About CUGMS
Who we are
The Cambridge University Graduate Mathematics Society (CUGMS) was founded in October 2006 to promote interaction, both social and academic, between PhD students studying mathematics in different departments. Any student pursuing a PhD in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) or the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics (DPMMS) is automatically a member of CUGMS.
Their membership is valid as long as they are studying in their respective department. Students may then choose to participate in CUGMS events, or not. Any Cambridge University PhD student in another department, who is studying a subject closely related to mathematics, is eligible to become a member of CUGMS. Please email us for more information.
What we do
We hope that the CUGMS will be a catalyst for both social and academic interaction between PhD students in different departments. To this end, we organise the following types of events:
- Social Events — Such as pizza parties, formal halls, table football tournaments, etc.
- Informal Seminars — We invite both internal and external speakers to talk on a variety of topics such as maths, gender issues in science, etc.
- Graduate Lectures — These are lectures given by graduate students for graduate students in whatever subject people want to learn about.
- Return Conferences — Current PhD students invite back friends from Part III who have gone all over the world to talk about the research they are now doing.
- Part III Seminars — Twice a year, the Part III students are given the opportunity to give a short seminar, which is supervised by a PhD student in their field.
- Part III Cafe — An informal meeting over coffee where Part III students have the opportunity to ask maths and other questions to PhD students.
More details about these can be found here, and an archive of past events is here. In addition, we hope to provide the following to current and future students through our web site or personally:
- An informal forum for voicing concern,
- Advice about all stages and aspects of life as a PhD student,
- Advice about supervising and other ways of getting involved,
- An online discussion area where people can get to know each other and organise events.
Annual CUGMS events
As this is our first year, we do not yet have a long list of annual events. We hope that the following events become part of CUGMS tradition:
- DPMMS PhD Student Induction (Michaelmas Term) — a short introduction to life as a PhD student in DPMMS,
- Induction Day Pizza Party (Michaelmas Term) — after the DAMTP and DPMMS inductions we invite all PhD students to have pizza with us,
- End of Year Picnic (Easter Term) — after the part iii exams finish, we invite all the part iii and PhD students to a picnic at Jesus Green (if the weather lets us),
- More to come...