It's perfectly reasonable that if you and I bumped into each other, part of our conversation would go something like this:
Me: "I'm co-organising the SAMBa Student-Led Symposium this semester."
You: "What's that?"
Me: "Well..."
So, the SAMBa Student-Led Symposium (or SLS) - what is it?
The SLS is a seminar/workshop organised by SAMBa students, where we get to do pretty much whatever we want (within the boundaries of mathematics and statistics). It also helps us prepare for the Integrative Think Tanks (ITTs) that happen at the end of each semester (for more on what the ITTs are like, see here.)
Rather than attempt to explain this further, I'll give you some examples of what's happened this semester.
In the SLS, we've had:
Workshops from students
Robbie Peck gave us a primer on clinical trials. Pictured is his `Low-Hanging Fruit of Medical Research'.
`Meta' maths talks
Euan Spence gave us a talk on How to Give a Good Maths Talk. Pictured is his `Inverse Problem' of maths talks.
Maths Workshops from academics
Chris Jennison told us about decision theory and joint clinical trials and Neill Campbell showed us how your phone makes those panorama pictures. Pictured is part of Chris' explanation of decision theory - based on what the weather forecast says, should you take your umbrella?
`Non-maths' workshops
Jack Betteridge and I did an introduction to Unix workshop. Eike Mueller gave us some sessions on the version control software Git. Pictured is what happens if you use the `rm' command in Unix recklessly.
Visits from Industrial Partners
Dr Will Tillet (from the RNHRD in Bath) asked whether we could speed up scoring the X-rays of Psoriatic Arthritis patients and Dr Alun Bedding (from AstraZeneca) explained how he wants to revolutionise the drug development process. Pictured is Alun talking about drug development at ITT4.
Talks from all of the SAMBa Cohort
We all gave critical talks on papers we'd read. Pictured is Adwaye Rambojun giving us a talk in semester one about Random Forests.
So, what is a Student-Led Symposium?
We've aimed at it being a discussion/seminar/workshop with a variety of topics - ask the rest of the SAMBa cohort if it's worked!
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