NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS (NZIMA)
====== One of New Zealand's Centres of Research Excellence ======


Newsletter 23

May 2009

We're pleased to give you another update on news from the mathematical
sciences CoRE, the NZIMA.

The sixth issue of our colourful twice-yearly NZ-IMAges bulletin has
just appeared.  We hope you like it.  If you didn't get a copy and would
like to, please let us know!

                              Marston Conder and Vaughan Jones
                              Co-Directors of the NZIMA


SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

1. Global praise for NZ mathematicians' role in cost-cutting exercise
2. New NZIMA Board chair: Len Cook CBE CRSNZ
3. Awards and Honours
4. Profile: Andy Philpott
5. OECD reports on Mathematics in Industry
6. Update on NZIMA programmes
7. NZIMA Annual Report for 2008
8. Events calendar


1. GLOBAL PRAISE FOR NZ MATHEMATICIANS' ROLE IN FINANCIAL EXERCISE

The work for Norwegian paper company Norske Skog that earned Andy
Philpott and Engineering Science graduate Graeme Everett a place in the
April finals of the 2009 Franz Edelman contest was reported in May in
the US publication "Business Week".

Andy and Graeme used techniques from operations research and stochastic
optimization to help members of the Norske Skog strategic management
team in Oslo build a detailed model of its global operations (of 18 mills
on 4 continents), and use this to identify opportunities for effective
cost savings.  The model included everything from freight costs to
currency fluctuations, and helped identify money-losing operations in
areas that appeared to be well-run.  This approach proved to be far
superior to a traditional financial analysis, and its transparency won
the approval of union workers.

This project grew out of work by Graeme and Andy on modelling the
operations of Fletcher's Tasman Pulp & Paper Mill in the late 1990s.
As well as being reported in Business Week, it was also the subject of
interviews with Andy on National Radio on 11th May and TV New Zealand's
NZI Business programme on 13th May.

See http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_19/b4130057138531.htm
for the Business Week article, and for the interviews see
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/20090511 and
http://tvnz.co.nz/business-news/nzi-business-may-13-maths-model-makes-easier-see-business-weakness-3-50-2732225/video.

For more about Andy Philpott and his work, see item 4 below.


2. NEW NZIMA BOARD CHAIR: LEN COOK CBE CRSNZ

We have appointed a new chairperson of the NZIMA's Governing Board:
Len Cook.  Len is New Zealand's former Government Statistician, and
was also the UK's National Statistician from 2000 to 2005.  He was made
a Commander of the British Empire for his services in 2005, and elected
as a Companion of the Royal Society of NZ the same year.  Currently he
is also Chair of NZ's Medical Training Board, and of NZ's Social Policy
Evaluation and Research (SPEaR) Committee.

Len succeeds Sir Ian Axford FRS FRSNZ, who served as chair of our Board
for six years, from 2002 to 2008.


3. AWARDS AND HONOURS

* Two NZ-based mathematicians have been invited to give lectures at the
next International Congress of Mathematicians, which will take place in
India in 2010:  Gaven Martin (Massey University), who is one of our PIs
and co-director of two of our programmes with geometric themes, and
Andre Nies (University of Auckland), who was a participant in one of
our first programmes, on logic and computation.  Vaughan Jones gave an
invited lecture at the 1986 ICM, and another at the following one
(in 1990), when he won his Fields Medal, but the the first NZ-based
mathematician to be invited to speak at the ICM was Rod Downey, at the
last ICM in 2006.

* Prof. Chris Wild (Statistics Department, University of Auckland),
who was last year elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of NZ, has now
been elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (FASA).
This is a rare honour: Alastair Scott and Chris Wild are the only two
people based in New Zealand to be so elected.

* Prof. Rod Downey, one of our PIs and our first Maclaurin Fellow, has
been appointed to the Marsden Fund Council (and as convenor of its panel
for Mathematical & Information Science (MIS))


4. PROFILE: ANDY PHILPOTT

Andy Philpott is a Professor in the Engineering Science Department at
the University of Auckland, one of the principal investigators of the
NZIMA, and co-director of our programme on Mathematical Models for
Optimizing Transportation Services. He currently holds a Marsden grant
investigating the mathematics of auctions for divisible goods.

After degrees in philosophy and mathematics at Victoria University of
Wellington, Andy gained his PhD in operations research at the University
of Cambridge in 1982.  He then held research positions at MIT (USA) and
Cambridge before returning to New Zealand in 1986.  At the University of
Auckland he won a Distinguished Teaching Award in 1988, and was promoted
to a personal chair in 2002.

