Profile
Tina Zhou
Curriculum Vitae
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Education:
I did my Master degree in Bath and doing my PhD here
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Qualifications:
I was in several national competitions in Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Maths
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Work History:
I worked in many different areas. Supply chain in L'Oreal, Marking in a small IT company, manager assistant in Banking, investment manager in private equity and some freelance in consulting
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Current Job:
PhD student
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Employer
I am doing my PhD in the University of Bath.
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About Me
I am a crazy mathematician and I model the sun.
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Read more
I am a PhD student in Bath. I love maths, physics, coding as well as dancing and painting. My research is in modeling solar storms with the Met Office. My biggest passion is using maths to understand the world and solve many cool problems for industries.
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How I Use Maths In My Job:
I need to use a lot of numbers that are collected by satellites in my job. I will then use some complicated algebra equations to put those data into our supercomputer. After translating the real-life numbers into something the computer can understand, it can run the code and give us some nice simulation. It is like the video games you see, but the videos is about our sun.
Of course, there are many detailed steps using statistics, probability and geometry and measurement. For example, our satellites are not so smart and they give us a flat sun but we need to change it back to a sphere.
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My Work
My work is about modeling the sun and predict when it will start to lose temper.
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A presentation of what I do
My research is a joint area of many different subjects. I do a lot of coding using computers eg Python and also on supercomputers. We build maths models for what we are researching and we use a lot of physics knowledge as well. Best part of my research is that I can collaborate with researchers from uni and top scientists from the Met Office and NASA.
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My Typical Day
I normally work from 9am to 10 pm.
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Read more
Most of time, I go to work around 9 and come home around 10 pm. I do spend most of my time working in the uni but I can also go do dancing and sports in the between.
After coming to the office, I will spend 300 minutes on answering emails and checking my to-do list. Then sometimes I might need to go to a class to study or go tutoring younger students. We also have a lot of meetings along the week. For the rest of the time (actually most of the time), I would spend on reading books and reading relevant research papers. Collecting ideas from reading, and then I need to decide how to build our model.
Half of the time could also be spent on coding, because there are so many data to use even a supercomputer finds it too huge. So improving how we put the data in the computer is another focus of my research.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Energetic, passionate, crazy
What or who inspired you to follow your career?
IBM Watson
What's your favourite use for maths in everyday life?
Solve really problems, for example we worked with Pepsi to help them with chips packaging and make chips less easily being crushed.
What did you think about Maths when you were in school?
I love it, but did not know what maths could actually do.
What did you want to be after you left school?
I might work in a uni or be a mathematician in industry
Were you ever in trouble at school?
No.
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
I was working in investment before coming back to uni. So I might just staying doing investment.
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Michael Jackson or Ramstein
What's your favourite food?
Anything healthy
What is the most fun thing you've done?
Went to work in India
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
I will be an artist and a computer scientist. Not sure about the 3rd one yet.
Tell us a joke.
Maths is so cool, coz your brain can easily got frozen.
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