NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS (NZIMA) Newsletter 8 August 2005 This is the eighth quarterly newsletter of the New Zealand Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (NZIMA), one of New Zealand's seven Centres of Research Excellence. We hope you find the contents interesting and informative. Marston Conder and Vaughan Jones Co-Directors of the NZIMA SUMMARY OF CONTENTS 1. Update on CoRE funding, new NZIMA programmes, etc. 2. New member of NZIMA's Scientific Advisory Board 3. Profile: Richard Evans, NZIMA Postdoctoral Fellow 4. Recent NZIMA events 5. Other news 6. Forthcoming conferences in the mathematical sciences in NZ 7. Forthcoming conferences in the mathematical sciences elsewhere 1. UPDATE ON CoRE FUNDING, NEW NZIMA PROGRAMMES, ETC. We are expecting an announcement to be made shortly by New Zealand's Minister of Education about extension of CoRE funding for the seven Centres of Research Excellence (CoREs), including the NZIMA, through to 2008. Subject to confirmation of this continued funding, we should be able to make decisions and announcements about NZIMA programmes for 2006/07 and confirm other decisions in the near future. 2. NEW MEMBER OF NZIMA'S SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD Dr Hugo Rossi, Deputy Director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in California, has accepted an invitation to join the NZIMA's International Scientific Advisory Board. This is Dr Rossi's second term as Deputy Director of the MSRI, and we are very pleased to have him join the board and gain from his wisdom and experience. He replaces Dr Robert (Bob) Megginson, who has returned to his faculty position at the University of Michigan. We are also very grateful to Bob for his valued service on our advisory board. 3. PROFILE: DR RICHARD EVANS, NZIMA POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW In 1980, Fields medallist Curt McMullen put forward a series of questions/conjectures related to dynamical systems and deformation spaces of hyperbolic 3-manifolds. One of these questions proposed a uniform upper bound for the radii of isometrically embedded balls in the convex core of an arbitrary element of a deformation space, where the bound depends upon the topological type of the manifold indexing the deformation space. Richard Evans, a post-doctoral fellow associated with the NZIMA's Geometry programme, has recently proved this conjecture. A preprint of his paper can be found at: http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/~revans. Richard completed a Masters degree at Auckland in 1995 and a PhD at Michigan in 2000, then held postdoctoral fellowships at Rice University and the University of Auckland from 2000 to 2004. 4. RECENT NZIMA EVENTS * Workshop on Models for Optimizing Transportation Services In April, mathematicians, traffic modelers and operations research practitioners gathered in Auckland for a 4-day workshop on Mathematical Models for Optimizing Transportation Services, as part of the NZIMA's programme directed by Andy Philpott, Matthias Ehrgott and David Ryan. The focus of the workshop was on three broad topics of major importance: transportation planning under uncertainty, optimizing the design of transportation systems, and pricing and revenue management. Also a special session was held on the use of mathematical tools for improving the efficiency of emergency services (ambulance, fire, police). A novel feature of the conference was the addition of two special panel discussions sponsored by the dairy company Fonterra (New Zealand's largest corporation) and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority. The workshop was truly international in flavour with participants and speakers from Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Germany, India, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, USA and New Zealand. Presentations from the conference are available on the conference website www.esc.auckland.ac.nz/Transportation, including comments by Mike Florian in a public television appearance about a hotly debated proposal to introduce tolled highways to Auckland. * Algebra & Geometry Workshop A 2-day workshop was held at Massey University's Albany campus in June, as part of the NZIMA's programme in "Geometry: Interactions with Algebra and Analysis", directed by Gaven Martin and Eamonn O'Brien. There were nine speakers (from universities in Auckland, Canterbury, Melbourne, Otago and Sydney), and the workshop was well attended, attracting about 25 participants from various NZ universities. * Hidden Markov Models and Complex Systems The first workshop in the NZIMA programme on "Hidden Markov Models and Complex Systems" was held at the Lake Wanaka Centre, Wanaka, over the period 29 June - 1 July, and involved a stimulating programme of tutorial, invited and contributed presentations. There was a strong coverage of modelling, algorithms, theory and applications, with the wide range of applications being a particular feature. Visiting speakers included Emery Brown (Harvard Medical School/MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital), Rolf Turner (University of New Brunswick) and Mark Berman (CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences). The workshop was attended by the programme's postdoctoral fellows, Junko Murakami ("Hidden Markov Models in Seismology") and Paul Mullowney ("Stochastic Differential Equations with applications to fisheries and neuroscience"). A second workshop is planned for the period 5-8 December in Wellington. * Dynamical Systems meeting The NZIMA programme on Dynamical Systems and Numerical Analysis ran a very successful one-day meeting at the University of Auckland on 5th July, organised by Vivien Kirk. There were 13 speakers including some exceptionally strong student talks. Although the main part of this programme concluded in 2004, the organizers are planning a further 3 one-day meetings, of which the first will be on Monday 5th December at Massey University, Palmerston North, embedded within the 2005 New Zealand Mathematics Colloquium. Please contact Robert McLachlan for further details. 5. OTHER NEWS The NZIMA's Executive Administrator, Margaret Woolgrove, gave birth to a very healthy baby boy, Benjamin David Woolgrove Schaffer, in May. Mother, baby and father are all doing well. Margaret expects to return to part-time work for the NZIMA in November. 6. FORTHCOMING CONFERENCES IN THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES IN NZ 27-30 September 2005, in Christchurch: "Thinking Outside the Square", 9th Biennial New Zealand Association of Mathematics Teachers conference See: http://www.nzamt9.org.nz/ 5 - 7 December 2005, at Palmerston North: 2005 NZ Mathematics Colloquium (and AGM of the NZ Math Society) See: http://mathscolloquium.massey.ac.nz/ 8 - 15 January 2006, at Taipa: NZMRI Summer Workshop and Meeting, on the Poincare Conjecture See: http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/Events/2006/SummerWorkshop 12-16 February 2006, in Auckland 3rd International Conference on Ethnomathematics See: http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/Events/2006/ICEM-3/ 3-7 July 2006, at Sky City, Auckland Joint Conference of the Statistical Society of Australia and the New Zealand Statistical Association (ASC/NZSA 2006) See: http://www.statsnz2006.com/ 10-14 July 2006, in Rotorua International Conference on Analytic Topology and Applications See: http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/~cao/conference06.html 7. FORTHCOMING CONFERENCES IN THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES ELSEWHERE 22-26 November 2005, on Fraser Island, Queensland, Australia: DELTA 2005, the 5th Southern Hemisphere Symposium on Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics Teaching and Learning. See: http://www.maths.uq.edu.au/delta05/index.php 5-9 December 2005, at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia: 13th Australasian Conference in Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing (30th ACCMCC). See: http://www.maths.uq.edu.au/cdmc/30accmcc.html SUBSCRIBING AND UNSUBSCRIBING Please forward this NZIMA newsletter to any non-subscriber to whom the material may be relevant and who may wish to receive the publication regularly. To join or to have your name removed from the mailing list, just send an email to