Episode 5: Solving social and environmental problems with mathematics

Because his joint BA, MD, and PhD degrees simply weren't enough, Warren Pan is taking on an MPhil at Cambridge in Medical Science. He studies obesity, and in particular, where and how the disease manifests itself in the brain. Warren takes us through his research methods--on mice and humans alike--as well as comments on larger questions surrounding obesity and body image. One of the many Cambridge stories bridging research and reality in a way that we can all learn from!

Thomas is a PhD candidate in Applied Mathematics at Cambridge. He has been involved in projects in areas ranging from baseball and politics to wind farms and speech modelling. Listening to Thomas speak about his research makes Mathematics sound exciting and accessible even for those who may not have loved maths at school.

Julia studies the Istanbul-based of Judeo-Spanish, a language built with elements of Spanish, Hebrew, French, and Turkish...to name a few. In particular, she researches to what degree these contact languages have entered Judeo-Spanish’s core grammar and vocabulary, a question rife with historical and cultural underpinnings. Some have called Judeo-Spanish a dying language, but perhaps this is an overstatement. 

Our guest for this episode is Andrea Michelle Lim. Primary school teaching seems like a hard job. What motivates people to do it? Find out why Andrea chose a career in teaching in this week’s video where she shares her school placement experience and discusses the role of primary school education.

Born out of a hazardous whale in the middle of Harrod’s, our guest Becca Lyens’ love for virtual reality makes for some fascinating research. In this interview, she discusses how immersive technologies can (and should) host journalism, inevitably touching on more philosophical questions such as “can we ever be truly empathetic to another’s experience?"

Emily talks about her experience in changing from psychology to linguistics and shares her views on controversial topics in linguistics such as whether language affects the way we think. She is interested in the way we perceive the world, and her research in this area has featured exciting topics such as the use of emojis in cross-cultural communication.