NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS (NZIMA) ====== One of New Zealand's Centres of Research Excellence ====== Newsletter 16 August 2007 We're pleased to give you an update on news from the mathematical sciences CoRE, the NZIMA. The third 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 in the next few weeks. Marston Conder and Vaughan Jones Co-Directors of the NZIMA SUMMARY OF CONTENTS 1. Outcome of CoRE re-selection round 2. Awards and Honours 3. New additions to MathsReach 4. Update on NZIMA programmes 5. NZ Science, Maths & Technology Teacher Fellowship 6. Other NZIMA news 7. Forthcoming conferences in the mathematical sciences in NZ & Pacific 1. OUTCOME OF CORE RE-SELECTION ROUND On the same day that Vaughan Jones was presented the Prix Mondial Nessim Habif at the University of Geneva, we were shocked to hear from New Zealand's Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) that the NZIMA's proposal for a further six years of support from the Centres of Research Excellence (CoRE) Fund had not succeeded. Instead, we have been granted a limited extension of CoRE funding to mid-2011. Shortly afterwards we received official notification about this, containing feedback that was both difficult to comprehend and contradictory. Our case was a strong one (against all of the criteria of the CoRE Fund), our referee reports were outstanding, and the support letters from NZ university departments and professional societies attested to the high value the NZIMA has brought to the mathematical sciences community in New Zealand and interactions with other disciplines and end-users. While acknowledging the NZIMA's research excellence, the strengths of its linkages, and the importance of mathematics as a fundamental discipline for New Zealand's future, the feedback indicated that the Selection Committee was unconvinced about how the NZIMA is "greater than the sum of its parts", how the NZIMA "provides synergy, cross-fertilisation and cohesion", and what value it is adding "over and above a simple increase in funding to existing research projects". We have lodged a very strong protest to the Prime Minister and the Ministers of Tertiary Education and of Research, Science & Technology about this decision (and some serious deficiencies in the way the selection process was carried out). Other bodies and individuals have also protested about the outcome, including the NZ Association of Mathematics Teachers, the International Council for Industrial & Applied Mathematics (ICIAM), members of our International Scientific Advisory Board, and the directors of other centres and institutes. Even the directors of other CoREs and members of the Academy and Council of the Royal Society of NZ have expressed alarm at the way in which research excellence appears to have been overlooked in favour of other issues of perceived importance in the selection process this time. We will be taking up these matters further with the TEC, in particular with respect to the question of future training opportunities for New Zealand students - with about half of our CoRE funding being spent each year on the support of students and postdoctoral fellows - and continuation of the many valuable activities that the NZIMA has been coordinating and supporting for New Zealand's benefit. 2. AWARDS AND HONOURS * International Prize for Robert McLachlan Robert McLachlan (one of the NZIMA's new principal researchers was awarded the Dahlquist Prize, at the SciCADE meeting in St Malo, in July, for his outstanding contributions to geometric integration and composition methods for solving differential equations. Robert has been director of our programme in Dynamical Systems and Numerical Analysis, and was our Maclaurin Fellow in 2005/06. * U.S. National Medal of Science for Hyman Bass Hyman Bass (one of our visiting Maclaurin Fellows last year) has been presented with a U.S. National Medal of Science by President George Bush, at a special ceremony in July. He was awarded this medal for his work in establishing the branch of mathematics known as algebraic K-theory, and was one of only eight awardees (across all the sciences) and the only one in mathematics for 2006. These medals are intended to "honour pioneers in scientific research who enhance understanding of the world and create innovations that give the United States an economic edge in the global market". 3. NEW ADDITIONS TO MATHSREACH Two more interviews have been added to the NZIMA's MathsReach resource. One of these is with NZIMA Co-Director Vaughan Jones, who speaks about "knot theory", one of the areas of mathematics in which his research won him a Fields Medal in 1990. He describes how his discoveries about polynomial invariants of knots arose by accident from his research in quantum theory, and how they relate to questions in cell biology as well as one of his other passions: kite-boarding. The other interview is with Marcus du Sautoy, one of this year's NZIMA Visiting Maclaurin Fellows. Marcus describes the music behind the randomness of prime numbers. He also tells how primes are used to keep money and other details secure during internet transactions, and talks about the $1 million Clay Prize for proving one of the biggest unsolved problems in Mathematics, the "Riemann hypothesis". See http://www.mathsreach.org (and click on "videos") to see these. 4. UPDATE ON NZIMA PROGRAMMES * Our Modelling Invasive Species programme (directed by Jennifer Brown, Alex James and David Wall at the University of Canterbury) is continuing well, with positive interactions between NZIMA-sponsored researchers at the University of Canterbury and others in the BioProtection CoRE, Landcare Research, AgResearch and Regional Councils. Three postdoctoral fellows and three postgraduate students are engaged on this programme, thanks to partial sponsorship from other sources. * Dr Al Parker has joined our programme on Partial Differential Equations as postdoctoral fellow, working with Colin Fox, Mike O'Sullivan and others on ergodic sampling algorithms for inverse problems in PDEs. Also Erfang Ma will soon begin a PhD on new Bayesian methodologies and developing a test-bed sampler. Other students and research fellows are working on aspects of the programme, with support from the Building Research Association (BRANZ), Contact Energy, Solid Energy, and two universities from Austria and Finland. * Our newest programme has just got underway, on