NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS (NZIMA) Newsletter 21 November 2008 We're pleased to give you another update on news from the mathematical sciences CoRE, the NZIMA. The fifth issue of our colourful twice-yearly bulletin "NZ-IMAges" has just been produced and is being distributed. We hope you like it. If you didn't get a copy and would like one, please let us know! Marston Conder and Vaughan Jones Co-Directors of the NZIMA SUMMARY OF CONTENTS 1. Pickering Medal for Ross Ihaka 2. Another summer of conferences 3. Awards and Honours 4. PRIMA Congress in July 2009 5. Fifth issue of NZ-IMAges 6. NZIMA support for visitors and NZ conferences 7. Upcoming events in the mathematical sciences in Oceania 1. PICKERING MEDAL FOR ROSS IHAKA Ross Ihaka (University of Auckland), whose work with Robert Gentleman in creating the "R" system for statistical computing was featured on the front page of Issue 3 of our NZ-IMAges bulletin, was awarded the Pickering Medal of the Royal Society of New Zealand at the NZ Science Honours Dinner in Wellington on 11th November. The Pickering Medal, which recognises excellence and innovation in practical applications of technology, is one of the three premier awards made by the RSNZ at the annual dinner. The uptake of the "R" system has been phenomenal. It has become the statistical package of choice for many statisticians around the world, particularly in universities, but also industry and government. For example, it is invaluable for processing huge amounts of genomic and survival data. "R" is sponsored by notable companies and organisations such as Astra Zeneca, HortResearch, Merck, Sharp & Dohme, and Telecom. It is used for both teaching and research by hundreds of universities around the world, including Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge and Berkeley. There are over 40 books written about, or featuring, the use of "R", and the package and the journal paper introducing it have been cited over 1700 times, by far the highest for publications in the mathematical sciences over the last ten years, worldwide. It is now disseminated through 75 internet sites in 30 different countries. 2. ANOTHER SUMMER OF CONFERENCES This summer will see another very healthy number of conferences in the mathematical sciences being held in New Zealand. As key drivers of knowledge transfer, generation of new ideas and both establishment and consolidation of collaborative linkages, conferences are highly valuable in the mathematical sciences, and we look forward to great outcomes. Already in November, the second New Zealand Postgraduate Mathematics & Statistics Conference was held at Whitianga, with sponsorship from the NZIMA. The conference attracted 63 postgraduate students, from all over New Zealand, and the talks they presented on their research spanned a diverse range of topics, from representation theory to queueing theory, and phylogenetics to topology. Mareike Fischer (Univ. Canterbury) won the NZIMA's Best Presentation award, for her talk on "Why DNA sequences can be perfectly misleading, and Peter Humphries (Univ. Canterbury) won the Peoples' Choice Award (sponsored by Hoare Research Software) for his talk on "Nesting polynomials in infinite radicals". The meeting was organised by Howard Cohl and Alethea Rea (U Auckland), with help from Haydn Cooper, Maarten Jordens and Dion O'Neale (Massey U), Beata Faller (U Canterbury) and Lyndon Walker (U Auckland). Also the 43rd Annual Conference of the Operations Research Society of NZ was held in Wellington in the last week of November. A second workshop for women researchers in the mathematical sciences in NZ will be held on Sunday 7th December, immediately before the 7th Australia-NZ Mathematics Convention (and 2008 NZ Mathematics Colloquium), both at the University of Canterbury. The following week sees the 4th International Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing being held at Auckland, and in January we have the annual NZMRI/NZIMA Summer Meeting, this time on algorithmic information theory, computability and complexity. All four of these meetings are being sponsored by the NZIMA. See item 7 below for further details (including conference websites). 