Credit Hours - 3
During the first semester of the second year, students will be required to give a seminar on the progress of their research. In the second semester and towards the conclusion of the preparation of their thesis, students would present their research findings.
PHD MATHEMATICS & MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS
Components of the programme:
- Core course (s); MATH 797 Mathematical Problem Solving, MATH 798 Mathematical Research, Writing and Publication II
- Elective course (s); all other courses are elective; they are shown in the table at (h).
- Mandatory course(s); there are no mandatory courses, these are in the Bachelors programme.
- Research component;
The major research component is to produce a thesis which exposes an original
contribution to knowledge. This could be supported by publication(s) in a recognised reputable journal.
- Competence-Based Training(CBT) component PhD Comprehensive Examination and MATH 798 Mathematical Research, Writing and Publication II
- Problem-Based Learning(PBL) component MATH 797 Mathematical Problem Solving
- Practical training, industrial attachment, internship, clinical experience, etc.,
The Year II activities include participating in an ongoing research programme either in the department or at the research centre, AIMS-Ghana or any other institute with which faculty members are doing collaborative research. The aim of this component of the programme is to guide the students in acquiring skills and knowledge relevant to doing research in mathematics. Projects currently include the following:
AIMS-Ghana Research Centre
The AIMS Research Centre attracts local, regional and international students and researchers. The Research Chair is
held by Dr Wilfred Ndifon who is the IDRC-IMS Career Development Chair of Quantitative Biology. The research area is quantitative assessment of T-cell diversity in health and disease. The candidate will conduct research under the supervision of Dr Ndifon.
The AIMS-Ghana Research Centre is envisaged to grow, offering further opportunities to our PhD candidates.
On the classification of immersed curves which extend to immersed surfaces- MmcIntyre:
In recent work in the department, some progress was made on the geometric interpretation of cancelling a negative group in the Blank word of a curve. A negative group was defined to be a pair of negative letters, yet we were able to construct an example and give a geometric interpretation of cancellation of three consecutive negative letters. This raises the possibility of redefining a negative group and exploring other possibilities for cancellation of subwords in the Blank word. A second line of research would investigate patterns in the Blank word which inhibit extension and a third line of research would be to develop a code which could generate the Blank word of a curve, up to the obvious equivalences induced by choice of starting point and choice of basepoint.
Analytic and Harmonic function spaces and associated operators- B Sehba:
The use of harmonic analysis in the study of functions of one or several complex variables is not a new phenomenon but recent developments in real harmonic analysis and the difficulty of applying complex analysis methods opened the study of connections between the two areas to find a way to deal with some unanswered questions of analytic function spaces. In particular,
a general weak factorisation theorem for Orlicz-type generalisations of Hardy spaces has been established and used to obtain results about Hankel operators. A candidate would work on a remaining open case and further weak factorisation results. A second line of research involves Carleson measures in Békollé-Bonami weights and applications for example to finding conditions that are necessary and sufficient for the Toeplitz product to be bounded.
Noncommutative geometry, quantum groups and quantum gravity- P K Osei and Bianca Dittrich: (Perimeter Institute)/Bernd Schroers Heriot-Watt University
Quantum gravity aims at unifying Einstein's vision of space-time as a dynamical object with the realization that fundamental physics and hence space-time has to be quantum. The first goal is to study analogue spin foam models with q-deformed quantum groups; in particular, to investigate the linearisation of coarse graining relations around fixed points of quantum group spin net models and analyse stability around these fixed points. A second goal is to construct semiduals of various twistor spaces and to interpret the emerging structures in the context of 4d noncommutative spacetimes. A third direction is to review the modern gauge theory formulation of 4 dimensional gravity and to study the Lie 2-group, a new algebraic structure proposed in the context of quantum gravity.
Diffeological spaces, category theory, Kacs-Moody algebras, cluster algebras-R A Twum :
The Borel-Weil theorem characterizes all irreducible representations of a connected Lie Group G as certain line bundles of the homogeneous space G/B. Analogues of this theorem exist for G a Kac-Moody group (possibly infinite dimensional). Work completed includes using enriched category theory to approach the problem. A categorical version of the Borel-Weil theorem with G a diffeological Lie group attached to a Kac-Moody algebra g and B a Lie subgroup of G is still being sought. In addition recently work has begun on cluster algebras.
Computational methods with applications to real life problems-E K A Schwinger and Antonella Zanna (Bergen University):
Special areas of application include: biomedical data ( MRI, CT, X-ray, ECG), remote sensing datasets (radar), scheduling problems using computational graph theory, ranking problems using Perron-Frobenius theorem and computational methods for partial differential equations.\newline
The project has four possible directions. A candidate could learn and use graph representation methods in image processing which convert pixels to graph nodes and use similarity for edge representation. A second direction is image segmentation methods, an integral part of image understanding algorithms. A third direction is to use image registration methods to align multiple versions of an area of interest, for example matching different images of an organ taken at different time periods to analyse progress in treatment. A fourth direction is in image denoising methods. Such methods are under continuous development as the method must be specific to the particular problem being considered. It should also be possible for a candidate to work on interdepartmental projects where computational mathematics is required.
Other possibilities in the near future include:
- Biomathematics Research Initiative BRI-UG with Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research and University of Vermont
- Combinatorics with Prof L Shapiro (Howard University)
- Several complex variables with Prof C Lutterodt (Howard University)
- Evolutionary game theory with Prof J Apaloo (St Josephs, Canada.
- Theory of reductive Lie groups and Lie algebras with Prof Kinvi Kangni (Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Abidjan)
- Constrained convex optimization with Prof A R De Pierro (San Carlos,Brazil.)
- Mathematical modelling of epidemics with Dr Farai Nyabadza (Stellenbosch)
- Modelling of physical phenomena with Prof. Anthony Aidoo (East Connecticut, State)
There is a memorandum of understanding between the University of Ghana and AIMS-Ghana in respect of the AIMS-Ghana MSc in mathematical sciences, which will be extended to arrangements for PhD students in the near future. The research collaborations mentioned above developed through PhD supervision and the proposed collaborations have been initiated through the University of Ghana, diasporan linkage programme which brought the above mathematicians to the department. The University of Ghana has a memorandum of understanding with Stellenbosch University, which enabled the visit of Farai Nyabadza to the department.
- Structure of the programme (Semester-by-semester schedule/structure of course, showing the credit value of each course).