NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS (NZIMA) ====== One of New Zealand's Centres of Research Excellence ====== Newsletter 28 August 2010 This quarter's e-newsletter from the NZIMA features news about the NZ mathematical olympiad team's record success in 2010, the future of the NZIMA, and NSF funding support for US-based research students to visit NZ. Other highlights include a profile of Matt Visser (Victoria University of Wellington) and his work, notice of a visit by the 2010 Forder Lecturer (Ben Green), a report from Gaven Martin about the 2010 International Congress of Mathematicians, and details of another full programme of events coming up soon. Marston Conder and Vaughan Jones Co-Directors of the NZIMA SUMMARY OF CONTENTS 1. Record success for NZ team at International Mathematical Olympiad 2. Awards/honours and other news 3. Discussions on the future of the NZIMA 4. PRIMA news: EAPSI Programme 5. Profile: Matt Visser 6. Report from Gaven Martin on the 2010 ICM in India 7. 2010 Forder Lecturer 8. Forthcoming events in the mathematical sciences in New Zealand 1. RECORD SUCCESS FOR NZ TEAM AT INTERNATIONAL MATHEMATICAL OLYMPIAD The NZIMA is major sponsor of the NZ mathematical olympiad training scheme. Each year New Zealand sends a team of six high school students to the International Mathematical Olympiad. This year New Zealand's team posted a record performance at the 51st IMO, held in July in Astana, Kazakhstan. For the first time ever, every team member won a medal. The NZ team won 2 silver and 4 bronze medals, putting it in the top 30% of the table of 97 countries participating. On one of the six questions, all six team members achieved a perfect score. This is a tribute not only to the students themselves, but also to the team leaders, and all the teachers and academics across the country who voluntarily participate with the selection and training of students in the olympiad programme. Silver medals were won by Malcolm Granville and Tom Yan, and bronze medals by Sicong Zhang, Robert Zhang, Stephen Mackereth and Edward Wang. The NZ team leader was Dr Chris Tuffley (Massey University, Palmerston North), and the deputy leader Ilya Chevyrev (an Honours student, University of Auckland). For more details, see http://www.nzamt.org.nz/nzimo/ and also http://www.eduvac.co.nz/news/2010/08/05/best-nz-result-international-mathematical-olympiad 2. AWARDS/HONOURS AND OTHER NEWS * The NZ Statistical Association has given its Campbell Award for 2010 to Professor Stephen Haslett (Massey University). * Paul Murrell (University of Auckland) has been elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, in recognition of his "outstanding professional contributions to and leadership in the field of statistical science". Paul is one of only five people outside of the US to be elected in 2010. * NZIMA Board chair Len Cook has been made a Life Member of the NZ Statistical Association. * Marston Conder (NZIMA Co-Director) has been appointed one of the three Moderators for the next Quality Evaluation round of the PBRF (the Performance Based Research Fund), being carried out in 2012. Marston is one of the original founders of the PBRF. He was chair of the government-appointed committee that established the PBRF in 2001/02, and has served on the Tertiary Education Commission's PBRF Sector Reference Group (which recommended enhancements for the quality evaluation rounds in 2006, 2009 and 2012). 3. DISCUSSIONS ON THE FUTURE OF THE NZIMA Over the last few weeks, Marston Conder (NZIMA Co-Director) and James Sneyd have been visiting main centres in NZ to discuss the future of the NZIMA. We wish to develop a new framework for the NZIMA, that will better enable planning, organisation and communication of the NZIMA's activities, and consider means by which the NZIMA's valuable activities can be continued when its CoRE funding ceases in mid-2011, and increase the chances of success in the next CoRE round. We will follow up on this tour with a meeting in Auckland at which ideas and suggestions will be discussed, with the aim of achieving the above objectives. We are grateful for all those who have given us feedback so far. 4. PRIMA NEWS: EAPSI PROGRAMME We have learnt from the Pacific Rim Mathematical Association (PRIMA) that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) is offering grants to research students (at Masters or PhD level) in the US for eight-week visits to New Zealand take part in summer schools and gain experience in research teams with local mentors. This is happening as part of the NSF's East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes (EAPSI) programme. Each grant includes a $5000 stipend, round-trip airfare to the host location, living expenses, and an introduction to the society, culture, language, and research environment of the host location. The latest application round is now open and will close on 10th November 2010. See www.nsf.gov/eapsi for further details. 