NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS (NZIMA) Newsletter 12 August 2006 We're pleased to give you an update on news from the mathematical sciences CoRE: the NZIMA. The first issue of our glossy colourful twice-yearly bulletin (containing more in-depth stories about NZIMA people, events and outcomes), for a wider audience, will appear next month. Marston Conder and Vaughan Jones Co-Directors of the NZIMA SUMMARY OF CONTENTS 1. Top Achieving Doctoral Scholars 2. Financial mathematics workshop: PRIMA opportunity 3. High-profile visitors 4. Other recent events 5. Update on NZIMA programmes 6. Other NZIMA news 7. CoRE Re-Bidding Round 8. Forthcoming conferences in the mathematical sciences in NZ & Pacific 1. TOP ACHIEVING DOCTORAL SCHOLARS Four PhD students in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Auckland have recently won Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarships from the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC). Inga Wang, Elan Gin and Erin Higgins are all working on mathematical models for biological mechanisms, which allow scientists to accurately predict the response of the body to changes in environment, such as the effects of genetic malfunction or chemical interference. Eyal Loz is using new mathematical and computational methods to find the largest known combinatorial graphs (networks) with given diameter and given vertex degree. Elan and Eyal were previously supported for their Masters degrees through the NZIMA's programmes in Dynamical Systems and Combinatorics respectively. Josef Silhan, who was one of the first of the NZIMA's scholarship students, successfully defended his PhD in July after a little over three years of study and research, supervised by Rod Gover. Josef wrote a thesis on "Invariant differential operators in conformal geometry", and one of his examiners commented that "the quality of the thesis is exceptional on an international level, and it exceeds substantially the usual standards for a PhD thesis". Josef has taken up a postdoctoral research position at Marsaryk University in the Czech Republic. 2. FINANCIAL MATHEMATICS WORKSHOP: PRIMA OPPORTUNITY Australia's ICE-EM is sponsoring a Workshop on Mathematical Methods in Finance on 25 & 26 September 2006, at the University of Melbourne, with special guest Professor Freddy Delbaen from the ETH (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Zurich. This workshop will be followed from 27 to 29 September by the 5th (Australasian) National Symposium on Financial Mathematics. See www.cmss.monash.edu.au/Events/Meeting06 for details. Students from New Zealand are eligible to pay the reduced registration rate (the same as for AMSI/FIRN students) and receive an accommodation subsidy ($250) to attend this Workshop. Also NZ-based academics are eligible to pay the reduced AMSI/FIRN rate, through the NZIMA's membership of PRIMA (the Pacific Rim Mathematical Association). 3. RECENT HIGH-PROFILE VISITORS Prof. William Newman (UCLA), one of the world's leading figures in applied mathematics, spent two weeks in Auckland in July working with Dr Philip Sharp on one of the most widely debated questions in computational astronomy: is the Solar System stable over its lifetime? While here, Prof. Newman also gave lectures on cellular automata, in Auckland and Christchurch. In August, Professors Deborah Ball and Hyman Bass (Michigan) visited and gave a series of lectures on mathematics and education in Auckland and Wellington. Deborah Ball is Dean of Education at the University of Michigan, and a world authority on the mathematical preparation of teachers. She is also a member of the U.S. government's 12-person advisory council on mathematics education. Hyman Bass, appointed as a Visiting Maclaurin Fellow, is a recent past-president of the American Mathematical Society, and also retiring president of the International Commission on Mathematics Instruction (ICMI). 4. OTHER RECENT EVENTS * NZIMA Celebration in Wellington On 14th June the NZIMA organised an evening at Victoria University of Wellington to celebrate the appointment of Prof. Geoff Whittle to a Maclaurin Fellowship for 2006. The evening included a brief account by Sir Ian Axford (Chair of the NZIMA's Governing Board) about Maclaurin, and a showing of the MSRI video "Porridge, Pulleys, Pi: two mathematical journeys" (featuring Vaughan Jones and Hendrik Lenstra and offering insights to their work, their backgrounds, their personalities and interests, and the impact of their research in mathematics, physics, cryptography and molecular biology). Also Dr Peter Thomson (from Statistical Research Associates) gave an interesting account of progress in the NZIMA's programme on Hidden Markov Models, describing projects by the postdoctoral fellows, students and others on GDP growth rates, rainfall modelling, earthquake and other geophysical modelling. Some of these are being co-sponsored by NIWA, AgResearch, SRA and Victoria University of Wellington. * The Great Origami Maths and Science Show With the support of the Royal Society of New Zealand, kiwi origami master Jonathan Baxter is forging partnerships with mathematicians and scientists to bring together The Great Origami Maths and Science Show. Paper sculptor Jonathan and mathematics educator Hugh Gribben toured New Zealand this month, presenting an hour-long show, exploring the laws of origami, origami in nature, problem-solving using the power of origami, and the application of