Mailed on 17 October 2019.

Educational Newsletter AM
A collaboration between the study programme and Abacus
Edition: October 2019

Preface
This newsletter covers the second semester of last academic year. We believe it is important that students know how their feedback is processed and what the plans for the subsequent year are. We asked the module coordinators to reflect on the way their modules went and to explain possible changes for next year. We find it equally important that students are aware of new lecturers. In the present issue of the newsletter, no less than eight new colleagues introduce themselves.
Jan Willem Polderman, Programme Director

Introduction
The purpose of this newsletter is informing the students about what is going on, and provide information and feedback about your education.
Since a new year has now begun, this edition of the educational newsletter reports on the modules in the third and fourth quartile of the academic year 2018-2019. The new Bachelor Coordinator shortly introduces herself and eight new lecturers tell something about themselves. Enjoy!
Linda ten Klooster, Chairman & Educational Affairs W.S.G. Abacus

New Bachelor Coordinator
Dear students,
As of September 1, 2019, I am your AM bachelor coordinator. As a teacher, I've already met some of you and I'm looking forward to meeting all of you in person.
Besides coordinating the AM BSc programme, I will be a lecturer for 2 days per week. Off hours, I like to spend time with my family, play the oboe and English horn and to work in the garden.
If you have questions or would like to meet me, feel free to stop by my office or send me an email.
Best wishes,
Judith Timmer
office: ZI 4009
email: j.b.timmer@utwente.nl

Modules 3, 4, 7, 8, 11 & 12
Module 3.
Module 3 is partly conducted in collaboration with the Applied Physics program and consisted in the 2018-2019 academic year of six parts. The parts vector calculus, electricity and magnetism, analytical programming and the project are closely related and executed together with the Applied Physics
Program. In addition, Module 3 also contains Prooflab III and Presentation Skills, which are only for the Applied Mathematics students and the double students. In the project the AM students work on the theoretical aspects of the assignment and build together with the Applied Physics students an instrument. This year the students visited the Teylers Museum in Haarlem after a lecture on the historical context of the Maxwell equations and the discovery of electricity and magnetism. The aim of this visit was to see many of the original measuring instruments and also to conduct some small experiments in the Lorentz laboratory, which still contains many items used by the great physicist and Nobel prize winner Hendrik Lorentz.
This was the first year that Module 3 was executed in its current form and not everything went as smoothly as was hoped for. The results for Vector Calculus and Electricity and Magnetism were rather poor, certainly in comparison with the last few years, while basically the same material was taught and examined as before. If the students would do more exercises this would certainly help to get more proficiency in mastering these topics, but the attendance of the exercise classes was again very low. Also, the module contains quite a large number of topics and Prooflab III and presentation skills are not really connected with the other parts of the module. The students therefore had to focus on a rather larger number of topics and it also caused quite some organizational issues.
Next year some small changes will be made, namely Presentation Skills will be reduced to 2EC and an additional 1EC Mathematica will be added to the module.

Module 4.
The following is about the course “signals and transforms”.
It is the first time I teach this course, and as a rule I then stick to the same schedule/topics/exercises as last year. I am not aware of students’ feedback (probably because I’m new to this course). The only thing I did was clean up certain bits of the lecture notes (without touching the real content). I’m fairly happy with the way it went. Next year I will probably turn most of the “colstructions” into either 100% lecture or 100% tutorial. (Tutorial of just 45 minutes didn’t seem to work well; quite a few simply left when tutorial commenced!)
The reactions of the students were very positive on all accounts! The overall score of the module was 8.1 (the highest of all modules at the UT in Q4). The students thought the workload was doable and pretty distributed over time.
I plan on changing one thing next year: chapter 1 of the signals and transforms lecture notes. The material in that chapter is not balanced (many techniques but not detailed, and half of it is not related to the rest of the course). The task force Analyse should have a look at it (I asked them but I’m not convinced they took it up).
The students did not always address me in English. I got the idea that 95% were Dutch, and they speak Dutch most of the time, and often they address me in Dutch as well (even though they know I’m Frisian). I do feel like the international students mixed with the Dutch students. I vividly recall only two international students and they seemed the mingle very well.

