Archive for MSc Theoretical Physics and Mathematics

With Term Approaching…

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on September 7, 2025 by telescoper

With just two weeks to go before we resume teaching at Maynooth University, I find that next week I have no fewer than three medical appointments next week, on different days and in different locations. All of them are (or should be) routine, and none are particularly serious. Much as I dislike hospitals, etc, it will be good to get these bits of scheduled maintenance out of the way before the start of term.

On the other hand, they mean that I have to miss what looks like a very nice meeting in Italy in honour of Sabino Matarrese. I was invited, and initially accepted, but had to cancel. I hope that it goes well!

For old time’s sake I thought I’d post this picture of a youthful Sabino from years ago; he’s in the middle of the row nearest the camera; I’m at the end in the yellow shirt.

Anyway, last Friday our first cohort of MSc students in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics received their final results. This course lasts a calendar year so the results come out later than for the undergraduate courses. Congratulations to them all, but especially to Enda who completed a project under my supervision that we hope to turn into a paper before long.

Some familiar faces will no longer be around, but soon we will be joined by some new ones. Tomorrow, registration opens up for incoming first-year students at Maynooth and later in the week for returning second-, third-, and fourth-year students. By this time next week we’ll have a much better idea how many students there will be in our classes for the new academic year.

On Friday (12th September) I’ll be off to the National Concert Hall for the 2025/6 Season Opener with the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin, another indication that Autumn Semester is nigh.

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Presentation Day

Posted in Education, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , , , on August 15, 2025 by telescoper

Today was the day of the last component of our MSc in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics here in Maynooth. The students handed in their dissertations on Monday and today they all gave presentations about their work. Listening to them all was very enjoyable, actually, as they were on a range of different topics, some purely mathematical, some statistical, and some more obviously physics. Moreover, they were all very good.

I often worry that assessing presentations is much more subjective than written work in physics and mathematics. In the event, however, we usually find good consistency in the scores awarded by staff in attendance. 

It also occurred to me during today’s presentations that we may make more use of such assessments to deal with the encroaching use of AI in project dissertations. One can get a good idea if someone has actually done and understood the work if they can present it in person and answer questions. That is, after all, the main reason we do viva voce examinations at PhD level.

Listening to talk after talk in a long session can be quite wearying – conferences are usually set up like that and they’re not often useful or interesting – but today’s session was fun. Not so much for the students I suppose, as there were a few signs of nerves. When all the talks were over the students trouped off en masse (presumably to the pub) as that was the end of their course. The staff remained behind to agree a set of marks and combine them with the other components of assessment, i.e. the marks for the dissertation. The examination board meets early next week, after which the final results will go forward to the University.

It was great to see the students all completing their course successfully, especially because it is (I think) such a demanding one. My only sadness is that we won’t see them until the conferring ceremonies in October. The Masters students have been regularly present in the Department throughout the whole year and I’ve had quite a lot of interest chats with them. I saw my own project student even more frequently, once a week for almost a year. We have to banish such thoughts now, though, as our thoughts turn to next year’s intake.

I don’t think any of the MSc students will read this – for all I know they’re still in the pub! – but in any case I’d like to say congratulations to them all and wish them all the very best for the future. They’ve earned it!

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