intricate folding techniques to industrial design and engineering (ranging from safer air-bags to the deployment in outer space of giant telescopes). Associated with the show is a companion manual tailored to the NZ curriculum that includes step-by-step instructions on making the models, hands-on activities and additional classroom resources. The NZIMA co-sponsored the production and distribution of 10,000 flyers to schools around the country to promote this tour. For more information please contact the tour organiser: Bettina Anderson by phone (027-668 9449) or email (bettina@pukekoblue.co.nz). * Statistics Conference The joint Conference of the Statistical Society of Australia and the New Zealand Statistical Association (ASC/NZSA 2006) was held in July 2006 and was a great success. This event was partly sponsored by the NZIMA, and a photo report will appear in the NZIMA's new glossy bulletin. 5. UPDATES ON NZIMA PROGRAMMES * Transportation Optimization * Strong international links are continuing to develop from the NZIMA's thematic programme in Transportation Optimization, as an outgrowth of its 2005 workshop held in Auckland. Similar workshops have since been held in Norway and Chile. * Phylogenetic Genomics * Mike Steel and others involved in the NZIMA's programme on Phylogenetic Genomics have been invited to run a four-month workshop on Phylogenetics at the Isaac Newton Institute (Cambridge, UK) in 2007. See the website http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/programmes/PLG/index.html for more details. Incidentally, the second of seven $100 challenges posted by Mike Steel on his website http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/~mst41/ has been solved. * Dynamical Systems and Numerical Analysis * A very successful one day meeting was held in Wellington on the 27th June. Attendees came from Australia, the USA and New Zealand. Further information can be found at http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~markm/DSNA/ . This programme also recently hosted Bjorn Sandstede (Surrey), a world leader in the area of pattern formation and non-linear waves. 6. OTHER NZIMA NEWS * Rod Downey (the NZIMA's first Maclaurin Fellow) was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematics (ICM2006) held this month in Madrid, Spain. This is the first time ever that a New Zealand based mathematician has been invited to speak at the ICM. Also Rod gave a series of three invited lectures on algorithmic randomness at the Annual European Logic Summer Meeting held earlier this year. * Vaughan Jones represented the NZIMA at the meeting of IMSI (the International consortium of Mathematical Sciences Institutes that run thematic research programmes and have large visitor programmes), held at the ICM in Madrid in August. * Gaven Martin (programme director and member of the NZIMA's Governing Board) has been re-elected to the Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, as representative of the mathematical and information sciences. Also he was New Zealand's representative to the meeting of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in Spain this month, just prior to the ICM. * Cheryl Praeger (member of the NZIMA's International Scientific Advisory Board) has just been elected to the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), and is the first-ever mathematician based in this part of the world to be a member of this Committee. * Jerry Marsden (member of the NZIMA's International Scientific Advisory Board) has been elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of London. * John Butcher (director of the NZIMA's programme on Numerical Methods for Evolutionary problems) has been invited to take part in September in a reunion of "pioneers" of SILLIAC - believed to be the first working computer in the southern hemisphere. * The NZIMA has established another international linkage, this time with the Atlantic Association for Research in the Mathematical Sciences (AARMS), which helps coordinate research activities in the four eastern-most provinces of Canada. We will be looking at ways in which we can facilitate participation by students in each other's summer schools and workshops, and encourage other joint activity. 7. CoRE RE-BIDDING ROUND An announcement was made recently by New Zealand's Minister of Tertiary Education about a new selection round for Centres of Research Excellence (CoRES), to take place at the end of 2006 and the first half of 2007. The seven existing CoREs will also have an opportunity to re-bid for continued support for another six-year period (2008-2014). The NZIMA will be mounting a strong case for continuation. 8. FORTHCOMING EVENTS IN THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES IN NZ & PACIFIC 4-6 December 2006, in Hamilton 2006 New Zealand Mathematics Colloquium See: http://www.math.waikato.ac.nz/Coll2006/ 29 January to 2 February 2007, in Fiji Second South Pacific Conference on Mathematics (SPCM07) See http://www.riemann.usp.ac.fj/~spcm07/ 5-9 February 2007 at Wollongong, NSW, Australia Mathematics-in-Industry Study Group 2007 See http://www.misg.math.uow.edu.au/ *Please note: Cost reduction for NZ students affiliated with the NZIMA * 16-20 April 2007, at Hanmer Springs Workshop on Modelling Invasive Species and Weed Impact See http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/bio/NZIMA/ 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. 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