Module 7.
Student evaluations of past years indicated that students were concerned that, due to the integrated nature of exams, it was possible to pass the module while hardly getting credits for one part of the module, for example the Algebra part. This because the exams were integrated. In order to counter that,
and also in order to simplify organisation, from this year on we offer three exams this time, one on Algorithmic Discrete Mathematics (Algorithms & Data Structures & Discrete Math), one on Languages and Machines, and one on Algebra. An advantage was that students could prepare for these exams now individually. The effect was a slight decrease of the pass rate due to two exams, Discrete Mathematics and Algebra. However, after the resits, the overall decrease was not significant. We think this change is an improvement for the organisation of the exams, and also serves that learning goals are achieved.
Another change was implemented in how the implementation project is evaluated. The main reason to implement this change is not so much past student evaluations but organisational requirements due to the large number of (computer science) students. Also, earlier student evaluations had shown that students thought the implementation project itself gave too few credits (since it was a pass/no pass grade only, and next to that, the implementation itself only gave bonus points). Since this year, the project grade is no longer based on a research paper (on a topic of choice), but on a brief documentation in a more or less fixed format that documents which of the modules of the implementation project have been achieved, and with which computational results. The idea of the bonus points were kept, as before, in form of a competition at the end of the module. This change had an enormously positive effect on the feasibility of the organisation (which scales well, also with even larger student populations). Next to that, the project implementation now gets the credits that it deserves. The grading is based on students’ own documentations, which testify what was achieved. Also that works well, and scales reasonably well, too.
Other changes are in the sheer organisation of the increased number of students, such as three parallel tutorial groups, large plenary tutorials (for the data structures part), and two parallel practical sessions. All implemented changes turned out to work (reasonably) well. One issue remains, which is the incredible effort in being able to correct such large numbers of exams in the given time frame.
The evaluations confirm that the module is doable, and the workload is adequately distributed over time. Only the first two weeks are a bit dense, due to the python “crash course”. The Mathematics students were generally satisfied with the module; the main concern is the work distribution in the implementation project, which tends to be dominated by the computer science students, which again is perceived demotivating by some Math students to try becoming a good (python) programmer. Some computer science students, on the other hand, perceive the module as a “Mathematics minor” due to the rather formal and theoretical nature of the subject material. The different topics are all reasonably well integrated and also very well aligned over time; in particular having a project that integrates so many different theoretical aspects of the module in one large, and challenging implementation project is unique. Maybe some students are not aware of it, but the (Mathematical) depth and complexity of the implementation project is remarkable for second year; I am proud that all student groups manage that complexity.
There are some minor organisation changes necessary, due to further increase of the number of (computer science) students. Another desirable change is to offer the option of self-testing the quality of students’ implementations via a web server, however it is well possible that we do not manage to get this service operating already for the next edition. Finally, we will continue to offer 4h PR sessions per week On Wednesdays), but only the first 2h will be supervised, the remaining 2h will be unsupervised PR.
Some students ask individual questions in tutorial classes in Dutch (when possible due to nationality of staff), which is not problematic. Some international students mix, some don't; but I have not heard any complaints about this by the students themselves. I admit I have little control over the mixing, which is maybe also due to the large number of students.

Module 8.
Last year not all Math students were very happy with the module. The main reasons were the imbalance in workload between parts 1 and 2 of the module (in particular Stochastic Simulation in part 2 took more time than expected), and unclarity about part 3.
The first issue has been mostly resolved by (i) slightly reducing the workload of the Stochastic Simulation assignment that took more time than foreseen last year, (ii) better communication w.r.t. deadlines and (iii) providing a student assistant for help with Python-related questions. As a result, students enjoyed the course much better, even though part 2 is still more demanding than part 1 (and will continue to be during next year).
The other issue, unclarity about part 3 (multidisciplinary project), in particular about the role of AM-students in the project teams, is a recurring issue over the years. This is mainly caused by the nature of the project, which is very open to let students actively define and analyse what they think should be researched. Since no clear problem description is provided, some students experience this as 'vague', so we should probably stress (even) more what the purpose of the project is and how students should actively define their own roles. However, we will again look into how we could change something such that also AM students will enjoy the multidisciplinary experience (as some already do).
All in all, we were quite happy to see that students enjoyed module 8 much better than last year, indicating they learnt a lot.

Module 11.
In module 11 a student selects two out of four elective courses and follows Reflection on Mathematical Research I. Also, each student is assigned to a bachelor’s assignment based on his/her preferences.
In the year 2017-2018, students indicated that they were satisfied with the module in itself and happy with the working load. They also appreciated the division of the bachelor’s assignments. At the start, some students were not subscribed in a timely fashion to the Blackboard pages of their electives and so, could not access the electives’ materials in time. (Blackboard was the predecessor of Canvas.) That was solved this year by arranging self-enrolment to the electives. This solution is possible thanks to the support of the office for educational affairs.
Furthermore, a few classes were cancelled and either rescheduled a bit later or not rescheduled. To overcome this, this year I kept a closer eye on the time table. Also, for some students who did a joint assignment, there was a mismatch between students’ and supervisors’ expectations. That was solved then by discussing and clarifying the expectations both with the students and their supervisors. Also, the rules for joint assignments have been clarified now and are more detailed.
In 2018-2019 the module was taught in English for the first time. Students were satisfied with the module and thought the workload was doable. Furthermore, the students were happy with the elective courses. The students indicated that they’d like to receive feedback on tasks and submissions for Reflection on Mathematical Research I. This is discussed with the teacher. Besides, the assessment form of the bachelor’s assignment will be uploaded to the Canvas page of this module, so that students know at an earlier stage how they will be assessed in module 12.