Applications of Mathematics in the Nanosciences, under the direction of Dr Shaun Hendy (IRL/MacDiarmid). A highlight of this programme will be the conference "Mathematical & Computational Nanoscience 2007", jointly sponsored by the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, from 9 to 11 December 2007 in Wellington. * A thematic programme on Conformal Geometry and Applications will be launched in 2008 with a workshop at Nelson, 6-12 January 2008. This will double as the NZMRI summer meeting, with outstanding speakers giving expository lectures surveying recent developments in the area: Ian Agol (Berkeley), Alice Chang (Princeton), Michael Eastwood (Adelaide), Robin Graham (Washington), Claude LeBrun (Stony Brook), Willard Miller Jr (Minnesota), Neil Trudinger (ANU), and Paul Yang (Princeton). The programme directors are Rod Gover (University of Auckland) and Gaven Martin (University of Auckland), and Dr Paul-Andi Nagy has been appointed as postdoctoral fellow, to work with Rod Gover. * A thematic programme on Algorithmics (New Directions and Applications) will begin in 2008 under the direction of Mike Atkinson (University of Otago) and Charles Semple (University of Canterbury). This programme will be launched in 2008 with a workshop in Napier, 18-22 February 2008. The workshop will include two expository lectures by each of the invited speakers, as well as short contributed talks and problem sessions. Invited speakers include Michael Langston (Tennessee), Steve Linton (St Andrews), Brendan McKay (ANU), Michael Mitzenmacher (Harvard), and Dominic Welsh (Oxford). 5. NZ SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS & TECHNOLOGY TEACHER FELLOWSHIPS The NZ Science, Maths & Technology Teacher Fellowship Scheme is run by the Royal Society of NZ on behalf of government, to provide teachers with a fellowship of up to 12 months to give them "new experiences and understanding outside the classroom that enables them to become more effective educators". Typically, a teacher fellow will work in a university department or local business (or other entity) for a year, to gain some professional development and work on a suitable research/learning project. This scheme is about to pilot a trial of short-term fellowships, of 3 to 5 months. Additional priority is likely to be given for these short-term fellowships to applicants from low-decile schools/regions, Maori or Pasifika teachers, and primary teachers. See http://www.rsnz.org/awards/teacher_fellowships/ for further details. Also the RSNZ would appreciate suggestions for suitable projects. These can be communicated to John Auty, the RSNZ's Education Project Officer, whose email address is . 6. OTHER NZIMA NEWS The NZIMA's Research Manager, Margaret Woolgrove, has a new baby daughter, Lucy, who was born at the beginning of July. Julia Novak is working for the NZIMA as a temporary replacement for Margaret Woolgrove until January 2008. Julia can be contacted by email at or by telephone on (09) 3737599 extn 82025. The NZIMA is helping to sponsor the first joint meeting of the American and New Zealand Mathematical Societies, which will be held in Wellington from 12 to 15 December this year. One of the plenary speakers, Professor Bruce Kleiner (Yale University), is being designated the NZIMA speaker. This event and others are listed below. 7. FORTHCOMING EVENTS IN THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES IN NZ & PACIFIC 25-28 September 2007, in Auckland: NZ Association of Mathematics Teachers (NZAMT) 10th Biennial Conference See http://www.cce.auckland.ac.nz/conferences/index.cfm?S=CCE_NZAMTC 4 October 2007, in Auckland: Public Lecture by Ian Stewart "All the World's a Network" See http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/wiki/Department_of_Mathematics for details of this and other lectures being given by Ian Stewart (visiting the University of Auckland as its first Seelye Fellow) 5-7 November 2007, at Long Bay, Auckland: Workshop for Women in the Mathematical Sciences in NZ Contact Dr Vivien Kirk for details 22-23 November 2007, at Queenstown: NZ Mathematics and Statistics Postgraduate (NZMASP) Conference See http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/bio/NZMASP/ or contact Scott Graybill 30 November & 1 December 2007, at Christchurch: 41st Annual ORSNZ Conference See https://secure.orsnz.org.nz/conf/ 3-7 December 2007, in Dunedin: 32nd ACCMCC (Australasian Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing) See http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/staffpriv/mike/ACCMCC32/32ACCMCC.html 9-11 December 2007, at Victoria University, Wellington: Mathematical & Computational Nanoscience 2007 (sponsored jointly by the NZIMA and the MacDiarmid Institute) See http://www.macdiarmid.ac.nz/mcn/ 12-15 December 2007, at Victoria University of Wellington, NZ: 1st Joint Meeting of the American and New Zealand Mathematical Societies See http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~mathmeet/amsnzms2007/ 6-12 January 2008, at Nelson: 2008 NZMRI Conference on Conformal Geometry See: http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/wiki/2008_NZMRI_Conference_on_Conformal_Geometry 14-18 January 2008, at Kaikoura: Conference on Finite Groups and Representations See: http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/bio/Finite_Groups/ 28 January - 1 February 2008, at Wollongong, Australia: Mathematics in Industry Study Group 2008 See: http://www.uow.edu.au/informatics/maths/research/misg/index.html 3-7 February 2008, at Katoomba (NSW), Australia: ANZIAM 2008 (Annual conference) See http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/ANZIAM2008/ 18-22 February 2008, at Napier: Conference on Algorithms See: http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/algorithmics/activities/febmeeting.html 19-22 February 2008, at Auckland: Workshop on Multi-scale Modelling of the Respiratory System See: http://www.bioeng.auckland.ac.nz/events/msmrs/index.php 15-19 December 2008, at Auckland: 4th International Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing See: http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/~bonning/4icc/index.html 13-17 July 2009, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia: First Pacific Rim Mathematical Congress See http://www.primath.org/ for updates 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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