Women in Mathematics

We are working to encourage and support female mathematicians at all levels.

Learn more about the women working in our department, past and present, and other initiatives to promote women in mathematics.

Our History

UCL was perhaps the first university in England to admit women on equal terms with men, in 1878. The department of mathematics followed this illustrious precedent by appointing one of the very first female Professors in Applied Mathematics in the UK. Professor Susan N. Brown worked here for 39 years, retiring in 2003.

Professor Susan N. Brown

Raised in south-coast England, Susan was an undergraduate at Oxford University and gained a prize-winning First in Mathematics. She began her doctoral research there in 1959 at Oxford with George Temple as her supervisor and completed her thesis on theoretical fluid mechanics by 1964. Before then Susan also began what became a long, close and fruitful association with Keith Stewartson, leader in the subject at the time, moving with him to Durham in 1962, Newcastle in 1963, followed by UCL in 1964. She stayed on the staff in the Mathematics Department at UCL as Lecturer, Reader and from 1986 Professor until her retirement in 2003, becoming thereafter an Emeritus Professor.

Susan collaborated with many people, and her supreme analytical skills combined with research attitude, determination and intellectual honesty were and are recognised universally. This led to pioneering research in aerodynamics, geophysical fluid dynamics, engine dynamics, particularly on vortex breakdown, critical layers, delta wings, hypersonics, critical layers, triple-deck theory, spot disturbances, leading- and trailing-edge effects, rotating fluids, linear and nonlinear stability, and much more. It also led to a great many international visits, especially in the USA to work with Tuncer Cebeci, Sid Leibovich, H K Cheng, Odus Burggraf, and to international fame: Brown and Stewartson together became world leaders in the 60s and 70s (and there remains a delightful correspondence by airmail between the two during those times.) Susan continued in research with UCL departmental colleagues until her retirement. Working with her guaranteed a study of the very highest standard but also she attracted a certain warmth from all who knew her, being kind, understanding, open, dedicated, among many other fine qualities. Derek Moore, also a distinguished applied mathematician, at Imperial College, and Susan lived together in a long close association in later years. Her teaching was excellent throughout despite a (too) heavy load, it was always clear and top-rate and coupled with care for all students.

We are very proud of this historic appointment, and as a department we are working hard to encourage female mathematicians at all levels.

Current Staff

Dr Freya Bull

Freya is a Research Fellow in the department of Mathematics. Before joining UCL she completed a PhD in Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Edinburgh where her research focused on mathematical modelling of bacterial populations. She is interested in how we can apply mathematical models to problems in health and biolody, with a particular interest in developing simple models to describe complex phenomena. 

Dr Cecilia Busuioc

Cecilia completed her PhD at Boston University under the supervision of Prof. Glenn Stevens. She moved to Imperial College London in 2008 as a Chapman Fellow. Following short term research visits at the Max Plank Institute for Mathematics in Bonn and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, she undertook teaching positions at Royal Holloway and Queen Mary University of London. She joined the UCL Mathematics Department in January 2019 as a Teaching Fellow. Her research lies primarily within the area of Algebraic Number Theory, with special focus on Eisenstein Cohomology and its applications to special values of L-functions and explicit class field theory.

Dr Stephanie Chan

Stephanie completed her PhD at UCL under the supervision of Prof Andrew Granville. She went on to hold postdoctoral positions at the University of Michigan, MSRI/SLMath, and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, before returning to UCL as a Lecturer. Her research is in Number Theory, with a particular focus on Arithmetic Statistics and Diophantine Equations. 

Dr Hannah Fry

Dr Hannah Fry at the Royal Institution
Dr Hannah Fry at the Royal Institution

Hannah is a lecturer in the Mathematics of Cities at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL, and is an Honorary Lecturer at the Department of Mathematics. She works alongside a unique mix of physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists & geographers to study the pattens in human behaviour - particularly in an urban setting. Her research applies to a wide range of social problems and questions, from shopping and transport to urban crime, riots and terrorism.

Alongside her academic position, Hannah is currently an EPSRC public engagement fellow, taking the joy of maths into theatres, pubs and schools. Hannah has published three popular maths book: The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation (Simon & Schuster/ Ted) and The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus (Penguin Random House/Transworld)., and Hello World (Penguin Random House/Transworld) which was released worldwide in September 2018. She also co-presents the BBC worldwide YouTube channel Brit Lab (formerly Headsqueeze) and regularly appears on TV and radio in the UK.

 

Dr Rosemary Harris

Rosemary joined UCL in 2022 as an Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics, having previous held a similar position at Queen Mary University of London. Her background is in Theoretical Physics, with a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford followed by postdoctoral research at the Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Universität des Saarlandes. She works on stochastic processes, in particular characterizing the probability of rare fluctuations away from typical behaviour, and their (possible) applications in modelling various real-world systems. Beyond the day job, she has been curator of the “Science on Screen” film series at the Barbican, and also participated in the “Pint of Science” festival. More broadly, she enjoys travel and outdoor activities, especially hillwalking and swimming.