Module 12.
Module 12 is the final module of the Bachelor Applied Mathematics programme. This module was organized for the third time and for the first time in English. The students spent time on Reflection on Mathematical research II, Complex Function Theory and their Bachelor's assignments.
Due to last year's feedback by the students we changed the following. The lecture on writing a scientific article was scheduled in the first week of the module instead of in week 6, to allow students for an earlier start on writing the article. Deadlines for the bachelor's assignment as well as for Reflection on Mathematical Research II were announced earlier. Also, the resits of module 11 were brought forward. Instead of taking place at the end of July, they were now scheduled in the week after the end of module 12. This gave the students uninterrupted summer holidays.
At our Bachelor conference, students of Applied Mathematics and of the double degree programmes Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics as well as Applied Mathematics and Computer Science presented the results of their bachelor's assignments. It was very interesting to see such a wide range of mathematics represented by the bachelor theses. At this event a new award, the Brigit Geveling best presentation award, was awarded for the first time to the student with the best pitch. Needless to say, we are very proud of all the students, their results and their presentations!

New Lecturers
Ruben Hoeksma will join the Department of Applied Mathematics as an Assistant Professor in December. He received his PhD in 2015 from this university for his thesis titled "Mechanisms for scheduling games with selfish players". After his PhD, he travelled to Santiago, Chile, to work as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chile. There, he spent one year at the Department of Industrial Engineering and one year at the Center for Mathematical Modeling. After two years in Chile, Ruben moved back to Europe for a two-year postdoc position at the University of Bremen. Now, Ruben returns to University of Twente to do research and teach as an Assistant Professor with the DMMP group.
Ruben's research is primarily focused on Combinatorial Optimization, Approximation Algorithms, and Algorithmic Game Theory, where he has a special interest in scheduling problems.

Julio Backhof.
I joined the department in October this year. Previously I was a postdoc in Vienna, a PhD student in Berlin, and an undergraduate student in Santiago de Chile (my home country). For my PhD thesis I specialized in stochastic control and mathematical finance. Afterwards, as a postdoc, I focused my work in what my colleagues and I like to call ‘stochastic mass transport’.
At a very high level, stochastic mass transport is concerned with the optimal pairing of sets. However, the problem has an in-built notion of time and information, which has to be respected by the sought-after pairing. These kinds of problems appear naturally in the context of physics (What is the likeliest path of a swarm of particles in between observations taken at different times?) and in finance/economics (What
is the simplest market model compatible with a given family of predetermined features?). I presently aim to explore the possible links of this theory to statistics.
So far I haven’t had any problems since moving to Enschede. In fact, most people have been very welcoming and friendly (though don’t you dare obstruct a bike line for a second!). The city has in fact a lot of activities to offer, which I didn’t expect as I was misled by its size, and the UT Campus is very enjoyable, particularly the forest. On the downside, ahh the weather …
Feel free to come by my office, should you want to discuss any matter of mutual interest. This is not just limited to academic stuff, as I am all ears regarding activities in Enschede and the surrounding region. In particular, if you are a Dutch speaker trying to improve your Spanish skills, perhaps we can do a tandem together!

Alisa Lochner completed a bachelor’s in Mathematics and Computer Science at Rhodes University, South Africa. Soon after, she completed a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) in the teaching of High School Mathematics. During her PGCE she did an internship at Kingswood College, where she then continued to work for a further two years.
Alisa moved to the Netherlands to combine her passion for Mathematics, Technology and Education in the master’s programme of Educational Science and Technology. She worked with the University of Twente’s Digital Testing of Mathematics group to write her Master’s thesis, which investigated the digital testing of Mathematics.
Currently Alisa is employed in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS), furthering the Educational Research and Development of digital testing of undergraduate mathematics.

