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We've just been awarded a departmental prize for Student Leadership Development!
Thank you so so much to everyone who made this possible, most notably the student experience team Ahmed, Olivia and Sai, as well as all of the group leaders for their hard work
We couldn't have achieved nearly what we did without your support - let's continue to celebrate collaboration and grow the DRP as big as it can go!
Midterm social
25/11/25 - Written by Shen
Now that we've had time to settle into the groups, about time to catch up!
With pizza and good vibes, a nice midweek social for all, and a great opportunity to see how everyone was getting on - amazing to see so many people there!
Looking forward to the next social event ...
DRP Week 4 - Seeing it in practice
24/11/25 - written by Lang Chen
We have been learning about the mathematical foundations of time-series momentum trading signals this week. We covered how cumulative returns over a 12-month window form the classic 12–1 momentum signal, and why the most recent month is skipped to avoid short-term reversal effects.
We also learned that momentum can be explained using the autoregressive (AR(1)) model, where positive return persistence over 3–12 months helps past winners continue to outperform. In contrast, short-term microstructure noise, like bid-ask bounce and liquidity shocks, creates negative autocorrelation at very short horizons. Altogether, it was interesting to see how both statistical structure and investor behaviour generate the medium-term momentum effect.
DRP Week 3 - Diving deeper
19/11/25 - Written by Leonardo Wang
During our first few meetings, we have begun discussing the fundamental setup of Category Theory. As someone who loves exploring the more abstract topics in maths, this field quickly drew me in as we explore definitions and theorems interlacing different a mathematical objects that we’ve all seen before: groups, rings, modules etc.
I really liked our sessions are structured where instead of rushing through content for the sake of accomplishing our goal to finish MacLane, we give ourselves generous amounts of time to digest the concepts through examples and constructions. Really looking forward to learning limits and colimits soon.
DRP Week 2 - Getting on
12/11/25 - Written by Matthew Oswald
During our first DRP meeting we began to look into Neural networks and their applications. Our group leader explored and presented cutting edge research on how AI maps different information points onto graphs of extreme dimensionality. The philosophical aspects as well have especially intrigued me, in terms of language, its relation to machines, and what machines can and should be learning, as well as how this relates to our own more organic methods of thinking.
As some members of the group move to a more coding element, planning to attempt to replicate certain experiments discussed in the articles presented, others of us are planning to explore different areas in neural representation, from polysemy to mapping. I’ve really enjoyed starting DRP and the topics discussed are (personally) extremely intriguing.
DRP Week 1 - First meetings
06/11/25 - Written by John Zou
For our first DRP meeting, we discussed the basic formulation of some probability theory from a measure-theoretic standpoint and introduced a basic definition of continuous time Markov processes. Although I have seen a formulation of this before, the previous definition was made more rigorous by introducing filtrations.
It is still very early stages of the project, but through our sessions I can begin to see how these theoretical tools I’m familiar with can be applied to a physical setting of interacting particle systems. I’m certain that in the following weeks the group can begin to discuss some complex results for models of physical systems with many components.
DRP Kickoff Autumn 25
29/10/25 - Written by Shen
We now have 35 different groups with just over 200 participants! That's around 1/6 of all maths students!!
Our launch event for this year!
After a successful trial period last year, we're back, and bigger than ever
We've been absolutely blown away with the amount of interest, and the amount of people who really want to enjoy a collaborative side to learning something new. Hopefully, the programme can elevate the existing opportunities in the department, and widen the reach of group learning efforts here.
Here's to a great year !
Best wishes, Shen
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