EVENTS

Alan Tayler Lecture 2024

The Alan Tayler Lecture series is in its 38th year. It honours Alan Tayler's efforts and achievements in industrial and applied mathematics. Alan was a founding member of the Institute’s Council in 1993. Smith Institute is proud to be a long-term sponsor of the lectures.

Alan's lifelong commitment was to the practical application of mathematical ideas to problems in science and industry. His vision continues to inspire many national and international collaborations on the theme of mathematics-in-industry.

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The Alan Tayler Lecture 2024, takes place on Monday 18th November at 4.30pm in the Riverside Lecture Theatre at St Catherine's College Oxford.

This year, we are delighted to have a member of our Scientific Board Prof Alison Etheridge OBE FRS, Professor of Probability, University of Oxford giving the lecture.

Registration is open for students, alumni, and the general public.

The order of events will be as follows:

4.30-5pm: Tea & Coffee (Riverside Lecture Theatre Foyer)
5-6pm: Lecture (Riverside Lecture Theatre).
6-7pm: Drinks (Riverside Lecture Theatre Foyer)

The 2024 Lecture

The Forwards and Backwards of Population Models.

Prof Alison Etheridge OBE FRS, Professor of Probability, University of Oxford.

What can we infer about the history of a population from the patterns of genetic variation that we observe today?

There is a long history of mathematical modelling of the demographic dynamics of a population and their effect on the genetic relationships between individuals sampled from that population, but the assumptions imposed to ensure analytic tractability are often very strict. Here we lay out a broad class of models that might describe how spatially heterogeneous populations live, die and reproduce. This class is particularly well suited to modelling plant populations. In particular, a novelty of our approach is that we explicitly model a juvenile phase, with important implications for quantities that we might try to infer from genetic data.

About the lecture series

Smith Institute enjoys close relationships with academia. One key example is St Catherine’s College, who have a long tradition in applied and industrial mathematics. The college has hosted an annual series of lectures on Mathematics and its Applications since 1986. In 1995, the series was renamed in memory of Alan Tayler, in tribute to his efforts and achievements in this field. Alan was the first Fellow in Applied Mathematics to be appointed at St Catherine’s and was a key figure within Smith Institute.

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