In honor of Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month, SIAM is spotlighting mathematicians and statisticians throughout April. SIAM member Dr. Chris Budd is a 2020 JPBM Communications Award Recipient and Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Bath.
Career and Awards
Dr. Budd received his Bachelor's degree in 1982 from St. John's College, Cambridge at the top of his class and his Ph.D. from St. John's, Oxford, studying numerical methods for nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations. He spent three years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory before becoming a tenured lecturer in numerical analysis at the University of Bristol in 1989. From 1995 to present, he has served as both a Professor of Applied Mathematics and the Director of Knowledge Transfer at the University of Bath.
Dr. Budd's numerous awards and recognitions include, but are not limited to, the 2004 Institute of Physics award for promoting maths and science, 2009 British Science Association prize for promoting maths and science, and the 2015 OBE (Officer of the British Empire) award from the Queen of England.
Research Focus
Normally, Dr. Budd works in the two areas of industrial applied mathematics and environmental mathematics. He has done a lot of work on weather forecasting and in climate change and his ideas are used in the codes used to forecast the weather. His industrial research varies from designing better WiFi systems to simulating turbochargers in car engines, and even finding better ways of microwave cooking. Since lockdown he has been working full time on using mathematical models to help fight the risks posed by COVID-19, such as making schools and universities safer, and designing safer ways to shop and to use trains.
Raising Public Awareness
For the last 20+ years, Dr. Budd has run a module at the University of Bath designed to help undergraduate students communicate mathematics to broader audiences while providing mathematics masterclasses to young aspiring mathematicians at the Royal Institution. Although typically found sharing his teachings at schools across the world, Dr. Budd has moved to digital seminars in accordance with lockdown restrictions and in an effort to expand the geographical diversity of his audience. He has since been a founder of V-KEMS, a virtual forum for knowledge exchange in the mathematical sciences that serves to make policymakers, industry leaders, and the general public aware of the role of math in the fight against COVID-19.
He was just awarded £3.5 million for a 5-year project in the 'Mathematics of machine learning' which starts in January 2022. He has been an associate editor of SIAM News and of SIAM Review and currently serves on the SIAM Education Committee.
Thank you, Dr. Budd, for your contributions to SIAM and for your leadership in mathematics and statistics!