Plus.Maths.org
Health & Society
At the University of Stellenbosch, 50km East of Cape Town, South Africa, Kiran Dellimore and his team are engineering medical equipment that will save the lives of people all over the world. Latest projects include replacement heart valves made from kangaroo tissue and equipment to help resuscitate people in emergencies.
Helen Joyce is a former editor of Plus magazine who now works as a journalist for The Economist. In August she's off to Brazil to be the paper's Brazil Bureau Chief. In between packing and learning Portuguese she has found time to tell Plus all about her varied career and the role maths has played in it.
Genomics is one of the fastest moving areas of science and Gavin Harper, a mathematician and statistician, has put himself right at its centre. He works for Oxford Nanopore Technologies, a company which is developing new technology for analysing molecules and sequencing DNA. With 75 employees from 18 different countries and all sorts of scientific backgrounds, Gavin's work environment is
nothing like the solitary paper-and-pencil affair traditionally associated with mathematics.
If you're worried that a mathematics degree might limit your career options, then there couldn't be a better person to talk to than Steve Hewson. Find out how his varied career has taken him from the lofty heights of theoretical physics, via the trading floor of a major investment bank, into the maths classroom, and has also seen him writing his very own maths book.
Victoria Gould has always known she would be an actor, and went straight from studying arts at school to running her own theatre company. But she eventually had to come clean about her guilty secret - she loves maths - and has since managed to combine a career as a research mathematician and teacher with a successful acting career on television and in theatre. She tells Plus why she needs to use
both sides of her brain.
Emily Poskett works as a government statistician for the Department for International Development. With lots of travel and the opportunity to make a real difference in poorer countries, her job is far more than just number crunching.
Adrian Dow has a huge change ahead of him: after fourteen years in the UK and around the world, he's about to return to his native Trinidad with the ultimate aim to open his own school. Plus intercepted him on the way to the airport.
Jose Munoz explains how engineering can allow you to explore the unknown, from understanding how mechanical structures bend to investigating the way genes affect the shape of embryos.
André Léger studies the fluid mechanics of food travelling through the intestines for consumer goods giant Unilever.
Wen Quek works for an award-winning architectural cooperative based in London. Recently, she worked on the new library at the University of Cambridge's Centre for Mathematical Sciences. As she tells Plus, Wen sees many parallels between mathematics and architecture.
Whether you love maths or hate maths, your opinions on the subject were probably formed early. So primary teachers have a vital role to play in promoting mathematical skills. Plus meets primary teacher and maths coordinator Maureen Matthews.
Helen is a defence analyst with the MoD, using her maths skills to help defend the nation. Plus finds out about her career path.