Use your heads this summer - do a CMP project

This matters a lot to me.  It matters a lot to me because it really really matters to you.  I will explain why below.

For those who have no time to read through, just do the following:
Go to the Summer Research website.
Browse through the projects offered.
Sign up for the e-mails.
Go to the talks (Tuesdays 13:00 MR3 this term; *free lunches*) at which those offering projects, both from other departments in the University and from industry, will be giving short presentations on their projects.
Talk to those presenting projects.

The longer version.

Particularly if you are doing Part III now, if you are intending to do a PhD, if you have never done any work in a field outside mathematics that uses your mathematical abilities and a smidgen of coding,  regard this as a must, rather like putting on a parachute. Put it on before taking to the skies, particularly in this instance, as you will be flying in a home-built glider of uncertain airworthiness piloted by an undoubtedly talented but as yet minimally trained pilot - yourself.

Why? Four reasons.

Reason 1: I have spent many hours last term herding words across the page, trying to convince you in gentle and non-alarming ways of the blunt and scary fact that doing a PhD is an essentially chancy business, that even some of the best students find the academic life not necessarily to their taste, (and many do not discover that until years three and four of a Phd), and that in some cases life is simply a beach. The best laid plans get swept away, like writing in the sand.  Simply put, acknowledge the possibility, now, that at some point, during PhD studies, or during post-doc years perhaps, you may want, you may need, to bail out.  I really really want to ensure that those who need to have soft landings.  Put on the metaphorical parachute!  Do a project. Start your PhD with the knowledge that whether it flies or stalls and crashes, you are needed as a mathematician, that there are entertaining and worthwhile jobs out there which you are well qualified already to engage in, and you already have experience and a reference.  Probably one that glows in the dark. Curiously, the confidence that  a rewarding career doing something else is a proven option if academic mathematics doesn't work out seems to provide confidence to pursue the academic route further, if that option is the one that is attractive.

Reason 2: In the course of inventing this programme we stumbled on an astonishing fact.  You, students, play a critical role facilitating research that established academics cannot fill.  You are the most efficient transporters of ideas, the vectors, carrying germs of concepts into foreign fields, sherpas bearing mathematical technology across the rugged mountain ranges that divide departments.  It's not just that your standard jobbing academic hasn't got the time to invest in the project (she hasn't: she's got exams to write, lectures to prepare, papers to review, meetings to go to, students to supervise, and that's before she sets chalk to blackboard in the name of her own research, saints aid her if she also has a house to run). In the summers from that following Part IB up to and including that following Part III, students have a splendidly open horizon, enough training, enough ideas in their mathematical library to be really useful, and a spirit of adventure as yet undimmed that carries them over any initial hurdles involved in learning a new technical language.

You are part of the mathematics departments.  We are part of the University, and part of a wider technological community.  We have a responsibility, it is part of our job, to share our mathematical technology within those communities. With your help, we can do this much more efficiently.  Think of it as outreach, or community service.

We are increasingly (and rightly so, in my view) dependant on a robust symbiotic relationship with that greater technological community for training and research within the departments - funding for PhD places, post docs, research grants, doctoral training programmes, as well as the bursary fund which enables us to provide those of you who will be working in University departments this summer with a roof over your heads and food on the table.   Through the Summer Research in Mathematics Programme some of our industrial supporters even support projects which are unrelated to their own interests.  We are entirely indebted to their generous and practical interpretation of the implications of being part of this technological community. Without their generosity, the Summer Research in Mathematics Programme, and a lot else would not exist. Please folks, do your absolute best for them!

Reason 3: CMP projects offer the practical training that complements the technical ideas learnt through lectures. The experience of working alongside biologists, engineers, chemists should be part of your training. If you end up working in industry, it is a valuable first experience.  If you stay in academic mathematics, it is even more important that you have spent some time gaining experience of the sort of problems that the majority of your students will be working on.

Reason 4: It would appear that the vast majority of CMP students really enjoy the experience. Of last summer's cohort, 45% reported the experience as "fantastic", a further 45% as "a rewarding experience". There were a few who rated it as a "useful entry on their cv". No one rated it lower than that.  Doing a project clears the palate while keeping the brain ticking over, freshens the mind ready for whatever happens next.

Looking at the line-up of projects on offer, seeing the intense activity that is going on behind the scenes to make this happen, the organisational work, the meetings to establish the framework of the programme within the Faculty,  meetings with industry to discuss support and engagement with the departments that has stemmed from the CMP programme, it is difficult even to recall the desperate early years when the future of the programme was very much in doubt. The years of begging for funds, from friends, family, robbing banks, well, only my own account, actually - but how could I ask others to give from their own back pockets if I didn't give in equal measure from mine?.  Convincing students they wanted to do projects: how do you sell a project on haematology to a number theorist? Persuading my colleagues that the programme concerned them: why should their promising young category theorist spend a summer working on developing efficient health checks for big engines (that might go bang, with distressing consequences, if they felt poorly).

Those years, it seemed all but impossible that the programme would continue. It nearly failed through lack of funds in 2013, and then, in a single week, a friend sold his flat and gave us the modest profits and an algebraist turned entrepreneur heard about the project and wrote a very useful cheque.  2014-2015 was another bad year. Ghastly family health issues diverted my attention, the job of recruiting projects and students rather fell by the board, but we still ended up with a viable programme, just. Again and again, repeat the mantra: "it may have the life expectancy of proverbial snowball in hades, but if we don't give up now, it still has a chance. Better to try and fail than not to try".

The snowball survived, and as snowballs can sometimes do, it grew. The programme is established, efforts to maintain and extend funding are in hand. There's lots I could say about the programme, its history, its potential, but this post is already quite long enough. I will finish by asking of you two favours.

First, there are jobs that need doing in connection with running the programme and the Tuesday seminars in particular. When Dr. Rasmussen asks for volunteers to help, volunteer.  Through all the time I was running it, your predecessors never let me down, never left me to serve or clean up after tea on my own, never left me short handed whatever jobs needed doing.  I found this extremely heartening.  Please do likewise for him.

Second, the next time you are in the bar with some of your mathematical colleagues, please raise your glasses and drink a toast to the Fellowship of the Hat - those unsung benefactors from the programme's darker years, who pulled out their wallets, put a couple of grand in the hat now and again keeping the concept alive.  We owe them much.