Andy's research interests cover a wide range, including linear, non-linear
and stochastic programming and their application to operations research
problems, such as optimal planning under uncertainty, capacity expansion
planning, stochastic optimization in supply chains, game theory models in
electricity markets, and optimal yacht routing under uncertainty.  His
achievements earned him the Hans Daellenbach Award of the Operational
Research Society of NZ in 2006.


5. OECD REPORTS ON MATHS IN INDUSTRY

Two reports on Mathematics in Industry have been released recently
by the OECD as part of its Global Science Forum (GSF).

The main report (released in 2008) is available from the OECD website
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/1/41019441.pdf (960kB file).
It makes very interesting reading.

As a follow-up, the GSF has compiled and released a compendium of
Mathematics-in-Industry activities, including some in New Zealand.
This was prepared by an experts group, some of whose members were
appointed by GSF delegates while others had participated in the
earlier activity.  The new material has been offered by the GSF as a
"useful, practical reference regarding options available to those
(in industry, academia, or government) who wish to strengthen the links
between academic mathematics and industry".  The catalogue, which is
not complete (as material may be added in the future) is available
at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/19/42617645.pdf (416 kB file).


6. UPDATE ON NZIMA PROGRAMMES

We have a number of thematic programmes at various stages of development.
Here's a summary of what's been happening most recently:

* Geometric Methods in the Topology of 3-Dimensional Manifolds
  (directed by David Gauld, Vaughan Jones & Roger Fenn)

This programme began in 2006, and is approaching completion, with a
workshop being planned for January 2010.  Its main theme is the study of
3-dimensional manifolds, and especially recent progress resulting from
the use of geometry, with a focus on the techniques and consequences of
recent work on Thurston's geometrisation conjecture.  The programme has
three PhD students at various stages: Stephen Budden and Sunanda Dikshit
(at the University of Auckland), and Qing Zhang (at Massey University's
Albany campus).

* Partial Differential Equations: Applications, Analysis, Inverse Problems
  (directed by Colin Fox, Mike O'Sullivan and Boris Pavlov)

This programme began in late 2006, and has almost a year to run.  It is
devoted to the development of methods for solving PDE (and associated
"inverse problems"), and the application of these to geothermal modelling,
nanotechnology, sea-ice interaction, structural vibration and acoustics.
Two postdoctoral fellows are directly engaged: Drs Al Parker and Hyuck
Chung; and the programme has two PhD students: Tiangang Cui (University
of Auckland) and Erfang Ma (University of Otago).

* Modelling Invasive Species and Weed Impact
  (directed by Jennifer Brown, Alex James and David Wall)

This programme began in late 2006, and has almost a year to run.  Its main
aim is the design of a mathematical and statistical framework for exploring
the spread and subsequent impact of invading organisms in NZ ecosystems.
The programme is involving positive interactions with the BioProtection
CoRE, Landcare Research, AgResearch, regional councils, and the U.S. Forest
Service, and has won generous additional sponsorship from other sources.
Three postdoctoral fellows have been involved recently: Drs Britta Basse,
Richard Brown and Joe Stover; and four PhD students have been engaged in
the programme: Kyoko Kukuda, Dawn Lemke and Meghan Williams (University
of Canterbury), and Steve Wangen (Lincoln University).

* Applications of Mathematics in the Nanosciences (directed by Shaun Hendy)

This programme's main focus is on mathematical and computational methods
for experimentation and model-based prediction of nanoscale phenomena,
and design and control of nanoscale systems. It is multidisciplinary,
involving interactions between maths, physics, chemistry and engineering,
with co-sponsorship from several sources, on a number of projects that
include: Melting of nanoparticles, Crystal growth and coalescence, and
Heterogeneous slip boundary conditions.  Four postdoctoral fellows have
been involved, supported by various funds: Drs Nicola Gaston, Brent Walker,
Geoff Willmott and Philip Zhang; and five PhD students have been engaged
in various aspects: Srikanth Dhondi, Jade Mackay, Sione Paea and Dmitri
Schebarchov (Victoria University of Wellington), and David McCarthy
(University of Canterbury).

* Algorithms: New Directions and Applications
  (directed by Mike Atkinson, Charles Semple and Mark Wilson)

This programme (which began in 2008) centres on the design and analysis of
algorithms, and their application to contemporary problems in mathematics,
computational biology, social sciences, and communication networks.
The programme's main event was a meeting on Algorithmics, held at Napier
in February 2008, and this has been followed up with a conference on
Permutation Patterns at the University of Otago in June 2008, a short
course of lectures in December, and a special session organised at the
7th Australia-NZ Mathematics Convention, in Christchurch also in December.
The programme is supporting two postdoctoral fellows: Drs Alex Raichev
and Chris Dowden; and also three postgraduate students are engaged in it:
Josh Collins (MSc, University of Canterbury), Beata Faller (PhD, University
of Canterbury), and Reyhaneh Reyhani (PhD, University of Auckland).

