Mathematical biology postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

My interest in mathematical biology began with a second-year module on dynamical systems, where we spent two weeks on predator-prey models. What struck me was not the elegance of the phase portraits but how much the models left out, and how carefully you have to argue about which omissions matter. I wanted to know how modellers decide, and that question has shaped the rest of my degree.

For my final-year project I modelled the seasonal population dynamics of Daphnia in a small urban pond, using a compartmental system of ordinary differential equations with temperature-dependent birth rates. I used publicly available monthly water temperature data from a nearby monitoring site as a forcing term, and fitted two parameters by least squares to sampling counts collected by a local wildlife group. The fit was mediocre, which turned out to be the interesting part. Adding a simple delay to reflect maturation time improved the seasonal timing considerably, but also made the system sensitive to initial conditions in ways I could not fully characterise with the tools I had. Writing that up honestly, rather than presenting the tidier version, taught me more than the modelling itself. I earned a strong first for the project and my supervisor encouraged me to pursue the subject further.

Alongside the project I took modules in stochastic processes, statistical inference and numerical analysis, and I chose a computational statistics option specifically to strengthen my R. I now work comfortably with differential equation solvers in R and can manage moderate data-wrangling tasks in Python, though I would describe myself as a competent user rather than a strong programmer. I have read parts of Murray's Mathematical Biology and found the chapters on reaction-diffusion patterning genuinely absorbing, particularly the way a mechanism that is mathematically simple can produce such varied structure. I would like to study stochastic and spatial models more systematically, since my project convinced me that deterministic ODEs are a limited description of small populations where chance events dominate.

Outside my degree I work weekend shifts at the information desk of a city aquarium. Explaining why a tank's jellyfish population rises and falls, to a family with three impatient children, is not a research skill, but it has made me much better at judging what an audience already knows and what I can safely leave out. I have found the same judgement useful in seminar presentations. I am also treasurer of a local running club and help coach the beginners' group. Keeping the accounts for around ninety members, reconciling race entry fees and presenting a clear annual statement to the committee has made me methodical about record-keeping, and I now document my code and data sources far more carefully than I did in my second year. Coaching has taught me patience with people who improve slowly and unevenly, which is closer to how I experience mathematics than I once expected.

I am drawn to taught postgraduate study rather than immediate employment because I want the mathematical grounding to work on biological problems properly, rather than applying whichever method I happen to know. I am especially keen to develop skills in stochastic simulation, parameter inference for mechanistic models and spatial modelling, and to work on a dissertation involving real data and real uncertainty. In the longer term I would like to work as part of a research group on ecological or epidemiological modelling, and possibly to continue to doctoral study if my dissertation goes well. I know the mathematics will be demanding, but my project showed me that I enjoy the slow, uncomfortable stage where a model does not yet work.

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