Summary
Vanessa Madu is a PhD student on the EPSRC CDT in Modern Statistics and Statistical Machine Learning at Imperial College London and Oxford University. She is interested in integrating techniques from machine learning, time series, and spatial statistics with physics-inspired models, with an application focus on the ocean, climate, and environmental sciences. Vanessa is doing her PhD under the supervision of Dr Adam Sykulski.
Vanessa is also a talented science communicator and has received several awards for her unique, innovative, and successful approaches to making science accessible to general and young audiences. She has also initiated several projects aimed at enhancing diversity within her field, driven by the vision that everyone should be able to enjoy and understand science, regardless of their background.
Science Communication
Vanessa thoroughly enjoys talking/writing/drawing/rhyming about science for general audiences and uses at least one rubber duck to do this wherever possible. Some of her work includes:
- Guest Speaker at the Hello World Hack on the scientific advances that can happen when one (accidentally) spills 27,000 rubber ducks into the North Pacific Ocean.
- Her winning talk on 'How do we know that humans are causing climate change?' for the RCSU Science Challenge 2022.
- A Fluid (Vortex) Dynamics activity for the White City Community Engagement STEMActivity Packs which went to 1500 families.
- 'Science Shorts': a series of 90-second videos of scientists explaining scientific topics to a general audience, introduced as a new publicity feature for the RCSU Science Challenge. Vanessa presented her own short on why we need to prove one plus one equals 2.
- 'Mathematics in Motion: Exploring Fluid Dynamics with Vanessa Madu' on the Young Scientists Journal Podcast
- Guest Speaker at the Girlguiding Cambridgeshire East STEM Activity Day on 'How to use maths to win at games'.
Availability/Speaker Requests
I love talking about science, so I am always thrilled to receive invitations to speak at events; however, I am actively doing research, meaning I am busy, so I will only consider requests I receive at least six weeks in advance!
I work very hard to deliver the highest quality science engagement activities that I can, and in return, I ask that your requests respect my time and its value.