5. PROFILE: MATT VISSER Matt Visser is a Professor of Mathematics at Victoria University of Wellington, best known for his work in mathematical physics, and in particular, the areas of general relativity, quantum field theory, and theoretical cosmology. His research specialities include black holes, "dumb holes' (which are like black holes for sound), and gravity. Matt began his university career at Victoria University of Wellington where he graduated BA and MSc, and then studied for his PhD at the University of California Berkeley in the early 1980s. He then held postdoctoral research positions at the University of Southern California, Los Alamos Research Laboratories (New Mexico) and Washington University (St Louis), before returning to New Zealand in 2002. He is the author of over 200 research articles (and has one of the highest H-indices of mathematicians working in New Zealand), and is also author of a book on "Lorentzian wormholes: from Einstein to Hawking", and co-editor of two others, on "Artificial Black Holes" and "The Kerr spacetime: rotating black holes in general relativity". His recent article on "almost black holes" in Scientific American (2009) has been translated into ten different languages. Matt has won numerous awards, including Fellowship of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Fellowship of the American Physical Society, and membership of the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXI). He also regularly contributes to public outreach, via Cafe Scientifique, Science Express, and amateur astronomy societies in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch. Currently he is working with actors and musicians on a play that will illustrate aspects of fundamental physics such as light and atomic structure. 6. REPORT FROM ON THE 2010 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF MATHEMATICIANS Gaven Martin and Andre Nies were invited speakers at this year's International Congress of Mathematicians, held at Hyderabad in India. Here are some brief excerpts out of a report from Gaven Martin: This was my first trip to India and it is impossible to describe the place in a few words, but it is totally chaotic and wonderful. A place of enormous contradictions and warm and friendly people – and great food! There were quite a few Kiwis there -- two of us were invited speakers, which is twice as many as Italy, and the same as Australia! I expect we will continue to do well after Rod Downey broke the ice in Madrid in 2006. The logo for ICM 2010 shows the fundamental domain for the modular group SL(2,Z) acting on the upper half plane, and a formula that is a famous conjecture of Ramanujan proved by Deligne. The Sanskrit writing at the bottom comes from the Rig Veda (a 3000-year old Indian religious document) and translates as "May good ideas come to us from everywhere". The President of India opened the ICM and presented the Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna and Gauss Prizes, and the Chern Medal (new to the ICM). The Fields medalists were * Ngo Bao Chau (Universite Paris-Sud, originally from Vietnam) * Elon Lindenstrauss (Princeton University, originally from Israel) * Stanislav Smirnov (Universite de Geneve, originally from Russia) * Cedric Villani (l'Institut Henri Poincare, Paris) . The Nevanlinna Prize was awarded to to Daniel Spielman (Yale University), the Gauss Prize to Yves Meyer (Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan), and the inaugural Chern Medal was awarded to Louis Nirenberg (NYU) for his lifetime work in the theory of partial differential equations. See http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/08/19 for details of their work. In other news, the International Mathematical Union elected its first woman president, Ingrid Daubechies (Princeton University). One of the highlights for me (and 39 others) was a chance to play world chess champion Viswanathan Anand. He won all but one game: a draw against a 14-year-old ringer. I had a reasonable position until a blunder at move 39 (after 3 hours). All in all a worthwhile, interesting and varied congress. Let's see how it goes at the next one in Seoul in 2014. 7. 2010 FORDER LECTURER The Forder Lecturer for 2010 is Ben Green, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Ben Green is perhaps best known for his work with Terry Tao in proving the existence of arbitrarily long sequences of prime numbers in arithmetic progression. He will visit New Zealand in September, and his schedule is as follows: * 3-8 September, University of Canterbury * 8-11 September, University of Otago * 11-14 September, Victoria University of Wellington * 14-16 September, Massey University (Palmerston North) * 16-19 September, University of Waikato * 19-26 September, University of Auckland and Massey University (Albany). 8. FORTHCOMING EVENTS IN THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES IN NEW ZEALAND 22-25 November 2010, at Hanmer Springs: 2010 NZ Postgraduate Mathematics & Statistics Conference For further details, contact Shannon Ezzat, University of Canterbury, email: sez10@uclive.ac.nz 29-30 November 2010, at the University of Auckland: Annual Conference of the Operations Research Society of NZ See http://www.orsnz.org.nz/#conference 7-9 December 2010, at the University of Otago, Dunedin: Annual NZ Mathematical Society Colloquium See http://nzmathsoc.org.nz/colloquium/home.php 9-14 January 2011, at Raglan: Annual NZMRI/NZIMA Summer Meeting, with theme "Dynamical systems" See http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/NZMRI2011/ 6-11 February 2011, at Leigh (near Warkworth): The Annual NZ Phylogenetics Meeting See http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/bio/events/leigh2011/ 29 August to 2 September 2011, at the University of Auckland: Annual Conference of the NZ Statistical Association [Provisional dates] Further details to come later 27 November - 2 December 2011, at Rotorua: "Volcanic Delta '11", the 8th Delta conference on the teaching and learning of undergraduate mathematics and statistics See http://www.delta2011.co.nz/delta2011/ 15-20 December 2011, at Victoria University of Wellington: The 12th Asian Logic Conference See http://msor.victoria.ac.nz/Events/ALC2011/WebHome 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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