NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS (NZIMA) Newsletter 33 November 2011 We're very pleased to bring you another update on news from the mathematical sciences CoRE, the NZIMA. Included in this issue are details of another full summer of conferences and workshops, and an impressive list of awards and honours to our mathematical scientists. Also the 11th issue of our colourful twice-yearly bulletin "NZ-IMAges" has just been produced and 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 awarded to David Ryan FRSNZ 2. (Many) More awards and honours 3. Pacific Rim Mathematical Congress - Call for Special Sessions 4. The future of the NZIMA 5. Ranking of mathematical journals 6. The Millennium Prize Problems 7. Eleventh issue of NZ-IMAges 8. Upcoming events in the mathematical sciences 1. PICKERING MEDAL AWARDED TO DAVID RYAN The Royal Society of New Zealand has awarded its 2011 Pickering Medal to Professor David Ryan FRSNZ (University of Auckland), for developing technology which is at the heart of optimisation software used worldwide for solving complex logistics problems, such as airline scheduling. The Pickering Medal recognises excellence and innovation in the practical application of technology. This award to David Ryan (who is one of our founding PIs and was co-director of our programme on Mathematical Models for Optimizing Transportation Services), cites his world-renowned research in mathematical programming and optimisation theory, and in particular scheduling, timetabling and combinatorial optimisation problems. David Ryan is New Zealand's leading authority on Operations Research, and our most influential contributor to the field. He is best known for developing the innovative "Ryan-Foster constraint branching" technology which is now a fundamental component of optimisation software used worldwide for solving complex logistics problems. This technology revolutionised the optimisation landscape by dramatically increasing the range and size of problems to which optimisation could be applied. David is a strong advocate for the use of mathematical optimisation techniques to solve problems of significant industrial importance, and is well known for his success in this field. For example, he has collaborated with Air New Zealand for more than 20 years to develop and commericalise pioneering optimisation software for scheduling flight crews, resulting in savings (as estimated by Air New Zealand in 2000) of more than NZ$15 million per year, and reducing impact of disruptions. His other notable work has included optimisation of processes at the NZ Aluminium Smelter, and management of stacks at container terminals. See http://www.des.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/about/newseventsandnotices/news/news/template/news_item.jsp?cid=443774 for further details. 2. (MANY) MORE AWARDS AND HONOURS * Marston Conder (NZIMA Co-Director) has been awarded a two-year James Cook Fellowship by the Royal Society of New Zealand. This fellowship, financed by the NZ government, will allow Marston to devote himself almost full-time to a research programme on the symmetries of discrete structures, for two years from March 2012. * The New Zealand Mathematical Society has presented its Research Award for 2011 to Shaun Cooper (Massey University, Albany), for his work in number theory and its applications in statistical physics, cryptography and computation of the number pi. His research has been cited as exhibiting excellence in its contribution and its originality. * The Hatherton Award (for the best published paper in earth, physical, mathematical or information sciences by a university PhD student in NZ) for 2011 has been awarded by the Royal Society of NZ to Adam Day, who is a former PhD student of Rod Downey (VU Wellington) currently on a Miller Fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley. This award is for Adam's excellent single-author paper on "Increasing the gap between descriptional complexity and algorithmic probability", which was published in the prestigious Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. * Rod Downey (one of our founding PIs and our first Maclaurin Fellow) has won the Hector Medal of the Royal Society of NZ, for his outstanding and internationally acclaimed work in recursion theory, computational complexity, and other aspects of mathematical logic and combinatorics. The Hector Medal is awarded in the mathematical and information sciences every three years. * Matthias Ehrgott (co-director of our programme on Mathematical Models for Optimizing Transportation Services) has won the Edgeworth-Pareto Award from the International Society on Multiple Criteria Decision Making. This award was presented to Matthias at the 21st International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making, at Jyvaskyla (Finland) in June 2011. * Javad Khazaei, one of the PhD students supported by the NZIMA on a merit basis over the last three years, has been offered a very generous postdoctoral position at Princeton University in the USA. Javad's work with his supervisor Golbon Zakeri (Engineering Science, University of Auckland), was featured in issue 9 of of our "NZ-IMAges" publication in October 2010. See also http://www.mathsreach.org/Allowing_for_Wind_Power on our MathsReach website. * Mike O'Sullivan (one of our founding PIs, and director of our thematic programme on "Energy, Wind and Water") has won the Henry J. Ramey (Jr.) Geothermal Reservoir Engineering award from the Geothermal Resources Council (GRC), for "outstanding achievements in the field of geothermal reservoir engineering". He received the award at the GRC's annual meeting in October 2011, at San Diego, California. * Alastair Scott (a founding PI of the NZIMA) has won the Campbell Award for 2011 from the NZ Statistical Association, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the promotion and development of statistics. [This award was made jointly and posthumously also to Roger Littlejohn (who was co-director of our programme on Hidden Markov Models, but sadly died in March 2011 after a short illness).] * Nick Shears (a recent young appointment in Statistics at the University of Auckland) has been awarded a prestigious five-year Rutherford Discovery Fellowship by the Royal Society of NZ. Nick will use his Fellowship to undertake research in marine science, aimed at providing a predictive framework to inform local and global resource managers in the development of ecosystem-based strategies for promoting healthy and more resilient marine ecosystems. * Matt Visser (another of our principal investigators) has been awarded a two-year James Cook Fellowship by the Royal Society of New Zealand. Matt will use this for research on the interface between quantum physics and gravity, involving Einstein's theory of general relativity. 