£200,000 funding for complicated shapes research
AN ACADEMIC at Loughborough University has been awarded over £200,000 funding to conduct research in an area of mathematics that studies complicated and beautiful geometric shapes using algebraic tools.
Dr Elisa Postinghel, of the School of Science, has been named a recipient of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) New Investigator Award and has been provided with funding of £203,354 to develop new mathematical methods to describe and classify shapes in four or more dimensions.
Classifying shapes by their geometric properties is an area of fundamental mathematical research.
Dr Postinghel’s project is to run for two years and will first focus on the simplest shapes that enjoy symmetric properties such as the sphere, which is symmetric under rotation about any axis passing through its centre.
Once she has determined algorithms for these simple shapes, she will go on to more complex challenges, for example, shapes that are formed by combining several simpler ones together.
This project looks to develop effective methods to classify these objects using a relatively new theory called The Theory of Newton-Okounkov Bodies.
Dr Postinghel’s project – titled ‘Classifying algebraic varieties via Newton-Okoun- kov bodies’ – will make a major contribution to Algebraic Geometry, an emerging area of Pure Mathematics in which the UK has a long tradition of excellence.
The study will also put Loughborough at the forefront of research in this area, raising the profile of the geometry work undertaken in the Department of Mathematics.
Dr Postinghel said: “It is an honour to have been awarded the grant. The research group at the Department of Mathematical Sciences of Loughborough University is young and what I hope is that the successful completion of this project will boost the status of the group and weave Loughborough into the fabric of UK Algebraic Geometry.”