Mailed on 9 November 2020.

 

Educational Newsletter AM

A collaboration between the study programme and Abacus

Edition: November 2020

 

The last educational newsletter is already a while ago. Due to the sudden arrival of COVID-19 pandemic, all lecturers were overwhelmed and busy making the best out of the constantly changing situation, in some sense by working in the survival mode. Not to burden the lecturers/module-team and the programme director any more, it was decided to stop with the Educational newsletter until everything was settled down a bit. We shall bring in the regularity of the Educational Newsletters with reports from the module coordinators from the first quarter on (once the quarter is completed).  We have decided to publish this newsletter to cover some of the highlights of the events since the last newsletter, and to introduce some new lecturers. 

We hope you all stay safe and healthy!

Anouk Beursgens, Officer Educational Affairs W.S.G. Abacus,

Also, on behalf of Pranab Mandal, Programme Director AM

 

Obituary

Our beloved Harry Aarts passed away on the 9th of August at the age of 59. He worked for the University of Twente for almost 25 years. We all will miss him sorely.

 

Introduction of TOM2.0

As of the start of this academic year, we have TOM2.0. Modules as 15 EC study units are therefore no longer offered. A module consists now of several study units, each of which can be passed individually. The composition of the study units can be found in the EER 2020-2021 . This also means that there are no longer clusters in which compensation can be used. For students from cohort 2013-2019, the transitional arrangements can also be found in the EER.

 

Regulations regarding COVID-19

The employees have worked hard and are continuing to do so to preserve the quality of the education offered in times of COVID-19.  The programme is happy that everything seemed to go well given the situation. To help the students, two Q&A session were organised, both for bachelor and master students. Questions of the first Q&A are collected in a FAQ document. This document and more information about the ‘soft separation bachelor and master’, introduced solely to prevent study delay between the bachelor and master due to COVID-19, can be found on the canvas page of AM. Now that exams take place on campus, it can happen that you miss an exam due to Corona-related issues. Therefore, there is a ‘Covid-resit’. More information about the ‘Covid-resits’ can also be found on the canvas page of AM.

 

Drawing Tablets

One of the most challenging parts of online education, is the ability to ask questions during tutorials. Since mathematics is not a thing that you can easily type, students struggle with how to show their attempts in solving the exercise when asking a question. To help with that, the programme has bought drawing tablets for their students. The distribution of the tablets will start next week: first- and second-year bachelor students can pick up a tablet Tuesday in the break. After that, the priority goes to first year master students and then third year bachelor students and older students. The tablets remain property of the university, but no deposit has to be paid and a procedure of return has not been decided yet.

 

A look ahead

It is a puzzle how to plan on-campus and online education well. Therefore, we are happy to see that in module 2 a division is made between days with on campus education and days with online education. The freshmen will have the Tuesdays and Fridays solely on-campus education, while on the other days only online education. Unfortunately, this has not worked out so well for module 6. There are some on-campus sessions, but less than what we would have wanted.

 

New lecturers

 

Fulya Kula is a mathematician and mathematics educator (PhD - METU, Turkey).  She has been a lecturer in the Applied Mathematics Department at the University of Twente since March 2020. Her doctorate thesis develops of a model on university students' learning of the calculus concepts and its prerequisite concepts. Her research interests lie in statistics, teaching statistics, and teaching mathematics which were followed by her publications. In a recent paper, she developed a new model to teach the statistical inference, published on one of the Oxford Journals: Teaching Mathematics and its Applications. She visited Finland and Spain as an exchange scholar. She worked as an assistant professor in the BMS department at the University of Twente during which she has obtained her UTQ. She knows Dutch in B2 level. 

My name is Jelmer Wolterink. I joined the Department of Applied Mathematics in March 2020. I have studied Artificial Intelligence at Radboud University and Mathematical Sciences at Utrecht University, and in 2017 obtained a PhD from Utrecht University with a thesis entitled \textit{Machine Learning Based Analysis of Cardiovascular Image Analysis}. After this, I was a postdoc at UMC Utrecht and subsequently Amsterdam UMC. I am now an assistant professor in the Applied Analysis chair. My research interests are in the development of novel machine learning techniques for the analysis of medical images like MR, CT, and ultrasound. In the past few years, there has been a lot of progress in this area, and there many exciting developments in e.g. the combination of data-driven and model-driven artificial intelligence techniques, and geometric deep learning techniques on graphs and meshes.

My name is Valente Ramírez. I joined the University of Twente as a lecturer for the Department of Applied Mathematics in August this year. I teach courses on both mathematics and statistics. I come originally from Mexico, where I studied a bachelor in mathematics at the National University (UNAM). After this, I received a master's and a PhD (also in mathematics) from Cornell University in the USA. Before coming to the Netherlands, I held a 2-year research position at the University of Rennes in France. As a researcher my work has focused on the geometry of differential equations over the complex domain. These are equations involving a function f and its derivatives, but the twist is that f is a complex-valued function that is defined over (a subset of) the complex numbers. So 'time' is modeled by a complex number. This area is very rich and has a lot of nice interactions with algebraic geometry, topology and complex analysis.

I had been involved in teaching since my bachelor years in Mexico, but it wasn't until recently that I decided to focus mainly on teaching. I really enjoy learning new things and finding a good way to explain abstract ideas to others, and I find that working as a lecturer is a great opportunity to do this. I've really enjoyed working for the UT so far. All the people I've met are very friendly, and I'm looking forward to times when we're able to have more social events!

Pim van ’t Hof joined the department as a lecturer in September. After graduating with an MSc degree in Applied Mathematics (graph theory) from that same department in 2006, Pim moved to Durham University in England to do a PhD in the Algorithms & Complexity group under the supervision of Daniel Paulusma and Hajo Broersma (both former members of the Applied Mathematics department at the UT). After graduating in 2010, Pim exchanged delightful Durham (as Bill Bryson wrote: “If you have never been to Durham, go at once. Take my car. It’s wonderful.”) for beautiful Bergen in Norway (‘gateway to the fjords’). He worked as a postdoc in the Algorithms Research group at the Department of Informatics of the University of Bergen for four years. During this time, his research focused on graph algorithms and parameterized complexity, while his hiking efforts focused on the seven mountains surrounding the city of Bergen (climbing all of them in one day during the notorious annual ‘7-fjellsturen’).

In 2014, Pim returned to the Netherlands to take up a lecturer position at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. Despite thoroughly enjoying working with students and winning a Teacher of the Year award, he decided to leave higher education in 2017 and ‘move to industry’ (a phrase almost exclusively used by academics to mean ‘start working for a company’). At ORTEC, Pim worked as an Operations Research Engineer and -later- as a Team Lead in the team responsible for the development of ORTEC’s vehicle routing software. There, he experienced first-hand how mathematics is applied in practice, and discovered that in order to do so successfully, there are many more problems to overcome than just the mathematical ones. He also learnt that his passion for teaching was even bigger than he thought. That’s why, when he found out the UT was seeking to appoint a lecturer in applied mathematics, he decided to apply.

When Pim is not working, he enjoys running, reading, and playing the oboe (he rejoined Muziekvereniging Wilhelmina Glanerbrug within a week after his return to Twente). He hopes to find more time soon to spend on some of his other hobbies, including table tennis, pool/snooker, and origami.