* Conformal Geometry and its Applications
  (directed by Rod Gover and Gaven Martin)

The main themes of this programme (begun also in 2008) are conformal and
hyperbolic geometry, symmetries & natural geometric equations, invariants
and applications, and nonlinear elasticity and materials science.
The programme's main meeting took place in Nelson in January 2008, and a
workshop on Parabolic Geometry was held in August 2008 in Auckland, as
part of a focussed research period on parabolic geometry, PDE & prolonged
systems (from July to September 2008).  The programme has supported one
postdoctoral fellow: Dr Paul-Andi Nagy; and with support from additional
sources, several postgraduate research students have been engaged in
various aspects of the programme: Niels Bernhardt, Howard Cohl, Geon Oh,
Callum Sleigh, Heather Macbeth, Matthew Randall (University of Auckland),
and Haydn Cooper and Maarten Jordens (Massey University).

* Energy, Wind and Water
  (directed by Mike O'Sullivan and Gordon Mallinson)

The programme began in 2008, with its main focus being on the use of
cross-disciplinary approaches to model and analyse the natural resources
of energy, wind and water.  Such approaches combine simulation techniques
(such as computational fluid dynamics) with optimization algorithms to
improve engineering designs, or control algorithms to improve operations.
The programme held a 4-day workshop on mathematical methods, at Auckland
in February 2009.  This well-attended workshop covered a wide range of
topics including tidal energy, oil and gas reservoirs, wind energy, and
modelling NZ's energy economy and bio-energy, and initiated some new
international research collaborations.  The programme has engaged two
Masters students: Emily Clearwater and Laura Abrahams (University of
Auckland), as well as overseas experts, including John Wilkins (Rutgers),
Jim Beck (Caltech), Karen Willcox (MIT) and Andrew Pollard (Queens).

* Mathematical & Statistical Knowledge for Teachers at Senior Levels
  (directed by Bill Barton)

The overall aim of this new programme is to investigate the mathematical
conditions in the last years of schooling and undergraduate courses in
New Zealand that are needed to ensure the provision of a sufficient flow
of competent graduates to meet the needs of all sectors of society that
require mathematical knowledge and abilities beyond Year 11 levels.
The initial phase of the programme is concentrating on data collection
and analysis, by a research fellow (who is being supported by the
University of Auckland).  Her work will include a nationwide survey of
the expected mathematical understanding of students entering
undergraduate degree programmes at NZ universities, the performance
outcomes at first year university level of students, and barriers to
enrolment in advanced secondary mathematics courses in New Zealand.
A website is being developed for dissemination of information about the
programme to all stakeholders in secondary and tertiary mathematics
education, and a stakeholder group is being formed.  The key period for
this programme will be in 2010, beginning with a large international
conference, followed by eight regional meetings which will help the
development of a standards document and action plan.

For more details of most of the above programmes, see our annual report
for 2008 - the next item.


7. NZIMA ANNUAL REPORT FOR 2008

Our annual report for 2008 (prepared for the TEC) is now available,
online in pdf at http://www.nzima.org/Publications.html


8. FORTHCOMING EVENTS IN THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES IN NZ & PACIFIC

6-10 July 2009, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia:
First Pacific Rim Mathematical Congress
See http://www.primath.org/prima2009/

1-3 September 2009, at Victoria University of Wellington:
New Zealand Statistical Association Conference 2009
See http://msor.victoria.ac.nz/Events/NZSA2009/NZSA2009

29 September - 2 October 2009, at Palmerston North:
Biennial Conference of the NZ Association of Mathematics Teachers
"Pi in the Sky: Extending Mathematical Horizons" (NZAMT11)
See http://www.nzamt.org.nz/nzamt11/

8-10 December 2009, at Albany (North Shore City):
Annual NZ Mathematics Colloquium, Massey University's Albany Campus
Further details awaited

3-10 January 2010, at Hanmer Springs:
Annual NZMRI/NZIMA Summer Meeting, this time with the theme of
"Groups, Representations and Number Theory"
See http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/wiki/2010_NZMRI_Summer_Workshop

31 January - 4 February 2010, at Queenstown:
ANZIAM 2010 (Annual Conference)
See http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/ANZIAM/

Details of the annual meeting of the ORSNZ for 2009 are not yet
available but will be published later in the year.