On the 10th January 2024, Sara Jabbari, Sandeep Shirgill and Teri Parsonage delivered a workshop on using maths to understand disease outbreaks to groups of female Year 9 students from schools across the West Midlands. The pupils learned how to build mathematical models, creating their own visualisations of disease outbreaks with dice and counters. Together they designed strategies to decide whom to prioritise for vaccinations within their populations to keep the infection at bay!
They also had the chance to hear about research within the School of Mathematics, including how we use mathematics to develop new treatments for bacterial infections and to promote a healthy immune response. The event was sponsored by Northrop Grumman and pupils took part in additional workshops, including making their own lip balms and programming with robots.
