Academic Staff Forum

The Academic Staff Forum brings together academic staff to hold informal discussions on various topics of interest related to teaching, research, and other issues. These seminars will be held on Mondays (see dates below) from 11:00 to 11:30 a.m. in the Statistics Common Room. Each session will be led by someone from the department, but the sessions are meant to be interactive and open up a dialogue; everyone will be welcome to share their thoughts and experiences and to ask questions. If you have ideas for future topics, please email the organizers.

2025–26

Organized by Brett Kolesnik and Tara Seedher

Term 2

Week 3: Mon Jan 26 (Stats Common Room, 11–11:30am)
Facilitator: Minhaz Ali
Topic: Mitigating circumstances and general student support
Week 5: Mon Feb 9 (Stats Common Room, 11–11:30am)
Facilitator: Paul Skerritt
Topic: Exams writing, invigilation, marking, green marking, scaling
Week 7: Mon Feb 23 (Stats Common Room, 11–11:30am)
Facilitator:
Topic:
Week 9: Mon Mar 9 (Stats Common Room, 11–11:30am)
Facilitator: Elke Thönnes
Topic: Moderation and coursework/assignments

2023–24

Organized by Ritabrata Dutta and Martin Herdegen

Term 2

On 12th February 2024 we would have Dr Martyn Parker talking about
Title: Ideas for engaging students post Covid.
Abstract: Discussions with colleagues at Warwick and in the wider sector has revealed changes in student behaviour and engagement following the return to “normal” delivery. The problem is complex and module feedback is difficult to use due to mutually exclusive themes emerging: (a) students wanting everything in the notes and no new material in lectures; (b) students wanting notes + new inspiring things in lectures that are not in the notes. I would like to argue that as educators we should be looking for approaches that enhance our education and that module evaluations are becoming less useful in this space; they describe an experience. I have always found experimentation (and failing) to be more useful. Consequently, I will bring together some areas that others might find useful. This talk will cover (1) some approaches to teaching with a tablet (such as an iPad or similar); (2) quick ways to engage students through instant response (voting systems); (3) discussion with the audience regarding their thoughts on what does good engagement “look and feel” like?

Term 1
16.10.2023	Anastasia Papavasileiou
	A rough path to impact – from constructing integrals to detecting RNA modifications In the first part of the talk, I will briefly describe on an intuitive level the main concepts of rough path theory, from Young integrals, rough paths and the continuity of the Ito-Lyons map to rough path signatures and their ability to efficiently capture information about paths (also known as trajectories, time series, ordered data, data streams etc, depending on the context). In the second part, I will talk about the importance and role of modifications in RNA molecules and the challenges around detecting them (at a rather amateur level). Finally, I will present some current work (joint with DKFZ, DataSig and Julia Brettschneider) on using rough path signatures in the framework of anomaly detection to detect RNA modifications and some interesting statistical problems around that.
30.10.2023	Horatio Boedihardjo
	Undergraduate admissions We will discuss the general profile of the students we have accepted and the admission decision-making process. We will then open the floor to hear colleagues' views about undergraduate admissions in general.
13.11.2023 12:15 - 13:45	Gavin Schwartz-Leeper (Faculty Senior Tutor)
	How to be a good personal tutor? This periodic training is designed to be a basic introduction to personal training for new personal tutors and to act as a refresher/update opportunity for experienced ones. The session will have opportunities to reflect on and discuss concerns, successes, and emergent needs in the department.
27.11.2023	Emma Horton
	An SDE model for proton transport Proton beam therapy is a type of radiotherapy that uses protons, instead of photons, to treat certain types of cancer. The advantage of using protons is that a beam of protons deposits most of its energy at a specific range (unlike photons), characterised by the so-called Bragg peak. This enables clinicians to precisely target a tumour and therefore reduce damage to surrounding healthy tissues. In this talk, I will explain how to build an SDE model for proton transport and reconstruct the characteristic Bragg peak via Monte Carlo simulations.