support each other as we learnt new skills.  It has been interesting to see the coding behind mathematical documents and seeing it go from code to a document. "

Dr Alastair Kay supervised the project Quantum Computing for the Curious and just wished it was longer:

"I am one of the co-authors of a new textbook on quantum computing for Cambridge University Press. This is intended to be a tool for self-study of the introductory material about what a quantum computer is and how it will outperform regular computers in certain tasks. Over the duration of this four week summer project, two second year undergraduates acted as my Guinea pigs, self-studying the current draft of the core chapters. They exceeded my expectations, and were incredibly helpful at spotting some critical typos, assisting me in improving the presentation of some of the material by identifying what was unclear, and challenging my implicit assumptions about prior knowledge. The latest draft is vastly improved, and I only wish the project were longer so they could provide the same assistance for the later chapters!"

The students, Cameron Smith and Kunze Xu, on this project also enjoyed it and  Cameron Smith remarks

“I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and feel that it has been beneficial to me both academically and personally.”

Finally, Kunze Xu says about the project:

“It was my pleasure to be a member of the Summer Placement and Education Program this year. It gave me a great opportunity to explore more knowledge outside the term time, enjoying the success of problem solving and learning different skills to overcome difficulties. As an international student, under COVID influence, I have had less time to work with others and this program provided an opportunity for me, to work with other students in the college. I extended my knowledge in Quantum Computing, got more familiar with Python, and we collaboratively overcame hard problems during the regular meetings. I really enjoyed these four weeks.”