Master in Mathematics, Teaching focus

For graduates in applied mathematics from the University of Namur, the transition from studies to the world of work presents no major difficulties: schools are short of mathematics teachers; the business world is looking for skills in networks, dynamic systems, optimization, control, modeling and programming, all assets that mathematicians trained at UNamur possess.

Confronting mathematics with reality

Many mathematicians invest their knowledge within companies. Many business sectors appreciate their analytical and synthesizing skills, as well as their rigor. Whether in consultancy or in the economic and industrial world, mathematicians have plenty of room to model phenomena and situations and, more broadly, put their mathematical baggage at the service of society.

Building IT solutions

Mathematicians at UNamur receive a solid training in scientific programming, an asset that many of them put to good use within various organizations (private or public), or in IT service companies. After a few years in applications development, mathematicians generally move on to project management.

Whatever their job title and level of responsibility, they work to bring human beings and an information management and processing system into harmonious interaction... an ongoing challenge that demands a good sense of interpersonal relations and an excellent knowledge of technology and the business world.

My job as an IT manager is at times akin to a mathematical demonstration. I start with a hypothesis, i.e. the existing situation, the budget, the resources, and I have to arrive at a thesis, in this case a major business project, such as setting up a company abroad. To achieve this, I conduct a real demonstration using lemmas, i.e. small implementations of IT solutions. To set up a company abroad, for example, you need to secure your IT network.

Alain Dieudonné, IT Manager

Evaluating financial or economic risks

Risk management is a strategic issue in banking and financial organizations, stock markets, insurance companies, but also parastatal institutions for social security, pension control, etc. Thanks to their sound knowledge of modeling, mathematicians often perform functions linked to controlling the uncertainty inherent in most economic activities.

Producing statistics

Statistics play an important role in today's society: opinion polls and surveys are part of our daily lives. Some consultancies specializing in conducting this type of analysis call on mathematicians.

Modeling reality

Whether it's the shape of contact lenses, the dynamics of a population, the concentration of space debris, the movements of the oceans, the understanding of social networks, the work of mathematicians is always linked to modeling: being able to understand, simplify, conceptualize and visualize a situation, to come out with a more abstract model likely to provide a global description of a phenomenon.

I've been working for a few years as an actuary in a consultancy firm in the field of supplementary pensions. We live in a world full of hazards: the actuary's role is to quantify, to model uncertainties... Above all, mathematics enables us to develop our way of thinking, which makes our capacity for analysis our main working tool.

Noémie Laloux, actuary

Transmitting a passion for reality

Teaching and the world of training still represent one of the major outlets for mathematicians. Almost a third of our young, professionally active graduates communicate their passion for the real world by teaching mathematics and/or science in upper secondary schools, colleges and universities.

The subject we teach is not particularly difficult. Above all, we need to give young people a taste for mathematics and help those with difficulties to understand it. It's a daily challenge.

Marie Matelart, Secondary school mathematics teacher

Pushing the limits of our knowledge

Mathematicians pursue research mainly in academic settings, in Belgium or abroad. Universities and public funds (FNRS, FRIA, etc.) finance the completion of a PhD (between 4 and 6 years) or award time-limited grants for participation in a research program, sometimes in partnership with the business world.

Aside from fundamental research, mathematics is often a valuable tool for scientific progress in other disciplines: computer science, astrophysics and physics, meteorology, economics, transport, biology... In these multidisciplinary contexts, dual skills often represent an asset.