Dr Betti Hartmann

Dr Betti Hartmann
Dr Betti Hartmann

Betti did her PhD in Theoretical physics as well as her habilitation (a post-doctoral qualification as a university lecturer at German universities) at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. She has done Post-Docs at the University of Durham (UK) and the University of Tours (France), and held Lecturer and Professor positions at Jacobs University Bremen (Germany) and the University of São Paulo (Brazil), respectively.

She is interested in non-linear phenomena in flat and curved space-time, in particular she studies black holes and (topological and non-topological) solitons with applications to astrophysics, cosmology, condensed matter and biophysics. In recent times, she has been active in studying applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence, solitons and black holes in Anti-de Sitter space-time as well as predictions of Grand Unified models and Superstring Theories for the primordial universe.

Dr Nikoleta Kalaydzhieva

Niki is an associate lecturer in the department of Mathematics. She completed her PhD at University College London in Analytic number theory under the supervision of Prof. Andrew Granville in 2020. In her thesis she studied problems related to continued fractions over function fields. Outside of this position, she likes to spread the joy of Mathematics through outreach talks and research schools on topics like Algebraic Topology and Projective Geometry. She is a speaker for the Royal Institution of Great Britain and an alumni of Chalkdust magazine.

 

Dr Beatriz Navarro Lameda

Dr Beatriz Navarro Lameda
Dr Beatriz Navarro Lameda

Beatriz Navarro Lameda graduated from the University of Toronto with a PhD thesis in random walks in random environments and stochastic PDEs in 2020. During her postgraduate work, she developed a deep passion for teaching and she is a big proponent of teaching innovation in and outside the classroom. Beatriz joined UCL as a lecturer (teaching) in January 2021. She is currently interested in mathematics education research. In particular, she is interested in IBL (Inquiry Based Learning) and flipped classroom teaching models, the impact of formative assessment and feedback, as well as teaching mathematical writing.

Dr Elvira Lupoian

Elvira completed her PhD in April 2024 at the University of Warwick supervised by Prof. Samir Siksek and Dr Damiano Testa. Her thesis studied various methods of computing torsion subgroups of Jacobians of curves. Elvira’s current research focuses on curves, their associated Jacobian variety, and various arithmetic applications. In particular, Elvira is interested in Jacobians of modular curves. 

Dr Houry Melkonian

Houry Melkonian is an academic leader with a PhD in Mathematics from Heriot-Watt University. Her work connects the mathematical sciences to real-world impact through curriculum innovation, strategic engagement, and cross-sector collaboration. She centres her teaching and leadership philosophy on transformative education and co-production. She specialises in building bridges between academia and policy, teaching and research, and institutions and communities to enable meaningful, equitable change. She is particularly passionate about mentoring, interdisciplinary collaboration, and fostering academic cultures where effective teaching and learning practices are embedded, shared, and sustained. Grounded in educational scholarship, her work supports students’ learning experiences in mathematics by enhancing understanding of teaching, learning, and assessment. She has a strong interest in educational theory, especially understanding the gap between theory and practice, and uses evidence-based approaches to inform policy and practices that drive equity-focused change. Strategically minded and collaborative, she aligns initiatives with institutional goals, fosters sustainable success across disciplines and sectors, and advocates for the societal relevance of mathematics. Through her leadership, teaching, and research, she strives to create inclusive, innovative, and impactful educational environments.

Dr Claudia Miranda

Claudia is about to complete her PhD in Mathematical Biology at University College London under the supervision of Dr Philip Pearce and Dr Thomas Michaels (now at ETH Zurich). Her thesis is about the polymerisation of haemoglobin in sickle cell disease upon deoxygenation. This work combines statistics, dynamical systems, and chemical kinetics theory to provide analytical and numerical expressions for the fraction of sickled red blood cells of a patient’s blood sample. This is in an initial step towards exploring new biomarkers for sickle cell disease. Claudia is now a Lecturer (teaching) in Mathematics and a member of the EDI committee at the department. She is particularly interested in outreach and in finding ways of making Mathematics fun and accessible for everyone. When she is not thinking about Mathematical Biology, there is a 90% chance she will be thinking about music in all of its forms: played, sung, or written. Another 9% is reserved for cycling, and we leave the remaining 1% as an exercise of imagination for the reader.

