Student Profile: Miriam Slattery

Miriam Slattery

University of Adelaide

Biography

Miriam Slattery graduated from high school in 2015 and has completed two years of a Bachelor of Mathematical Sciences (Advanced) at the University of Adelaide. She was the recipient of the Marta Sved Scholarship for the highest-achieving female student in Mathematics in 2016 and the Ann Coultas Prize for the first-year student with the highest results in a statistics course in 2016. She has a keen interest in mathematics, particularly mathematical modelling. Outside of academics, her hobbies include facepainting and leading youth groups and youth camps.

Optimal Animal Foraging in a Two-Dimensional World

We aim to investigate a model for an animal searching for randomly located food in a two-dimensional plane and seek solutions to give a minimum search time. We will do this by extending analytical optimisation techniques used on a similar problem in one dimension. We will also use simulations to find numerical solutions.