Third-year undergraduate student Ilanthiraiyan Sivagnanamoorthy, who has been working on a joint cross-national education research project with Dr Rehan Shah from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Dr Alexandra Werth from Cornell University has had two of his abstracts for upcoming conference proceedings papers accepted at two prestigious global education conferences: IEEE EDUCON Global Engineering Education Conference at QMUL in April 2025 and the ASEE Annual Engineering Education Conference at Montreal in June.

The research project outlines the development of a mathematical skills inventory for engineers, building on Dr Shah's ongoing research on threshold concepts, which are discipline-specific concepts that act as learning bottlenecks due to their troublesome and transformative nature. These concepts encompass sets of knowledge, skills, and abilities that often seem unfamiliar, contradictory, or inconsistent, but once grasped, lead to a significant shift in the learner's perspective and understanding. Examples of such threshold concepts within mathematics include the notion of proofs, calculus, limits, and complex numbers. While these threshold concepts have been examined in the context of mathematics students, there is a noticeable gap in literature investigating how engineering students navigate threshold concepts within their curriculum and how these are assessed.

Concept inventories are typical as assessing core mathematical threshold concepts through existing tools, such as the Calculus Concept Inventory and Function Concept Inventory, are designed for students in mathematics degree programs, focusing on content knowledge rather than skills. However, these tools lack the engineering perspective and contextual relevance, making them less suitable for use with engineering students.

This creates an opportunity to develop a more skills-based approach that better addresses the specific needs of engineering programs. This project seeks to examine and contextualise the essential mathematical skills needed to master the threshold concepts of functions and linear algebra, drawing from core skills identified in prior literature and insights from teaching experience. This work lays the groundwork for developing a skills inventory—a competency-based mathematical instrument tailored to undergraduate engineering students. This inventory will aim to address the skills-based challenges encountered in the context of mathematics within first- and second-year engineering programs.

Ilan is also part of the recently established Queen Mary Centre for Undergraduate Research (QMCUR) in the School of Engineering and Materials Science, having recently delivered a fascinating and insightful talk at the recent Undergraduate Research Week showcase for staff and students from QMUL and the University of Westminster. He will also be delivering a similar talk to QMUL staff from the SEMS CREME research groups and EECS Education Scholarship Centre at the upcoming joint Scholarship Exchange Webinar.

The selection process for these international academic conferences is extremely competitive, featuring papers submitted by academics from all over the world.

The conference review panel noted the following: "I look forward to reading about the outcomes from the implementation of these skills inventory and its effectiveness", "This is an interesting topic and I look forward to reading the full paper".