3. AWARDS AND HONOURS * John Butcher In September, John Butcher (one of the NZIMA's PIs and director of one of our first programmes, on Numerical methods for Evolutionary Problems) was awarded a prestigious Honorary Fellowship of the European Society of Computational Methods in Sciences and Engineering, "for his outstanding contribution in the field of Computational Mathematics and Numerical Analysis". In addition, his 75th birthday was honoured at a conference in Greece. * Mike Hendy Mike Hendy, another of the NZIMA's PIs, has won two awards in the last three months: a New Zealand Science & Technology Medal from the RSNZ, and the New Zealand Mathematical Society's annual Research Award. These awards recognise Mike's seminal work on mathematical approaches to molecular ecology and evolution, and quantitative methodology that forms an integral part of phylogenetic software packages being used worldwide. * Shaun Hendy Shaun Hendy, director of our programme on Applications of Mathematics in the Nanosciences, has been appointed Deputy Director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. * Vaughan Jones NZIMA co-director Vaughan Jones gave an invited lecture on the Poincare conjecture and the Riemann hypothesis at a symposium of Rutherford Medal winners in Dunedin on 3rd December. (In fact Vaughan was the first ever winner of the Rutherford Medal, in 1991.) See the following for details: www.odt.co.nz/on-campus/university-otago/34559/top-scientists-gather-dunedin 4. PRIMA CONGRESS The first Congress of the Pacific Rim Mathematical Association (of which the NZIMA was a founding member) will be held at the University of New South Wales the week 6-10 July 2009. This will be a major event, bringing together people from mathematics departments and institutes from North and South America, the Pacific, New Zealand, Australia, and east and south-east Asia. Special sessions arranged so far will cover Algebraic Geometry, Commutative Algebra, Computational Algebra, Dynamical Systems, Geometric Analysis, Industrial Applications of Mathematics, Inverse Problems, Mathematics Of Climate Change, Mathematical Finance, Mathematical Physics, Partial Differential Equations, Scientific Computing, Stringy Topology, and Symplectic Geometry. See item 7 below for further details and the congress website. 5. FIFTH ISSUE OF NZ-IMAGES GLOSSY BULLETIN The latest issue of our colourful twice-yearly bulletin "NZ-IMAges" has just been published. This, the fifth issue, features articles on Ilze Ziedins's work on modelling the operations of an Intensive Care Unit (ICU), Charles Semple's research on algorithms for phylogenetic reconstruction (of evolutionary trees), and Shaun Hendy's NZIMA programme on "nano-mathematics", plus articles on secret key schemes, polytopes and paper-folding, involving Julia Novak, Isabel Hubard and Hugh Gribben at the University of Auckland. See also http://www.nzima.org/Publications.html for previous issues. 6. NZIMA SUPPORT FOR VISITORS AND LOCAL CONFERENCES The NZIMA undertakes and supports a wide range of activities in New Zealand that promote excellence in the mathematical sciences. As part of this, from time to time we call for suggestions for conferences and high-profile visitors and other valuable research (or research-related) activities. We are again making such a call, with a deadline of 15th February 2009. For details, see the NZIMA website http://www.nzima.org and click the "Support Opportunities" link in the left hand menu bar. 7. UPCOMING EVENTS IN THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES IN OCEANIA 7 December 2008, at Christchurch: Half-day workshop for women researchers in the mathematical sciences in NZ Contact: Vivien Kirk 8-12 December 2008, at Christchurch: 7th Australia-New Zealand Mathematics Convention (incorporating the 2008 NZ Mathematics Colloquium) See http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/ANZMC2008 15-19 December 2008, at Auckland: 4th International Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing See: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/research/groups/theory/4ICC/index.html 4-9 January 2009, at Napier: Annual NZMRI/NZIMA Summer Meeting, this year on algorithmic information theory, computability and complexity See http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/Events/NZMRI2009/WebHome 1-5 February 2009, at Caloundra, Queensland: ANZIAM 2009 (annual meeting of Australia & NZ Applied Mathematics) See http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/conference/index.php/ANZIAM/2009 6-10 July 2009, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia: First Pacific Rim Mathematical Congress See http://www.primath.org/prima2009/ 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) http://www.nzamt.org.nz/nzamt11/ 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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