Lerna Pehlivan has been a lecturer in the Applied Mathematics Department at the University of Twente since April 2019.
She received her doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, under the supervision of Dr. Jason Fulman. Her undergraduate and Master’s degree are from Boğaziçi University in Mathematics with a minor in Mathematics Education.
Her research interests include enumerative combinatorics and probability, in particular problems related to random pattern avoiding permutations and card shuffling. In addition she has published work on analytic number theory focusing on representations of integers by quadratic forms and theta function identities.
She held a Fields Institute Post-doctoral Fellowship from 2009 to 2011 at Carleton University, Ottawa and a postdoctoral position at York University, Toronto from 2011 to 2013. In the past she has been an assistant professor at Mount Allison University and Acadia University in Canada and has taught Calculus, Discrete Mathematics, Matrix Algebra, Abstract Algebra, Differential Equations, Probability, and Statistics.
She likes learning new languages. “Mijn meest recente poging is natuurlijk om Nederlands te leren”.

Felix Schwenninger studied mathematics at the Technical University of Vienna, a rather beautiful town in Austria, before he came to Twente for his PhD under supervision of Hans Zwart. In Spring 2019, after post-doctoral and visiting professor positions in Germany (Hamburg and Wuppertal), he returned to Enschede as assistant professor in the math department and as central defender/midfielder at v.v. Drienerlo. Felix research interests include (functional) analysis and applications in the (control of) partial differential equations. He generally likes mathematical puzzles, and particularly posing them in class. His current teaching includes Applied Functional Analysis within the mathematics master.

My name is Clara Stegehuis. I studied Applied Mathematics here in Enschede. I graduated in 2014, and then I did my PhD at the Technical University of Eindhoven. Now I have returned to Enschede where I joined the DMMP group as an assistant professor.
My research focuses on modelling large networks, such as the networks you find on the internet or on social media. I am interested in many kinds of different properties of such networks, like how epidemics spread on a network, and how this depends on the shape of the network. I am also interested in finding small structures in networks that are characteristic for the specific network. This research uses techniques from probability theory, graph theory as well as simulations on real network data.
Beside my research, I like to communicate my research field to a wider audience. During my PhD, I wrote a blog about my research (in Dutch), and I often give public lectures, for example at high schools, theatres or museums. During these lectures I often tell something about the mathematics behind specific network applications, such as meme spreading, music or Sinterklaas.

I am Matthias Walter, one of staff members who joined the department this year. My original scientific background is mainly theoretical. I obtained my PhD from Volker Kaibel in Magdeburg, Germany, where we worked in the field of extended formulations, which is about expressing polyhedra as projections of other polyhedra. For details I can refer to his DAMUT Colloquium talk in November.
Since polyhedral combinatorics is the scientific backbone of today’s solving techniques for mixed-integer linear optimization problems, and because I am also a passionate programmer, I spent 3 years in the (much more applied) group of Marco Lübbecke at the RWTH Aachen University.
There I learned a bag of tricks about practical aspects of solving hard combinatorial optimization problems to optimality. Apparently, the bag was big enough to successfully apply for my current position here at the University of Twente.
My first months at the UT were relaxed since I did not have too many duties. This changed right after the summer break, and I am quite busy nowadays, involved in teaching preparation (Optimization Modeling and the national course Integer Programming Methods), grant writing (for which I’m getting a
lot of advice!), the University Teaching Qualification, student supervision, committees and, if time allows, writing research papers.
If you happen to be in the building on some Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday evening, feel free to stop by at my office for a chat. Chances are, that I got tired of LaTeX and switched to C++ or Python instead, maintaining and improving my code. You are of course also invited to visit me at day time, in particular if you have a discrete optimization problem at hand or are interested in polyhedra, programming or volleyball (which is my favourite sports as you might guess).

Katharina Proksch
I studied Mathematics and Physics at the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, where I also did my PhD in the Statistics Group of the Mathematical Institute, which I finished in 2012.
Since I have always enjoyed teaching a lot, I took a position as a substitute professor at the University of Siegen afterwards, where I gave lectures for mathematicians and economists.
Research-wise, I have always been interested in working with data within interdisciplinary projects, which is why most of my scientific work has been at the interface of several disciplines. Of particular interest to me is the development and theoretical investigation of means of statistical inference for applications from the natural sciences. In this context, I have been working on the construction of statistical goodness of fit tests and confidence statements with a recent focus on statistical multiscale analysis and its application to (nanophotonic) imaging and inference on three-dimensional molecular distributions in biological samples. I pursued this line of work in particular within the four years before I came to UT, in which I have been working as a postdoctoral researcher both at the Institute for Mathematical Stochastics of the Georg-August University Goettingen and at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry within the group "Statistical Inverse Problems in Biophysics."
Now, I am looking forward to both teaching and doing research at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Twente.