Carnegie PhD Scholar awarded Robertson Medal 2023-24

On Friday 26th January 2024, Scott Warrander, PhD Scholar in Mathematics at the University of Glasgow received the Robertson Medal in Science, Engineering & Technology for Academic Year 2023-24.

The silver medal is awarded each year to the Scholarship candidate judged to be the most outstanding for that year’ competition. The medal was introduced in 2003 to mark the contribution of the retiring Chairman of the Trust, Sir Lewis Robertson, who served the Trust for over 40 years.

About this year’s recipient

Scott grew up in Manchester, and from an early age he enjoyed and excelled in mathematics. It wasn’t until sixth-form college, however, that he began to appreciate mathematics for its own sake. He began to engage with as much extra-curricular mathematics as he could, which included attending the University of Manchester “Making Maths at Manchester” summer school in 2017, and qualifying for the first round of the 2017/18 British Maths Olympiad in which he received a certificate of distinction for his performance.

In 2018, Scott began studying Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh with direct entry into the second year of the programme. He quickly gravitated towards pure mathematics and sought out many opportunities to engage with active research, being awarded funding for 3 undergraduate research projects during his degree. His academic excellence was continuously recognised throughout his time studying: he received the Simon Gray Prize in 2019, the William and Isabella Dick Fourth Year Project Prize in 2021 for his Honours Group Project, and the William and Isabella Dick Prize for the Best Fifth Year Student in 2022 for his distinguished performance in his master’s year. He completed his master’s dissertation in Quantum Groups and Link Invariants, supervised by Dr Pavel Safronov, and graduated in 2022 with first-class honours.

He took a break from his education during the 2022/23 academic year and worked tutoring undergraduate mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. In this role, he was nominated for the Edinburgh University Students Association Teaching Awards 2023.

Having always been fascinated by connections between different areas of mathematics, Scott decided to pursue a PhD in mathematics in the field of geometric representation theory, which describes connections between two of his favourite subjects as an undergraduate: algebraic geometry and representation theory. He is currently working on geometric representation theory at the University of Glasgow under the supervision of Dr Dinakar Muthiah.