Katie Severn

"My personality types were coordinator, manager and coach. It made me smile seeing these, as recently I have realised more and more that I enjoy working with people more then alone and I am pivoting to roles I get to do tis in. So seeing my personality type match up to these changes I am making is reassuring!Manager: I am not a manager currently however I really do love working with people and in team based projects. A lot of the skills listed for manager are ones I think I possess or am developing currently. To be a 'manager' or similar position in my current role still requires a bit more experience (I only finished my PhD and got a job a year ago!) but I could imagine my career heading down this route!Coordinator: This really does suit me currently. I work in a lot of teams and like to be the coordinator within them, I like to check in with other team members and try and help everyone as much as I can. Coach: some of these skills/attributes really jump out as very 'me'. For example 'Takes pride in exceeding expectations' is definitely something I do, I never want to be good enough I want to be better- this can be a good thing and really drives me, but I also think sometimes excepting you are not the best at things and being good enough is fine- no one can be best at everything! Overall the personality types confirm what I already have thought which is that I enjoy working with people and am very people orientated- my current role as a researcher can be collaborative but also often their is a lot of individual work which I perhaps do enjoy less then the group work."

"I mainly split my time between statistics research and lecturing.However the thing I enjoy most about my job is the work I get to do on equality, diversity and inclusion within the university. As everyone is aware there are less females studying maths, and I think this is really sad and needs changing. Women are just as capable as men (as I'm sure we all know!) but for some reason something is holding some of us back. I have held events to celebrate the incredible women within maths with the hope that this encourages students to stay within maths and see how capable they are. I really enjoy this, I get to meet some really inspiring women and take part in these positive events. Women are by no way the only underrepresented group with maths, and much more needs to be done to make maths and all of Stem even more inclusive, it will not be an overnight thing but already I have seen so much positive change- I can't wait for all the rest we will make!I lecture a machine learning module- a lot of this is group projects and coding for the students that I oversee.My current research uses really large data sets on maternity data for women in Tanzania to predict pregnancies at risk. This data is challenging to work with as it is very messy and sparse (what this means is some data is missing and some data is just incorrect- for example when I see a data point that says a 30 year old women has had 100 children, I’m thinking that’s probably wrong). I have to use clever methods to work with these challenges plus many more. Whilst it may sound hard its really rewarding work with such a positive application and impact."

"I have always loved maths, a lot of my family have science backgrounds and my grandma was a maths teacher. I think I was incredibly lucky as I had a lot of positive encouragement with maths from the get go, especially knowing a woman succeeding in maths. I really enjoyed how logical maths was but also how creative it can be- you get a chance to create solutions and proofs and there often is a ‘right’ answer how you get to the answer is up to you.It was fairly easy decision to study maths at university for me, it was what to do after that I wasn't as sure about.From coming to university I always had an interest in doing a PhD the thought of doing new research in maths and working on real world problems intrigued me a lot. However like many students I never knew if I would suit a PhD, fortunately I got the opportunity to a summer research project at Nottingham, this gave me a taster of research and not only did I really enjoy it I realised I was capable of research. As soon as I had finished this project I applied immediately to do a PhD as I couldn’t imagine leaving academia.I really enjoyed doing my PhD, I got a lot of independence to research areas that interested me and flexibility to work how I wanted. The maths PhD group is very large and social and so I really enjoyed this aspect: there was always someone to talk to if you needed a break from work and lots going one. A shared experience of doing PhDs really helps to make close friends that I’ll have for life now!My research area is really interesting, research in statistics is really exciting as it is important in so many areas such as machine learning and A.I which as most people will know are very hot topics. It’s exciting working in an area that is often in the news and has so much potential to improve people’s lives. On an individual level I also really enjoy the process of research in statistics it has theoretical components but a lot of applied aspects like working with large databases and coding methods to run efficiently and of course correctly! I have really benefitted with overall confidence from doing my PhD for example I used to be very nervous with public speaking however after giving talks at multiple conferences I now can happily talk in front of large audiences and actually really enjoy it! Talking of conferences PhDs provide a great opportunity to travel around as you get to go to exciting conferences, for example I’ve been lucky enough to go to Sicily and Zanzibar.Whilst working on my PhD I found some really interesting areas of research and got to be involved in teaching and equality, diversity and inclusion work within the university, I think all three of these factors led me to stay in academia and carry on the work I enjoy so much!"

"Just as with my personality trait my favourite thing to do is things with people, seeing friends or at the moment 'virtually' seeing friends! I like painting and other crafts- I wouldn’t say I’m particularly talented at them but I find them relaxing. I really like musicals, seeing them live or watching musical films! Also I have a little kitten that I love spending time with outside of work- I didn’t know a feather on a stick could be so much fun!"

"My job is very flexible and each day really is different to the previous one.I normally will spend a large amount of my day on or by my computer. I like to code a lot- the data I use can be so large I have to use code to run statistical methods. For one data set just finding the mean took around an hour on a computer!I sometimes do some teaching, sometimes this is teaching students how to code other times I will meet one to one with students and go through maths questions as well as checking on how they are feeling.With my job it is important to be learning new methods and ideas and so I often have to read a lot to teach myself maths I may not be as familiar with. I also spend a lot of time googling things to help learn."

"Alevels: Physics A*, Maths A*, Further Maths A*, Chemistry A*Degree: Maths first classPhD in Statistics"