Chris Molloy

Chris Molloy Graduated from the University of Leeds in 2020 after studying Mathematics BSc. He is now a Graduate Data Scientist at Accenture.

Choosing Leeds

Chris enjoyed maths but didn’t know which area he wanted to specialise in. The structure of the course at Leeds attracted him as he was able to choose from a wide variety of modules. He said “I decided to study at Leeds mainly because of the breadth and depth of the course. Before I went to university, I knew that I liked maths, but I didn’t know which specific areas I liked the most.”

The structure of the course meant that after studying largely core modules in first year, in the second and third years, there was the opportunity to expand on the areas that seemed interesting.

He continued “The structure of the course meant that after studying largely core modules in first year, in the second and third years, there was the opportunity to expand on the areas that seemed interesting. This structure allowed me to gradually unfold my specific interests in maths, which in my case was in statistics, mathematical programming, and applied mathematics. This allowed me to gain specialist skills in these areas which opened up the opportunity to pursue a career in data science, which may not have happened had I been on a more confined course and not discovered these interests.”

Experiences at Leeds

While studying maths at Leeds you have the opportunity to getting involved in a variety of exciting projects and tasks. Chris said “Studying about the mathematical modelling of the spread of infectious disease in my final year project was particularly interesting. Especially given that when I was in semester 2 the Covid outbreak began! Using these modelling approaches during the initial Covid outbreak was a really unique and interesting experience, which allowed me to understand the kind of work being done by the government and scientists to try and predict Covid spread.

These experiences can give you an insight into which path you may want to take after graduating. Chris said ‘Discovering which areas in mathematics I enjoyed and exceled in the most was paramount to finding a career path that I was passionate about, and this was the key takeaway from my time at Leeds. Also, the opportunity to learn statistical programming in R, and general mathematical programming in Python, really set me up well for my further studies and career in data science.”

After Leeds

Throughout your time at Leeds our dedicated Faculty Employability Team will be there to support, guide and advise you on your next steps. After graduating Chris decided to continue his studies. He said “Since completing my Mathematics degree, I went on to study a Master’s in Data Science at The University of Manchester. After graduating from that course, I started working for Accenture as a Graduate Data Scientist.”

Advice and tips

We asked Chris if he had any advice for future maths students at Leeds. He said “Leeds provides you with a great opportunity to comprehensively design your own degree according to your interests. Whether you are looking for a broad experience learning about many different areas of mathematics, or you are looking for a more directed experience, in something like financial mathematics or statistics, this course really caters for everyone.’

If you are like I was and don’t know what career path to go down, this course will give you the best tools to figure it out. Also, the excellent quality of lecturers and tutorial teachers throughout the maths department really helps with gaining an understanding of those difficult theories and concepts that mathematics presents. Overall, I would certainly recommend studying maths at Leeds.”

Find out more about our Mathematics, BSc here.