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Welcome
Why study Mathematics at Bristol?
The Department of Mathematics provides postgraduates with a vibrant and stimulating place to work. During your study, you will not only develop your mathematical skills and competencies, but will also have the opportunity to collaborate and interact with internationally leading researchers and to apply your results across a range of academic disciplines.
Postgraduate admissions booklets and project descriptions are on the Applied Mathematics, Pure Mathematics and Statistics sections of the postgraduate admissions site.
The Department of Mathematics is one of the largest departments in the Faculty of Science with about 70 members of academic staff covering a range of applied mathematics, pure mathematics and statistics research. It has an international reputation for excellence in each of these areas, as was demonstrated by the UK government's Research Assessment Exercise in 2008, where our Applied Mathematics group was ranked third in the UK, the Statistics group joint fourth, and the Pure Mathematics group joint fifth (by the grade-point-average ranking used in Times Higher Education, for example).
There is a wide range of research conducted in the department. Broadly, there are three subject groups:
Applied Mathematics
Research is concentrated in the areas of dynamical systems and statistical mechanics, mathematical physics (quantum chaos, random matrix theory, quantum information), fluid dynamics, materials science and scientific computing.
Pure Mathematics
Research is formed around the topics of algebra, analysis, ergodic theory and dynamical systems, geometric group theory, logic and number theory.
Statistics
The main research areas are applied probability, Bayesian modelling and analysis, behavioural biology, multiscale methods, Monte Carlo methods, nonparametric regression, optimisation under uncertainty, statistical bioinformatics, statistical signal processing and the analysis of time series.
Computer facilities in the department include a Linux farm with twelve 32-bit machines, and an HPC Linux cluster with sixteen 64-bit multicore nodes. Postgraduates are also welcome to use the BlueCrystal machine which was built by a consortium of the University, IBM, ClusterVision and ClearSpeed.
More information is available about the degrees we offer, application procedure, our open day, funding and student life. There is also a list of frequently asked questions.