Date: 18 March 2026
On the 18th of March 2026, the Cardiff University SIAM-IMA Chapter organised a Bake Your Thesis competition for PGRs from the schools of Maths and Computer Science. Each of the participants entered a bake which visually represented the research topic or findings of their PhD, accompanied by a title and abstract. We had six participants, five of which being PGRs in the School of Maths. It was great to see a diverse group of participants across various research groups, and from different backgrounds.
Bakes were entered by the following PhD Students:
BROOKIE: An Empirical Study of Oven-Based Aggregation methods – Thomas Greatrix
Smoothed Profiterole Hydrodynamics: Choux based modelling of Granular Flows – Rhys James
A Transmission Traybake – Emma Shelley
Baked Dynamics: Modelling Alcohol Consumption and its Consequences – Elin Williams
Stacked Shortbread Systems with Buttercream Coupling – Naomi Wray
Where Pastry Meets Particles: A Napoleon Cake View of KDE - Alesia Zverovich
Thomas Greatrix
Rhys James
Emma Shelley
Elin Williams
Naomi Wray
Alesia Zverovich
Professor Karl Schmidt and Dr Nneka Umeorah from the School of Mathematics, and Dr Padraig Corcoran from the School of Computer Science and Informatics agreed to judge the competition for us. They viewed and tasted each of the baked goods and elected a Star Baker. In addition, we also arranged for the audience to be able to vote for their favourite bake. The results of the competition were the following:
Star Baker: Naomi Wray
Audience Favourite: Alesia Zverovich
The event was well attended by postgraduate research students as well as academic and professional services staff, who enjoyed eating the baked goods. On top of that, the competition was a fun way to generate interest and spark discussions on the research conducted within the departments.
The competition was a huge success, and we were very pleased with the overall outcome of the event. It was great to receive such positive feedback, and to see people from both Schools brought together as a community. We hope to be able to have this competition again in future.