Dr Hao Ni

Hao is a senior lecturer in financial mathematics at UCL and a UCL faculty fellow at Alan Turing Institute since September 2016. Prior to this she was a visiting postdoctoral researcher at ICERM and Department of Applied Mathematics at Brown University from 2012/09 to 2013/05 and continued her postdoctoral research at the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance until 2016. She finished her D.Phil. in mathematics in 2012 under the supervision of Professor Terry Lyons at University of Oxford. Her research interests include stochastic analysis, financial mathematics and machine learning. More specifically she is interested in non-parametric modelling effects of data streams through rough paths theory and statistical models. Rough paths theory is a non-linear extension of classical theory of control differential equations to model highly oscillatory systems, and the core concept in rough paths theory is the signature of a path, which can be used as useful features for learning to summarize sequential data in terms of its effect. Moreover, she is also interested in its applications, e.g. online Chinese handwritten character and financial data streams.

Prof Karen Page

Karen took her DPhil in Oxford in Mathematical Biology, after which she spent two years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Her first lecturing post was in UCL’s Computer Science department; she moved to the Maths department in 2006.

Dr Ruth Reynolds

Dr Ruth Reynolds
Dr Ruth Reynolds

Ruth completed her PhD in noncommutative algebra at the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Dr Susan Sierra during which she developed her love of teaching. Her research interests lie in the interactions between noncommutative ring theory and algebraic geometry, with particular focus on idealizer subrings and their properties. After finishing her PhD, she stayed on as a Teaching fellow in Edinburgh. She joined UCL as a teaching fellow and STACK technologist in December 2020. Ruth is actively involved in the development and implementation of computer-aided assessment of mathematics and effective methods of teaching. When not thinking about maths or teaching, Ruth can often be found baking bread, going on long hill walks, or playing the violin.

Dr Nadia Sidorova

Nadia graduated from Moscow State University and completed her PhD at University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, in 2003. In her thesis she studied stochastic processes on Riemannian manifolds. After that she took a postdoctoral position at Oxford to work on Rough Paths theory. Then she moved to Bath for another postdoctoral appointment and started working on random processes in random environments. This field of research is still one of her main interests. Nadia moved to UCL in 2007 and is now a Reader. She works in the area of Probability.

Prof Helen Wilson

Professor Helen Wilson
Professor Helen Wilson

Helen Wilson studied at Cambridge before taking a two-year postdoctoral appointment in Chemical Engineering in Boulder, Colorado. She was a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Leeds for four years before moving to UCL in 2004. She is now a Professor. Her research focuses on complex fluids: bouncy, gritty or sloppy liquids that don’t follow the standard rules of water flow.

Dr Edwina Yeo

Dr Edwina Yeo
Dr Edwina Yeo

Edwina is an EPSRC National Fluid Mechanics Fellow based in the Department of Mathematics. Edwina recently completed a PhD and postdoc at the University of Oxford where she worked on deposition and transport in blood flow and developing continuum models for interacting systems. Edwina’s research focuses on the intersection of fluid mechanics and biology, specifically, she examines how to better model aggregation and clumping in fluids which is a major problem in healthcare settings and manufacturing. 

 

PhD Students

Edwina Aylward
Molly Brennan
Jun Cheng
Maria Chivers
Emily Cook
Fenora David
Sara Drummond-Curtis
Silvia Gangeri
Wen Ge
Anushka Herale
Katherine Horton
Xintong Ji
Belindar Juma
Yumin Lu
Megan Masters
Andela Markovic
Catinca Mujdei
Praveen Naina
Clara Neather
Shany Neeman
Sasha Parry Barnard
Ophélie Rivière
Varsha
Nikhita Vas
Cyan White
Ella Williams
Florence Williams
Muqing Xue

More information on our PhD students can be found on the Department of Mathematics PhD student page.
 

Outreach

We support and particpate in a number of outreach events:

Useful Links

European Women in Mathematics Travel Grants

European Women in Mathematics (EWM) will start awarding a few grants each year for female mathematicians that are EWM members and are at an early stage of their career or work in a developing country, who need funding (travel and/or accommodation, up to 400 EUR) for participating and giving a talk at a significant conference in their field.

There will be two deadlines per year for applications:  June 1st and December 1st.

The applicant should submit to contact@europeanwomeninmaths.org the following:

  • a CV
  • a short letter from the PhD advisor (in case of PhD students) or of the applicant (in case of PhD holders) describing the relevance of participating at that event and motivating the need of funding.
  • a presentation abstract, names and institutional affiliations of co-authors and an estimate of the expenses for which the application is made.

Grant holders will be expected to represent the EWM when participating in the meeting for which the funding was applied for. In particular, the EWM logo should be added to talks and posters that the successful applicant presents. Moreover, promotional material (that will be sent to the applicant before the meeting) should be laid out at the registration desk of the meeting if agreed by the organizers.

 

Useful Links

Outreach