Catherine Hobbs
Catherine Ann Hobbs (born 1968) is a British mathematician and educator working as a professor at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Her research focuses on applications of singularity theory to the physical sciences. She has a strong interest in science policy, particularly relating to encouraging and supporting women in STEM fields. Early life and education. Hobbs was born in Bristol. She attended Queen Elizabeth's School in Crediton, Devon. Her father David Hobbs was an academic at the University of Exeter in mathematics education, and contributed to writing a series of influential text books for  school mathematics, as part of the School Mathematics Project. These introduced many concepts of modern mathematics at school level for the first time. Her mother Rosalind Hobbs was a primary school teacher. She attended the University of Warwick 1986–1989 for her first degree, where her tutors Christopher Zeeman and Caroline Series both encouraged her to consider postgraduate study. She did a PhD 1989–1993 at the University of Liverpool supervised by Chris Gibson on applications of singularity theory in robotics. Career. Her first academic appointment was as a teaching fellow at the University of Nottingham, 1992–1994. From 1994 she was at  Oxford Brookes University, first as a lecturer then senior lecturer in 1997, then head of the Department of Mathematical Sciences from 2004, and Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Exchange from 2007. She spent a sabbatical year at the University of Auckland in 2001. In 2010 she became head of the Department of Engineering Design and Mathematics at the University of the West of England in Bristol. She is presently associate dean for research in the Faculty of Environment and Technology at UWE Bristol. From 2014–2017 Hobbs was Chair of the Committee of Heads of Departments of Mathematical Sciences in  the UK (HoDoMS). Since 2017, Hobbs has served as vice president of the London Mathematical Society. Hobbs is currently on the Board of the Engineering Professors Council as an Annual Congress Convenor. Research. Her research interests are in applications of pure mathematics to the physical sciences. She has worked in applications of geometry to robotics, numerical computation of highly oscillatory integrals and dynamical systems. Women in STEM. Having been the only girl in her Further Mathematics A-level class, in a minority on her undergraduate and postgraduate courses and finding that she encountered very few women in academic positions during  her studies, she became active in encouraging and supporting women to go into STEM. She has developed mentoring schemes, run outreach activities and organised conferences and lectures to provide examples of role models to younger women. From 1994 she was active in the organisation European Women in Mathematics, including being newsletter editor, editor of two proceedings of EWM conferences and a co-organiser for the 2007 EWM conference in Cambridge, UK. She was a Member of the Government Advisory Expert Group on Women in STEM, 2009-2011, member of the National Steering Committee for the WISE Campaign (Women into Science  and Engineering), 1997–2000 and a member of the European Mathematical Society's Committee for Women in Mathematics, 2004–2010. She was founding chair of the London Mathematical Society's Women in Mathematics Committee in 1999. The committee was awarded the inaugural Royal Society Athena Prize for Diversity in STEM in 2016.