Kieran Kalair

MSc Real World Systems 2017, PhD Mathematics 2021

Three words to describe your time at Warwick

Interesting, diverse, rewarding.

Career aspirations

I plan to stay in a role that allows me to use and develop my mathematical ability, whilst seeing real impact in the solutions we provide. Along with this, tackling hard, but rewarding challenges that face industry and society more generally: the transition occurring in energy and incorporation of machine learning into more areas of industry to name two key examples.

Senior Mathematical Consultant at the Smith Institute

To what extent did you plan your career?

I aimed for a job that allowed me to not leave mathematics behind, but still allowed me to see real impact in what I do when using it. I attended two career fairs during my time at Warwick, and also did two internships to get a feel for what opportunities were out there, and what the work would look like in some of these. These highlighted that there were opportunities to do what I wanted, but I ultimately decided I didn't want to limit myself to one applied domain, which lead me to consultancy at Smith Institute.

This offered (and continues to offer) a mix of problems in energy, fast-moving consumer goods, spectrum auctions and security & defence. When I found them, I was particularly interested in the idea of using mathematics for a diverse range of challenges and being able to develop distinct areas of technical skills, for example forecasting and optimisation. Towards the end of my PhD, I had accepted an offer with them, and started after handing in my thesis.

How do you use your Maths degree in your job?

I use maths daily in my role as Senior Mathematical Consultant at Smith Institute. This ranges from building and validating forecasting models, the formulation and solving of optimisation problems and the implementation and training of machine learning models, to give a few examples. I also still read a range of literature on these topics, keeping up to date with new developments to ensure when tackling a problem, we are aware of the different approaches one can take.

Another key aspect that arises often is translating practical problems into well-posed, solvable mathematics problems. In practice we see different domains have different issues to tackle, and with these come different considerations (computation time, black box vs explainable models, incorporating randomness, etc), which informs how one can translate a practical problem into a mathematics problem that can be solved.

Why did you choose to study Maths at Warwick?

I've always been interested in mathematics. During my undergraduate degree, I became increasingly interested in finding ways to apply this thinking and methods to practical problems. I heard about Warwick's Centre for Doctoral training that had an applied focus - Mathematics for real world systems - and saw it as a great match for myself, balancing understanding the underlying theory but also getting some insight into domains where this theory would have some tangible impact. After completing the MSc in Mathematics for real world systems, I continued on to do a PhD in the same area at Warwick, and thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

Which modules did you particularly enjoy/find useful?

During my MSc, I found a numerical methods module particularly useful, and still use aspects of it in my job today. We focused on how various computational techniques were implemented in practice, and the associated computational complexity of these approaches. It also included a mix of theoretical questions and practical coding tasks. A real point of value it highlighted to me was to always think of how the code and algorithms we are writing scale - and what changes can be done to improve this scaling. This is something that often arises when dealing with highly complex problems or huge datasets in industry now.

Beyond this, I also particularly enjoyed modules on dynamical systems, statistics & data-analysis and stochastic processes. The later in particular highlighted interesting ways to understand and handle randomness in systems, which is particularly relevant to many practical problems.

What core skills do you think you developed during your time at Warwick?

The three core skills that stand out to me are problem solving, critical thinking and communication.

During both my MSc and PhD at Warwick, I had several opportunities to communicate research to a range of audiences - some academics, some domain experts from industrial partners, some other students. This is something I am glad I started practicing early, as when I then moved into industry, I was already equipped to talk about science in a range of different ways depending on who the audience was, and what was most relevant to them.

Problem solving and critical thinking are, in my view, key skills for any mathematician. Reviewing the literature, one must have both an open mind to interesting and new approaches, but also be critical of their shortcomings, which themselves open up new avenues for research. Additionally, the applied focus of my research during my PhD meant there were several domain specific problems that had to be translated into maths problems, and understanding the best way to do this, and then how to solve this formulated problem, constituted a lot of my work during that time.