NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS (NZIMA) Newsletter 14 February 2007 We're pleased to give you another update on news from the mathematical sciences CoRE, the NZIMA. The second issue of our colourful twice-yearly bulletin "NZ-IMAges" is about to come out. If you don't get a copy and would like to, please let us know! Please also note our planned workshop for women in the mathematical sciences in NZ under upcoming events in item 6. Marston Conder and Vaughan Jones Co-Directors of the NZIMA SUMMARY OF CONTENTS 1. Launch of "MathsReach" 2. Awards and honours 3. Centres of Research Excellence (CoREs) selection round 4. Update on postdoctoral appointments 5. Recent events sponsored by the NZIMA 6. Forthcoming events in the mathematical sciences in NZ 1. LAUNCH OF "MathsReach" The NZIMA launched a new initiative, called "MathsReach", this week. New Zealand's Prime Minister, the Rt Hon. Helen Clark, officiated at the launch at Onehunga High School (24 Pleasant Street, Onehunga) on Friday 23rd February. The aim of MathsReach is to show school students and teachers what lies beyond the school curriculum in mathematics and statistics, in terms of professional careers, research activity, hot topics, and interesting and important applications. This will be achieved through a variety of media (video clips, web links and special articles), with a focus on people and what they do. This resource will be available on a website and as a DVD - free of charge to schools. The launch on 23rd February marks the first step in its development. Resource material on the web and the DVD will be supplemented and updated over time. See http://www.mathsreach.org/ for the initial release. 2. AWARDS AND HONOURS * NZ Mathematical Society Research Award for 2006 The winners of the New Zealand Mathematical Society's Research Award for 2006 were announced at the NZ Mathematics Colloquium in Hamilton in Decmber. The award was won jointly by - Dr Robert Aldred (University of Otago), for his leading work in combinatorics and graph theory, and in particular for his near-complete solution of the vertex colouring/edge partition problem, characterisation of regular graphs which admit at most one 2-factor, as well as his recent work on the Path Partition Conjecture, and - Prof. Mick Roberts (Massey University, Albany), for his pioneering and practical work in mathematical epidemiology, his development of realistic physiologically based models of the incidence and spread of infectious diseases, and his work on parasite transmission on pasture. Robert Aldred was a key member of our programme on Combinatorics in 2004/05, and Mick Roberts was an active participant in our programme on Dynamical Systems and will be a key member of our programme on Modelling Invasive Species. * NZSA Campbell Award for 2006 * Prof. Jeff Hunter (Massey University) has won the Campbell Award for 2006 from the NZ Statistical Association, to recognise his contributions to statistical research and education. Jeff has hosted NZIMA-sponsored visitors and ran an NZIMA-sponsored International Workshop on Matrices and Statistics in April 2005. He was presented with his award at the NZ Science Honours Dinner in Auckland in November. 3. CENTRES OF RESEARCH EXCELLENCE (CoREs) SELECTION ROUND In late November we lodged a proposal for another six year's of government sponsorship from the Tertiary Education Commission's Centres of Research Excellence (CoRE) Fund. Proposals from the existing seven CoREs and 26 proposals for new CoREs are currently being considered by selection panels established by the Royal Society of New Zealand, which has been contracted by the TEC to run this selection round. We are very grateful to members of our Governing and Advisory Board, our Research Manager (Margaret Woolgrove), and many others, for their helpful contributions to preparing what we believe is a compelling bid. Referee reports on the NZIMA's proposal have been excellent: very supportive of what we have achieved to date and the potential for what we can achieve in the future, given sufficient resources. 4. UPDATE ON POSTDOCTORAL APPOINTMENTS The following postdoctoral fellows have been engaged on NZIMA thematic programmes recently (in 2006 or early 2007) - in many cases with partial or total support from other sources: * Dr Pierre Ailliot, on the Hidden Markov Models programme, from January to September 2006, to work on HMM space-time daily rainfall models * Dr Britta Basse, on the Modelling Invasive Species programme, from August to November 2006, with support from the University of Canterbury, to work on level-set theory and metapopulation models of Tussock spread in North Canterbury * Dr Richard Evans, on the Geometry and 3-Manifolds programmes, to work on the ending lamination conjecture for hyperbolic 3-manifolds and other