In the spring semester Jock McOrist has been on research visits to Sydney and Madrid.  Earlier in the spring, he visited Professor Geordie Williamson FRS at the University of Sydney for 6 weeks working on a mathematical physics and geometry project.  Professor Williamson is the Royal Society’s youngest living fellow; he has also been awarded prizes by the European Mathematical Society, the Clay Institute, and was a plenary speaker at the 2018 International Congress of Mathematics.  In April, Jock visited Mario Garcia-Fernendez for three weeks at the Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas in Madrid.  This visit was funded by the ICMAT Severo Ochoa Visiting Programme.  Their project involves developing links between differential geometry and string theory in the context of the Hopf surface and Chiral de Rahm operators. This visit was such a success that follow-up funding has already been awarded to Dr Garcia–Fernandez to pay for Jock to visit for a further 4 weeks  in November 2019.