Sophie Wilson is one of the UK’s most distinguished computer scientists. Amongst her many achievements, she designed the Acorn System 1, coding the operating system in binary before designing and implementing Acorn Assembler, Acorn MOS and BASIC. She and Steve Furber designed and implemented the prototype of the BBC Microcomputer, and Sophie designed the operating system and designed and implemented BBC BASIC for a succession of processors. She and Furber went on to co-design the ARM processor powering Acorn’s computers during the 1990s and virtually every mobile phone and tablet in the world nowadays – 300 billion sales of ARM powered chips to date (Jan 2024). She co-designed the ARM3, ARM610 and ARM 700 processors and ARM7500FE single chip computer. By 1999, Sophie developed the Firepath SIMD LIW processor and continues to develop the Firepath processor today.
The MPhil in Scientific Computing at the Department of Physics, University of Cambridge is pleased to offer a scholarship co-funded by Sophie Wilson for students wishing to study in the MPhil in Scientific Computing for the 2024-25 academic year.
The successful candidate will receive training on high-performance computing and advanced algorithms for numerical simulation at continuum level. They will employ this knowledge to conduct research in the field of clean energy, either on multiphysics simulation of fusion reactor plasmas or supercritical geothermal energy recovery.
The scholarship will cover the MPhil fees (£13,554 in 2024-25) for home students or will contribute the equivalent amount towards overseas fees, and will be tenable at Selwyn college (where Sophie Wilson is an alumna and Hon Fellow).
This scholarship is part of an effort to build a stronger and more inclusive Scientific Computing community, and to bring a wider range of experiences to this field. As such, applications of female candidates, who are currently under-represented in this field, are particularly welcome.
Application: Candidates who have already applied for the MPhil in Scientific Computing before the funding deadline of 4th January, and indicated they wished to be considered for funding, will be automatically considered for this award.
Candidates who haven’t yet applied, should mention their wish to be considered for the Sophie Wilson Scholarship in their application to the MPhil in Scientific Computing, under the section ‘Statement of interest’, by the funding deadline stated below.
Funding deadline: Sunday 10th March 2024 (extended from 1 March 2024).