questions in geometry and topology * Dr Takaki Iwata, on the Hidden Markov Models programme, for a short period in 2006, with support from the Institute of Statistical Mathematics in Tokyo, to work on earthquake models and related issues * Dr Junko Murakami, on the Hidden Markov Models programme, for all of 2006, and co-sponsored by NIWA, to work on estimating the parameters in a HMM model via the posterior mean, and on particle filter methods as an adjunct to more conventional statistical routines * Dr Bart Oldeman completed his 2-year term on the Dynamical Systems programme in July 2006, working on several projects in numerical bifurcation theory, and also installing, maintaining, and troubleshooting the AUTO software package for numerous students and other researchers at three NZ Universities and one in Australia * Dr Charles Tadjeran, on the Modelling Invasive Species programme, from August to November 2006, to work on anomalous diffusion extensions of Fisher's equation * Dr Elisa Varini, on the Hidden Markov Models programme, for a short period in 2006, with support from the Italian Institute of Applied Mathematics (Milan), to work on HMM models and particle filters, with applications to earthquakes. 5. RECENT EVENTS SPONSORED BY THE NZIMA *Workshop on Dynamical Systems* A further one-day workshop on Dynamical Systems was held in December 2006 as a special session of the 2006 New Zealand Mathematics Colloquium, at the University of Waikato. In fact 25 of the Colloquium's speakers asked to speak at this special session. *NZMRI Summer Meeting* This year's summer meeting was held in January at Waitangi, as part of the NZIMA's latest programme on Partial Differential Equations. The first two days (8 & 9 January) included instructional lectures of an expository nature intended for students, given by Professors Jari Kaipio (of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Inverse Problems Research) and Rowan Killip (a former student from Auckland now at UCLA) and others. For the rest of the week, excellent lectures were given by several experts in the field, including Boris Altshuler (Columbia), Jochen Bruening (Berlin), Stefan Finsterle (Lawrence Labs, Berkeley), Rostislav Grigorchuk (Texas A&M), Ernie Kalnins (Waikato), Pavel Kurasov (Lund) and Daniel Watzenig (Graz). *Public Lecture by John Conway* The NZIMA sponsored another public lecture by its Visiting Maclaurin Fellow, John Conway FRS (John von Neumann Distinguished Professor at Princeton University), on "the Game of Life", at the University of Auckland on 25th January. This lecture proved so popular that we had to move to the largest lecture room available, to cater for well over 200 attendees. John will visit New Zealand again in January 2008. *AccessGRID seminar* Assoc. Professor Paul Bonnington (Co-director of our Combinatorics programme and now leading the "BestGrid" project in New Zealand) organised an interactive seminar using the new AccessGRID technology, on 5th February. Professor Mike Steel (of the NZIMA and the Allan Wilson Centre) gave a talk on "Ancestral networks, and the curse of the unfaithful grandparents", simultaneously at the University of Auckland and the HitLab at the University of Canterbury, using two-way video communication with multiple cameras and a shared whiteboard. This was a pioneering event. 6. FORTHCOMING EVENTS IN THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES IN NZ 15 March 2007, at the University of Auckland: Public lecture by Marcus du Sautoy (NZIMA Maclaurin Fellow) on *** The Music of the Primes *** at the Engineering Building, Lecture Theatre 439, 20 Symonds St, with refreshments and book sales at 5pm and the lecture following at 6pm 16 March 2007, at Victoria University of Wellington: Public lecture by Vaughan Jones (NZIMA Co-Director) on *** Why flatland is a great place to do algebra *** at the Maclaurin Lecture Theatre (Maclaurin 102), Kelburn Parade, with refreshments at 6.30pm and the lecture following at 7pm 16-20 April 2007, at Hanmer Springs, NZ: NZIMA programme workshop on Modelling Invasive Species and Weed Impact See http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/bio/NZIMA/ 2-6 July 2007, at Hobart, Tasmania (Australia): Annual MERGA (Maths Education Research Group of Australasia) conference See http://www.aamt.edu.au/merga30/ 4-6 July 2007, at Christchurch: 2007 NZ Statistical Association Conference Contact nzsa2007@gmail.com 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 5-7 November 2007, at Long Bay, Auckland: Workshop for Women in the Mathematical Sciences in NZ Contact Dr Vivien Kirk for details 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 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/ 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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