Profiles
Dr Matthew Craven
Lecturer in Applied Mathematics
School of Computing, Electronics and Mathematics (Faculty of Science & Engineering)
Role
- Lecturer in Applied Mathematics in SoCEM.
- Shortlisted for SSTAR awards in the categories of "Inspiration Teaching" and "Sensational Programme Lead" in 2017.
- Lead of the Plymouth GPU Research Center.
- Research interests in many aspects of Mathematics (see 'Research' section for details).
- Programme Manager for the (six) Foundation Year programmes in SoCEM.
- Stage tutor for four of the above six programmes.
- Senior Personal Tutor.
- One of two SoCEM disability champions.
- Admissions Tutor for BSc (Hons) Mathematics and Statistics with Foundation Year, and assistant Admissions Tutor for year 1 Mathematics programmes.
- Teaches across several schools, including service teaching, Mathematics degree students and 3rd year project supervision.
- Enjoys speaking at outreach events, having given several Mathematics Masterclasses in collaboration with the Royal Institution.
- PGCAP mentor for new staff.
- Applied Mathematics seminar organiser - if you wish to give a seminar then contact me!
Professional membership
Institute of Mathematics and its Applications
London Mathematical Society
Foundation Year Network
Teaching interests
Postgraduate: 1 PhD student in Financial Mathematics
Undergraduate
2017-18 Sem 2:
MATH2604 Mathematical Methods and Applications
MATH3628 Final Year Projects
2017-18 Sem 1:
MATH051 * Mathematical Methods I
MATH055 Mathematics 1
MATH3628 Final Year Projects
* denotes module leadership.
2013-2017: STAT008* Statistics for Extended Science; MATH051* Mathematical Methods I; MATH1015* Mathematics with Applications 1; MATH236 Engineering Analysis; MATH2501 Advanced Calculus and Transforms; MATH2604 Mathematical Methods and Applications; MATH3501/3602 Final Year Projects
I also have a large amount of teaching experience in many different venues and levels, from foundation year to MSc levels and PhD workshops.
Research interests
Current research projects:
Copulas and combinatorial optimisation in financial mathematics for business
Combinatorial enumeration methods for approximation of optimal solutions
Hyperheuristics in symbolic computation
Group-theoretic cryptology
Visualisation of algorithms
Structure-preserving mappings and algorithms
Mathematical education
(In many of the above I make use of parallel computation on an HPC cluster and/or GPUs.)
I have varied research interests, and research in the following areas:
Applied Mathematics: Experimental mathematics, Mathematical finance and economics, Dynamical systems, Combinatorial optimisation, Cryptography and cryptanalysis, Game theory;
Applicable Mathematics: Computational algebra, Discrete mathematics and graph theory, Mathematics education;
Computer Science: Evolutionary algorithms, Symbolic computation, Performance analysis of algorithms, high performance computing.
Applied Mathematics: Experimental mathematics, Mathematical finance and economics, Dynamical systems, Combinatorial optimisation, Cryptography and cryptanalysis, Game theory;
Applicable Mathematics: Computational algebra, Discrete mathematics and graph theory, Mathematics education;
Computer Science: Evolutionary algorithms, Symbolic computation, Performance analysis of algorithms, high performance computing.
Other research
I am an external member of the Cybersecurity research group at the University of Abertay Dundee.
I am always interested in hearing from prospective PhD students in the areas specified in my research section, and in particular, Group-Theoretic Cryptography and Financial Mathematics.
Grants & contracts
In July 2014, Plymouth University was selected as an NVIDIA CUDA Research Center, with myself as the principle investigator. Seven CMS staff and one colleague in Computing carry out research ranging from Particle Physics, Industrial Engineering to Cryptanalysis supported with hardware from NVIDIA. This status was successfully renewed in July 2015 and July 2016.
Research groups
- Centre for Mathematical Sciences (CMS)
Other academic activities
- I have taught many Royal Institute Mathematics Masterclasses in cryptography, the most recent in April 2017.
- I am on the editorial board for Applied Computational Intelligence and Soft Computing. Also I was a Review Committee member for GECCO 2009 (GA Track), a Programme Committee member for GECCO 2010 and GECCO 2011 (both GA Track), a Programme Committee member for the GECCO-UP Workshop 2013 and a Review Committee member for the VizGEC Workshop in 2015-2017.
- I review EPSRC grant applications in cryptography.
- I am the leader of the Applied Mathematics research group on Computational Algebra and Symbolic Computation, and run the Plymouth GPU Research Centre.
Additional information
I am always keen to hear from prospective PhD students. For informal enquiries, please contact me directly. To apply officially for a PhD position at Plymouth, please click here.
Links
http://math-sciences.org/
https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/schools/school-of-computing-and-mathematics/mathematics-and-statistics