New Zealand Institute of Mathematics & its Applications (NZIMA)

Other Activities

Aside from its major thematic programmes, the NZIMA is engaged in a range of activities supporting execellent research in the mathematical sciences in New Zealand. Some of these are described below.

Maclaurin Fellows

Full-time Maclaurin Fellows so far have been:

• Professor Rod Downey (Victoria University of Wellington) in 2003
• Dr Rod Gover (University of Auckland) in 2004
• Professor Mike Steel (University of Canterbury) in 2004
• Professor Robert McLachlan (Massey University) in 2005
• Professor Geoff Whittle (Victoria University of Wellington) in 2006

Visiting Maclaurin Fellows so far have been:

• Professor Richard Laugesen (University of Illinois at Urbana), who visited NZ for the second half of 2003.
• Professor Hal Caswell (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), for 3 months in 2004
• Professor Martin Liebeck (Imperial College), for 6 weeks in 2005 and 3 weeks in 2006
• Professor John Conway (Princeton University), for 3 weeks in 2006

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Postgraduate Scholars

NZIMA scholarships have been awarded to the following students of the mathematical sciences:

• Tiangang Cui (University of Auckland)
• Zhaojing (Jean) Gong (University of Canterbury)
• Garry Nathan (University of Auckland)
• Kim Noakes (University of Auckland)
• Dion O'Neale (Massey University)
• Tissa Senanayake (University of Waikato)
• Josef Silhan (University of Auckland)
• Krasimira Tsaneva-Atanasova (University of Auckland)

Scholarship support is also being offered by the NZIMA to students involved in a mathematics-in-industry style programme in Industrial Mathematics, being organised by Professor Robert McKibbin (Massey University).

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Sponsorship

One off support of $10,000 was made to the NZ Mathematical Olympiad Committee to assist with expenses in training and sending a New Zealand team to the 2003 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).

Financial support from the NZIMA has assisted a number of local conferences and workshops to take place and has enabled visits to New Zealand of overseas researchers. Support so far has gone (or will be going) to:

• Prof. Mike Atkinson (University of Otago) - for a conference on Permutation Patterns (February 2003)

• Assoc. Prof. Steve Haslett (Massey University) - for a conference on Multi-level Modelling (December 2002)

• Dr Ross Ihaka (University of Auckland) - for a visit by John Chambers (Bell Labs)

• Dr Mike Meylan (Massey University) - for a visit by David Evans (Bristol)

• Prof. Geoff Whittle (Victoria University of Wellington) - for additional speakers at the NZMRI Summer Meeting (January 2003)

• Dr Thomas Yee (University of Auckland) - for a visit by Trevor Hastie (Stanford University)

• Dr Ilze Ziedins (University of Auckland) - for a visit by Kavita Ramanan (Lucent Technologies)

• Dr Arkadii Slinko (University of Auckland) - for a visit by Hervé Moulin (Université de Caen) in Feb/Mar 04

• Dr Peter Donelan (Victoria University) - for speakers at the conference "VIC 2004" (February 2004)

• Dr Vivien Kirk (University of Auckland) - for a visit by Dr Alastair Rucklidge (University of Leeds)

• Assoc. Prof. Eamonn O'Brien (University of Auckland) - for additional speakers at the NZMRI Summer Meeting (January 2004)

• Prof David Vere-Jones (Victoria University of Wellington) - for a visit by D.J. Daley (ANU, Canberra)

• Prof V.S. Sunder (The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India) - for a research visit to Auckland

• Prof Nye John (University of Waikato) - for a statistics conference (March 2004)

• Dr Arkadii Slinko (University of Auckland) - for a visit by Walter Bossert (Apr 04)

• Dr Rod Gover (University of Auckland) - for speakers at the Roy Kerr Symposium (Aug 04)

• Prof Allen Rodrigo (University of Auckland) - funded two speakers at the International Conference of Bioinformatics (Sept 04)

• Prof Bakh Khoussainov (University of Auckland) - partial support of speakers at the International Workshop on Automata Structures and Logic (Dec 04)

• Prof Jeff Hunter (Massey University) - partial support of speakers and reduced fees for delegates at the 14th International Workshop in Matrices and Statistics (March 05)

• Assoc Prof Rick Beatson (University of Canterbury) - partial support of speakers at a workshop on Approximation and Harmonic Analysis (Feb 05)

• Prof Nye John (University of Waikato) - support for a visit by C.R. Rao (Mar 05)

• Prof Chris Wild (University of Auckland) - support for conference in honour of Alastair Scott (Apr 05)

• Dr Allison Heard (University of Auckland) - support for visit by winner of Butcher Prize (Dr Tatiana Marquez Lago - Dec 05)

• Prof Boris Pavlov (University of Auckland) - support for a visit by Peter Kuchment (Texas A&M University) in Dec 05

• Dr Jennifer Brown (University of Canterbury) - visit by David Borchers (St Andrews) in first half of 2006

• Dr Warren Moors (University of Auckland) - support for International Conference on Analytic Topology and its Applications (Jul 06)

• Dr David Scott (University of Auckland) - support for New Zealand Statistical Association Conference (Jul 06)

• Dr Philip Sharp (University of Auckland) - visit by Bill Newman (Aug 06)

• Dr Mike Meylan (University of Auckland) - development of a collaborative website devoted to linear water wave theory

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High Performance Computing

• A Silicon Graphics Origin 3400 (with 16 R14000 processors) and an IBM Regatta P690 (with 32 processors) housed at the University of Auckland's Bioengineering Institute - click here for information about access and charging

• The HELIX Beowulf-class cluster supercomputer (comprising 66 dual-processor AMD Athlon computing nodes connected to each other using dual gigabit Ethernet networking), created by the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, and housed at Massey University's Albany campus - click here for further information about access and charging.

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Promotion and publicity

Institute Co-Director Marston Conder visited NZ universities during July 2002 to give presentations about the establishment, aims and activities of the NZIMA and describe the opportunities it presents for research in the mathematical sciences in New Zealand:

• Victoria University of Wellington - 10.00am Thursday 4th July 2002
  
• University of Otago (Dunedin) - 4.00pm Thursday 4th July 2002
  
• University of Canterbury (Christchurch) - 9.30am Friday 5th July 2002
  
• Massey University (Palmerston North) - 3.00pm Friday 5th July 2002
  
• University of Waikato (Hamilton) - 11.00am Wednesday 31st July 2002
  
• University of Auckland - 5.00pm Thursday 25th July 2002.
  

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