The Department of Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics is, together with Umeå Center for Gender Studies, searching for a PhD student in mathematics or computational science with focus on discrete mathematics and gender aspects of scientific authorship. The employment will start on September 1, 2024 or by negotiation, is limited to four years of full-time studies, and is based at the Department of Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics. Last day to apply is February 2, 2024.

The Department of Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics performs research in computational science, mathematics, and mathematical statistics. The department has approximately 100 employees of which about 25 are PhD students. For more information see, http://www.umu.se/en/department-of-mathematics-and-mathematical-statistics/

The Graduate School of Gender Studies has since 2001 co-financed PhD students at all of Umeå University’s faculties. A PhD student at the Graduate School of Gender Studies will take part in a unique and dynamic research environment, in which about 25 PhD students are participating in. For more information see, https://www.umu.se/en/umea-centre-for-gender-studies/doctoral-studies/the-graduate-school-of-gender-studies/

Project description and tasks:
The successful PhD student will carry out research within an interdisciplinary research environment that includes the discrete mathematics group of the Department of Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics and the Graduate School of Gender Studies. The candidate will analyze gender patterns in the so-called Erdös social collaboration graph, where the nodes represent researchers in mathematics, and edges between two nodes/researchers represent the fact that they have at least one common publication. This analysis includes questions like:

What are the patterns in co-authorship in relation to gender?
How does the publication productivity differ for men and women over time?
How does the relation between scientific productivity, co-authorship and national context correlate?
How is gender representation and co-authorship performed in mathematics?
Currently, the research group in discrete mathematics consists of 18 people. The group is very active and has a weekly seminar, different workshops, and a frequent flow of visitors and international collaborators. It has several PhD students and postdocs. The research covers a wide range of areas and touches upon extremal, probabilistic, algorithmic, game theoretic, computational, topological, geometric, and algebraic combinatorics.

The successful PhD student will also participate in the research environment at the Graduate School of Gender Studies. This involves participation in activities such as PhD courses, seminars, workshops and termly away-days.

Umeå offers excellent working and living conditions. The city is young and located right next to a large river. It is surrounded by forests and lakes and lies close by the sea. In the vicinity there are plenty of opportunities for both indoor and outdoor activities.