The second edition of the colloquium of PhD in Mathematics and its applications, took place from the 7th to the 9th of December 2021. Professor Olivier Menoukeu Pamen, the German Research Chair at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) Ghana, during the opening ceremony, called for closer collaboration between mathematical scientists and policy-makers to solve societal challenges. He said challenges such as floods, traffic congestion, financial crisis, and disease outbreaks could be managed better if policy-makers engaged mathematical scientists regularly to solicit their views and inputs towards resolving them.
He proposed an annual conference for Mathematical Scientists to discuss the state of mathematics study in Ghana, intended to find applied mathematics to be taught in schools to shape the country’s development. Prof. Pamen, also the Lead Organizer of the Colloquium, was of the view that a better understanding of mathematical concepts by policy-makers would compel them to allocate a significant amount of financial resources towards its application. The three-day workshop provided a platform for increasing co-operation among PhD candidates on one hand, and the various institutions and research centres on the other hand.
Some of the topics discussed during the workshop included microfinance, statistics, data analysis, stochastic analysis, control theory, geometry and quantum algebra. The PhD candidates also made presentations of their respective research works, which were constructively criticised by their colleagues and senior researchers, and offered suggestions to make them better.
The event was organised within the framework of the German Research Chair Programme in AIMS Ghana, under the Alexander von Humboldt and the German Ministry of Education and Research and Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Foundation.
Dr Antoine Bogso, a Research Associate at AIMS Ghana, on his part, said the Colloquium enabled the participants to share ideas, broaden their perspectives about life in general and established network that would help them in their future careers. Dr Stephen Moore, a Lecturer at the Mathematics Department, University of Cape Coast, observed that mathematics progressed when there was a collaboration among mathematical scientists, and thus, called for more collaborative work among researchers.
A total of over 25 lecturers and PhD students participated in the event, sharing ideas and opportunities for collaboration. In an interview, two students who participated in the colloquium, namely; Mr Zigli David Delali from the University of Mines and Technology (UmaT) pursuing Algebraic Topology and Mr Julius Kwaku Adu-Ntim, from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) shared their perspectives on the Colloquium with the GNA, saying that the platform had enabled them to properly shape their research works.
They said the platform had helped them to establish contacts with senior lecturers, researchers, and colleague PhD candidates that would aid their future work.
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