Matt Roberts

My research is in probability - mainly on systems with a "branching structure" like a family tree.

This includes epidemics and the evolution of DNA. We imagine a system of organisms, each of which moves around in space, breeds and eventually dies. Does the population survive forever, or eventually die out? How quickly does it colonise space?

It turns out that these mathematical questions have some surprising applications, for example to computer algorithms for storing data efficiently, code-breaking and graphical processing.