Master of Mathematical Modelling (MMathModel)

Mathematical modelling can provide critical insights into solving the world’s most intriguing challenges and everyday essential processes and systems. Indeed, for any complex network of relationships, be they engineered or natural, or even personal, mathematics has the elegance, flexibility, and structure to tease out turning points, reveal hidden patterns, uncover sensitivities, sense limits, and predict emergent behaviours.

This world-leading programme will provide students with a deep theoretical understanding of mathematical models and their implementation.

Through the MMathModel programme, students will develop the expertise to transform a real-world, complex problem into a set of equations and learn how to analyse these with advanced theoretical and computational tools. Students will understand why models work and be confident in assessing the nature and scope of the answers that such models can provide, as well as know how the various layers of complexity are coupled and affect those answers.

A fundamentally valuable skill will be students’ ability to apply principles of model reduction techniques to simplify the complete mathematical statement of a problem to a series or hierarchy of smaller manageable problems. The decision when a problem becomes mathematically tractable, requires an astute understanding of which elements or relationships in a model are relevant, and which may be discarded.

Armed with this knowledge, students will develop the skills to construct various mathematical models for complex multidimensional real-world problems to generate both broad generic solutions and localised precise ones. The challenges may include the effects of global climate change or regional impact on Pacific Island nations, planning infrastructure for telecommunications networks, power distribution grids or transport systems, predicting financial fluctuations, managing disease epidemics, or designing better systems of healthcare and health equity.

Understanding the power and limitations of mathematical tools is a critical skill in achieving meaningful and useable answers which will, in turn, help to predict outcomes and allow people to adjust a system with greater confidence.

An advanced skill set of mathematical modelling, critical analysis and self-reflection will open considerable opportunity and increase employability across the private and public sector. Graduates may seek positions as consultants and analysts in finance and professional services, provide critical direction to operations and policy through local and central government, or work on transformational research within research institutes. Equally, some students may wish to pursue an entrepreneurial route building on their university research towards commercialisation and spinout.

Organisations wishing to invest in and retain high-value staff or address critical talent gaps may consider the MMathModel within their repertoire of organisational training. As part of the programme students will undertake open-ended complex multidimensional research that could also provide a path to future postgraduate studies.

The MMathModel will be attractive to students from across the globe who have enjoyed mathematics within an undergraduate Engineering or Science qualification or other degree with a strong relevant mathematics or computational and numerical methods core.

This exceptional programme is supported by internationally leading academics who bring industry experience and expertise in an array of subject areas including operations research, machine learning, theoretical mechanics, mathematical bioengineering, population biology, ecology, climate, and aerospace.

Programme directors:

Professor Hinke Osinga and Associate Professor Richard Clarke

Prof. Hinke Osinga, a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, is internationally recognised for her research on numerical methods to classify solution structures of dynamical systems. Her main interest lies in the computation of invariant manifolds with applications to Biology and Engineering.

A/Prof. Richard Clarke, from the Department of Engineering Science in the Faculty of Engineering, is a mathematical modeller and fluid dynamicist. His research studies the transport of fluid around the body via the cardiovascular and lymphatic systems, and also the collective behaviour of microbe suspensions. Both of which he explores using mathematical and computational modelling.