Charlotte Desvages

Dr Charlotte Desvages joined the School of Maths in 2018 and teaches mathematical computing. Prior to this, she did her PhD in Musical Acoustics at Edinburgh and an undergraduate degree in Physics in her home country, France. Recently I had the pleasure of talking to Dr Desvages about her academic life and how a love for learning led her to a full-time teaching position at the School of Maths.

 

Early Life

 

How did your mathematical journey as in the love for mathematics originate?

I've always loved maths and so from quite a young age I found it really satisfying. I wasn’t into humanities like literature, history and things like that. It felt to me at the time that it was just memorising things and so it was nebulous and abstract for me. I liked being able to solve problems and go through the process myself rather than reading what someone else had done. After School, I didn't have a very specific career in mind, but I knew I wanted to study for as long as I could, because I really enjoyed learning.

 

How did this love for learning influence your choices later in your academic life?

In the French education system students need to decide whether or not they intend on doing a Masters while applying for an undergraduate degree, because there's a specific undergraduate degree that you need to be able to do one afterwards. So I went for this particular degree and applied for Maths. After doing a semester, I realised that I wasn't necessarily into pure mathematics and so I changed degrees to physics, and I ended up doing a physics degree.

 

Postgraduate degrees in Acoustics

 

How did your Physics degree lead you to a PhD in Acoustics? Obviously, they are connected but there are lots of other things that one can do with a Physics degree too. Why did you particularly choose music and acoustics?

The kind of career paths that came from studying physics at that time were typically working for energy companies, that sort of thing. It just wasn't really something that I found super appealing. So I started looking into what other things I could do with my degree. Since high School I had been in bands with my friends, and enjoyed music. At University I really enjoyed the physics of waves and vibrations, so I started looking into masters programmes for the physics of sound and acoustics and I did my Masters in that here in Edinburgh. My Masters programme was a really small class with about a dozen of us. It was quite a small department, they were looking for PhD students at that time and there was some funding available. I did a little experimental acoustics project during the second semester, and then I followed that on with a computational acoustics project for my master's dissertation. I found that quite interesting and so after discussing with my supervisors, we applied for PhD funding.

 

What was your PhD research about?

A lot of musical instruments have been designed through centuries of trial and error to get to the point where they sound good, but the physics of what's happening in there is still mostly a mystery for some instruments. I was specifically working with stringed instruments like violins and cellos. The work involved building mathematical models of how these instruments produce sound and using numerical methods and algorithms to solve these differential equations. A nice thing about making synthetic sound this way, by actually simulating the instrument, is that it is more flexible than just playing a bunch of recordings or synthesising a signal without really knowing much about how the instrument works. So, it sounds more natural because you're actually simulating the physical behaviour of an object. This particular application comes with a whole lot of other constraints that you have on your numerical simulations so that it sounds good. This kind of research has also been done on instruments which are no longer as popular and are limited to traditional families. There are some kinds of historical instruments which may only be found in museums, for example, so you can't really play them anymore or you would break them. Trying to build models of these specifically with their physical properties could be a way to play them somehow, even if it's just playing a virtual model

 

Teaching

 

After your PhD you joined the School of Maths as a University teacher. Did you always like teaching and were planning to do it?

During my PhD, I was tutoring quite a lot. I ended up tutoring the courses that I took when I was doing my Masters. So, by the time I had finished my PhD, which lasted four and a half years, I had a decent amount of teaching experience and most of that was in applied maths, computational physics and engineering related courses. A few months after that, this job for a full time teaching position in Computational Maths came up. I applied and was lucky to obtain the position. The courses in the School obviously have a stronger maths flavour to them but most of the methods I teach now are closely related to what I used to teach in Acoustics.

 

University Mathematics is generally not associated with a teaching centred approach. However you are working as a full time University teacher and are part of the ‘Technology Enhanced Mathematical Sciences Education group’. How is this different in Edinburgh?

I think at the School of Maths in Edinburgh, we're lucky to have this research group with very dedicated people and researchers who are putting teaching at the forefront. Generally, there's a strong focus on learning technology and using that appropriately and effectively. Apart from that, understanding how students learn mathematics and how to make our teaching effective that way improves the learning experience for everyone. The School leadership is extremely keen to invest a lot of resources and effort into making sure our teaching is as good as it can be. I think in terms of mathematics education we're lucky to be in a School which is doing really well in that regard; I’m lucky to be in a position where I’m able to fully focus on developing teaching, and which allows for career progress on that basis.

 

What's the most exciting part of the job?

Talking to students and watching them learn in real time is really cool. Being part of all that and interacting with students is always fun.

 

If you could change one thing about the higher education system what would it be?

On the teaching side of things I think more resources, dedication and recognition towards teaching and pedagogy would benefit everyone. This is something that's only really starting, but being able to fully progress in an academic career based on teaching, instead of having to have a strong research profile to progress would help in improving teaching quality. That's not currently possible in a lot of institutions, so I think it would be a good thing for everyone, for students and academic staff alike.