The Further Mathematics Network.

Love maths and think you've got what it takes to be a designer? The Further Mathematics Network and Rolls-Royce plc are inviting entries for a new UK national poster competition for undergraduate and PGCE mathematics students. The academic year 2007-8 is the first year that the competition has been run, and there is a £100 prize awarded for the design of each winning poster — it is likely that two posters will be selected. The winning designs will be sent to schools and colleges around the UK, meaning that your poster may be exposed to tens of thousands of teachers, students and parents — the potential audience is over 2000 schools and colleges.

Posters may be designed by an individual student or by groups of students, and each poster should convey the essence of a mathematical topic that has been covered at university by the designer(s). The posters should be designed to be read by school and college students studying AS or A level mathematics.

Poster designs must be original work, and images used should not be protected by copyright. The best posters will be:

• mathematically accurate;
• attractively laid out;
• capable of enriching a course in AS or A level Mathematics;
• likely to attract school/college students to take mathematics (or mathematics-related subjects) at university.

To flex your artistic and mathematical muscles, you must design your poster in Microsoft Publisher, with the page layout set to 59.4 cm x 84.1 cm. The format can be either landscape or portrait. The university's logo should appear in the top left corner and there should be a space 8 cm high x 11 cm wide in the top right corner for the Further Mathematics Network logo. The bottom 2 cm of the poster should be left blank. All images should be at least 300 dpi.

Entries should be submitted by e-mail to Janice Richards no later than 31 March 2008. For further information please contact Richard Browne at the Further Mathematics Network.

Another competition shortly closing is our very own Plus New Writers Award. Plus is again looking for the science writers of the future, who can make mathematics lively and interesting for a general audience Plus New Writers Award gives you (or your students) a chance to join our acclaimed list of authors, including physicist Stephen Hawking, mathematician and writer Marcus du Sautoy, and NASA astronaut Michael Foale. Whether you're young or old, a student or a teacher, a maths expert or an enthusiastic amateur, if you want to share your fascination with maths with the rest of the world, then this is a great way to give it a go.

There are three categories to this writing competition: Secondary school and sixth form students are invited to write a piece of up to 900 words about the life and/or work of any mathematician, living or dead. University students, undergraduate and postgraduate, and the general public can write a longer piece on any mathematical topic or application they think the world should know about.

The winning entries will be read by an international audience of over 200,000 in the June 2008 issue of Plus. The closing date is March 31st 2008. Besides the fame and glory of seeing your article published in Plus (one of last year's winners went on to write for New Scientist), there are also prizes for the best submissions, including signed copies of popular science books, an Apple iPod and a subscription to the journal Nature, kindly donated by its publisher.

Our competition website contains all the relevant information, as well as posters for download, in case you want to advertise the competition in your school or college.

So if you know some maths you want to shout about, download your entry pack now and get writing!