Bachelor of Science in Mathematical Sciences Careers
Key information
Employability skills from this degree
- Designing and conducting observational and experimental studies
- Analysing and interpreting data, finding patterns and drawing conclusions
- Approaching problems in an analytical and rigorous way, formulating theories and applying them to solve problems
- Dealing with abstract concepts
- IT skills
- Advanced numeracy and analysing large quantities of data
- Logical thinking
Further study options
- PhD in Mathematics and Statistics
- PhD in Statistics
- MSc in Mathematical Modelling
Job titles for graduates with this degree
Graduates progressing directly into employment take up a wide variety of roles. The following provides a sample of initial roles listed on the Graduate Outcomes Survey by graduates approximately one year after graduation:
- Actuary
- Analytics Consultant
- Business Analyst
- Commodity Analyst
- Marketing Analyst
- Master Data/SRM Analyst
- Risk Analyst
- Software Engineer
Sarah Murphy
I chose UL for this course, but also because I’d never met a UL student who didn’t seem to love their time here. Maths and applied maths were my favourite subjects in school and this course seemed liked the perfect way to pursue those interests. For the first two years, you will establish a strong base in mathematics and statistics before specialising in your area of choice. In third year, you start to focus on your chosen specialty and then everyone goes on co-op placement. In your final year, you have the chance to pick a final year project in a topic that interests you.
This course has allowed me to develop essential skills needed to be a mathematician while also giving me the chance to apply them in a working environment. I completed my co-op placement in Analog Devices in Limerick, one of the leading semi-conductor companies in the world. I worked as a part of the New Product Engineering team that specialised in data analytics. My job involved the statistical analysis of data from different stages of testing and gave me the opportunity to apply the skills I had learned in college to the real world. My communication skills, presentation skills and my ability to work effectively as part of a team were vastly improved during my co-op experience.
I think one of the great advantages of studying Mathematical Sciences at UL is that it opens up a broad range of career paths. The course doesn’t tie you down to one profession but instead gives you the essential mathematical skills that are in demand in every sector.
Colm Howlin
I really enjoyed Maths in school, so I decided to continue with it at University. I visited several campuses before my making my decision on which University to choose. UL had by far the most impressive campus which made the decision easy.
As Principal Researcher at Realizeit, I lead the analytics and research efforts. Realizeit is an adaptive learning company that has created a platform to deliver personalised learning online to students. The platform uses data to figure out what works best for individual students and uses that to personalise and adapt the delivery of learning material.
I work on the development and deployment of the algorithms that are used by the system to personalise the learning experience. This ranges from algorithms that estimate the difficulty of a question to algorithms that automatically detect when a student is bored. I also work with several Universities to help them understand the impact of adaptive learning on how their students learn. My role, as with most in the tech sector, predominately involves problem-solving. The course not only provided me with the foundations in the tools that I would rely on in my career but more importantly, helped me develop my problem-solving skills.
Any advice for school leavers?
Study what you think you will enjoy, and you’ll set yourself up to have a far more successful and happier career than forcing yourself to study something that is supposed to lead to a good job or career.
Kevin Brosnan
Throughout second level education, numeracy based courses, maths and accounting, were my strongest - and not knowing what I could do with that my intention was always to become a second level maths teacher. After being encouraged by my maths teacher I looked at maths courses across Irish universities, and chose UL after speaking to a number of students on the course and after visiting the amazing campus.
The first two years formed a basis of maths, statistics and computing, but it was the third year which changed my career trajectory. My co-op placement was with Accenture Analytics in Dublin working with large enterprises to identify and prevent fraud using statistics and data, a field we now commonly call Data Science. After my co-op placement I was gripped by the thought of using statistics and computing to prevent fraud and risk. I finished my final year and then enrolled for a PhD at UL - during which time I investigated cheating in elite athletics and worked with a company developing fraud detection tooling in the Motor Insurance Space.
After finishing my PhD, I moved into the financial services space, and have worked with two global payment processors designing statistical and machine learning systems which detect, prevent and manage payment fraud in real-time - every transaction you do is scanned through a statistical model to evaluate the likelihood of the transaction being fraudulent in milliseconds!
Today I work on strategic risk management and product development, where I use my knowledge of fraud and risk, as well as mathematics and statistics, to protect companies and consumers from sophisticated fraud attacks. While I don’t write algorithms, or solve difficult equations, my background in logical thinking and understanding of data is essential to risk, design and strategic decisions I make every day.
