Roles of Responsibility

Leadership Roles & Mathematical Engagement

Outside and inside of academia, I have taken on a number of leadership roles that allowed me to experience both the challenges and rewards of building teams, managing funds and being in a position of responsibility for others.

  • Editor Emergent Scientist (EmSci), 2018-current: Emergent Scientist (Em. Sci.) is an open access journal for undergraduate and graduate students published by EDP Sciences, supported by the French Physics Society and the French Academy of Science. It offers students a unique opportunity to get acquainted with scientific peer-review publishing. I became editor of the newly added Mathematics Section with the first article accepted in April 2019.
  • Maths HelpDesk, Imperial College London (UK), 2016-current: I initiated and institutionalized an inter-departmental collaboration platform to match researchers from across departments that are stuck on mathematical problems with mathematicians who have the required expertise. In 2016, I secured funding on university level and managed a core team of 5 to run the platform, matching incoming projects, integration of a new ticketing platform, and lead the development of a strategy plan for the coming years.
  • Director and Trustee of the non-profit Supporting African Mathematics Initiatives (SAMI) 2015-current: With a small core team, we founded the charitable company SAMI to advance education in mathematics for the public benefit. By now, activities are wide-ranging, including maths camps in Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Togo, Cameroon, Rwanda and the UK, targeted initiatives such as the African Data Initiative and the Digitial Communities Initiatives, as well as support for a number of African grass-root initiatives related to mathematics, mathematics education and the use of data and technology. We currently manage projects with funds of GBP 20,000-25,000 yearly.
  • African Data Initiative, 2015-current: Statistical software development project in partnership with the NGO African Maths Initiative (AMI), the social enterprise Statistics for Sustainable Development (Stats4SD), IDEMS International, the International Association of Statistical Education (IASE), the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), and Maseno University, Kenya. As part of a cross-institutional team, I organized a crowdsourcing initiative raising $40,000 that allows African developers to create tools for climate data analysis and corruption modeling with international mentorship. The software is already being used in implementations in a number of organizations.
  • Mathematics Camps, 2011-current: I was part of organizing more than 10 educational summer programs for teenagers across Africa and in the UK in co-operation with local organizations and institutions, being responsible for volunteer recruitment, organization and content creation, managing an international and local team on the ground prior to the camp, as well as the camp week itself with 50-100+ people each. The key components of these programs are not just to spark motivation and self-confidence in the students to pursue mathematics and sciences, exposing them to more advanced material in a fun way, but also to mentor the volunteer team into taking leadership roles, and to include local and international teachers as part of teacher training initiatives.
  • Digital Communities Initiative, 2016-2017: projects supported by SAMI using sustainable technologies in education, agriculture and women’s enterprises; grant of GBP 8,150 awarded by The Economist Charitable Trust;
  • International Physics Olympiad 2016, Zurich (Switzerland): I lead the Ghanaian Team for the International Physics Olympiad 2016 and acted as International Board Member representing Ghana.
  • President SIAM Student Chapter, Imperial College London (UK), 2015-2016: Leading a chapter committee of 8 people, we secured sponsorship from Imperial College Mathematics Department, industrial partners and SIAM, increased membership numbers by 80%, organized regular academic, industrial and social events for around 220 PhD students and postdocs.
  • Cohort Building Activities, Imperial College London (UK), 2015-2016: I initiated and run a cohort building pilot project to improve communication between PhD students in mathematics, and secured a grant of GBP 1,500 from the Imperial College Graduate School to support regular activities.
  • Founding Member SIAM Student Chapter, University of Cambridge (UK), 2014: With a small team we created the first SIAM student chapter at University of Cambridge, organizing academic and social activities for PhD students.
  • Hall Subwarden, Imperial College London (UK), 2014-2016: From 2010-2016, I was part of running a student residence hall of 160-220 undergraduate students with increasing responsibility over the years becoming a subwarden, including emergency response, welfare, fire safety, first aid, organizing events, leading a hall committee of around 12-18 people, and managing a yearly budget of GBP 12,000.

Organizational Roles for Scientific Events

  • 12/2019 Minisymposium Organizer on Mean-field models for large interacting agent systems at the 2019 SIAM Conference on Analysis of Partial Differential Equations, La Quinta, US.
  • 04/2019 Workshop Organizer, Cross-Pollination in Mathematics Education, African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Ghana.
  • 04/2019 Conference Organizer, Southern California Applied Mathematics Symposium, California Institute of Technology, US.
  • 02/2019 Minisymposium Organizer on Inverse Problems in Machine Learning at the 2019 SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, US.
  • 01-03/2019 Organizer Special CMX Seminar Series on Optimal Transport, California Institute of Technology, US.
  • 11/2017 Conference Organizer, Special Section on Particle Methods & Nonlocal PDEs at the AMS Fall Western Sectional Meeting, University of California, Riverside, USA.
  • 2015-2016 Seminar Organizer Junior Applied Mathematics Seminars (JAMS): weekly seminar by PhD students for PhD students with 2 speakers per week from different disciplines.
  • 06/2016 Conference Organizer, SIAM Student Chapter 2nd Annual Conference, Imperial College London, UK.
  • 03/2016 Organizer of the Partial Differential Equations Day, Imperial College London, UK.
  • 04/2015 Conference Organizer, MASDOC-CCA Conference, University of Warwick, UK.
  • 08/2013 Seminar Organiser for a series of applied mathematics seminars, University of Ngaoundéré, Cameroon, and Ecole Nationale Supérieure Polytechnique de Yaoundé, Cameroon: focused on biomathematics, mathematical epidemiology and modelling of infectious diseases.