Elizabeth Williams, a KESS 2 participant from Cardiff University, recently won the ‘People’s Choice Award’ at the Welsh Mathematics Three Minute Thesis (3mt) competition hosted on 17th March, 2021. The 3mt was organised by the SIAM-IMA student chapter at the School of Mathematics in Cardiff University and the competition was open to all Welsh mathematics PhD students with judging panellists from across all eight Welsh Universities.
A 3mt competition gives PhD students the opportunity to present an overview of their research in just three minutes. Elizabeth presented an overview of a part of her research titled “Using Frailty as a Measure for Hospital Prediction” discussing why this area is important for research. Elizabeth then compared two patients with different hospital length of stays and how using a frailty score could differentiate between these two patients.
Elizabeth Williams
Elizabeth’s PhD research, supervised by Dr Daniel Gartner and Professor Paul Harper, works in collaboration with the Clinical Futures team at the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board focusing on the demand predictions and care pathways of elderly and frail patients in South East Wales. Some of the predictive analytics work includes analysing the factors that will affect elderly/frail patients’ length of stay in hospitals. The mathematical modelling will determine how many beds are needed for these patients within different health care settings.
Elizabeth said,
“Being able to participate in a 3mt competition gave me the opportunity to convey my research to both peers and experts from a wide range of mathematical backgrounds. As a result of the event, I was honoured to receive the ‘People’s Choice Award’ for the audience’s favourite chosen talk.”
Elizabeth’s research is funded through Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarships (KESS 2), a pan-Wales higher level skills initiative led by Bangor University on behalf of the HE sector in Wales. It is part funded by the Welsh Government’s European Social Fund (ESF) convergence programme for West Wales and the Valleys.