3. PACIFIC RIM MATHEMATICAL CONGRESS - SPECIAL SESSIONS The Pacific Rim Mathematical Association (PRIMA) is organising the second Pacific Rim Mathematical Congress, to be held at Shanghai Jiaotong University, China, the week 24-28 June 2013. See http://www.primath.org/prima2013/ for further details as they become available. The organising committee has invited the Pacific Rim community to submit proposals for special sessions. Each special session will consist of 30- and 60-minute time slots, totalling 9 hours during the week, and is expected to include individuals from at least two different countries in the Pacific Rim region. Proposals for these sessions should include the names and affiliations of the session organisers, a title of the proposed session, and a list of possible speakers. These proposals should be sent to PRIMA 2013 Organising Committee, by email to , as soon as possible. 4. THE FUTURE OF THE NZIMA As many readers will know, the NZIMA's status and funding as a Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE) in New Zealand have come to an end, but plans are being made to create a new version of the NZIMA, and re-position it for future possibilities. A potential model has been developed, and adopted by the NZIMA's Governing Board. Proposals were invited recently from the NZ mathematical sciences community for principal activities and leadership of the new entity, and these are currrently being considered by a steering group, made up of the following people: Len Cook (NZIMA Board Chair) Peter Jackson (NZIMA Board member) Vaughan Jones (NZIMA Co-Director) Marston Conder (NZIMA Co-Director ... standing aside) Bill Barton (Maths Ed, University of Auckland) Jennifer Brown (Statistics, University of Canterbury) Mick Roberts (Applied Maths/Stats, Massey University) Geoff Whittle (Mathematics, Victoria University of Wellington) If you have any questions about progress, please contact Marston Conder (by email or phone 09-9238879). Marston will be giving up his position as Co-Director of the NZIMA in early 2012, when he takes up his James Cook Fellowship. 5. RANKING OF MATHEMATICS JOURNALS The International Mathematical Union (IMU) and the The International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) recently created a joint working group to consider the development of a method for ranking mathematical journals, and consider possible options for protecting against the inappropriate use of impact factors and similar manipulable indices for evaluating research. The working group's initial report has appeared, and is available from http://www.mathunion.org/publications/reports-recommendations. Before going ahead with any further action, the IMU and ICIAM want to explore opinions on a larger scale, and get as much input as possible from the mathematical community. With this in mind, they have initiated a "Blog on Mathematical Journals", see http://www.mathunion.org/journals, to which anyone interested can submit his/her opinion. Input from a wide range of people is being sought. 6. MILLENNIUM PRIZE PROBLEMS The Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) has arranged a series of popular media articles describing the Millennium Prize Problems, in "The Conversation" in Australia. So far, four have appeared, on: * The Navier Stokes problem http://theconversation.edu.au/millennium-prize-the-navier-stokes-existence-and-uniqueness-problem-4244 * The Hodge Conjecture http://theconversation.edu.au/millennium-prize-the-hodge-conjecture-4243 * P vs NP http://theconversation.edu.au/millennium-prize-p-vs-np-4246 * The Poincare Conjecture http://theconversation.edu.au/millennium-prize-the-poincar-conjecture-4245 Brief items on some of these problems have also been included in our six-monthly publication NZ-IMAges (http://www.nzima.org/Publications.html). See also http://www.mathsreach.org/Category:Notable_Maths_Problem on our MathsReach website. 7. LATEST ISSUE OF NZ-IMAGES GLOSSY BULLETIN The 11th issue of our colourful twice-yearly bulletin "NZ-IMAges" has just been published. This one features items on the Maths/Art nexus, the transition from high school to university mathematics, the Census, symmetries of networks and maps, operator algebras, models of chaos and manifolds, variety in statistics, and the study of matroids. A notable quote comes from Astrid an Huef, a new professor at the University of Otago, who says the number of women in pure mathematics is increasing. "I used to be the only one at some conferences, but now you need to queue for the women's bathroom." See also http://www.nzima.org/Publications.html for previous issues. 8. UPCOMING EVENTS IN THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES 6-8 December 2011, at the University of Auckland: 2011 New Zealand Mathematics Colloquium See http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/NZMC2011 15-20 December 2011, at Victoria University of Wellington: The 12th Asian Logic Conference [Invited speakers include winners of the Karp prize and the Sacks Prize] See http://msor.victoria.ac.nz/Events/ALC2011 8-13 January 2012, at Tahunanui, Nelson: 2012 NZMRI Summer Meeting, on "Random Media and Random Walks" See http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~mholmes/workshop/ 23-27 January 2012, at the University of Auckland: New Zealand Probability Workshop 2012 See http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~mholmes/workshop/auckland_2012 29 January - 2 February 2012, at Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia: ANZIAM 2012 Conference See http://anziam2012.monash.edu/ 13-17 February 2012, at Queenstown: Conference and Magma workshop on "Symmetries of Discrete Objects" See http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/~conder/SODO-2012/ 29-30 November 2012, at Dunedin: NZ Statistical Association 2012 Conference See http://www.stats.org.nz (Conference website not up yet) 24-28 June 2013, at Shanghai, China: Second Pacific Rim Mathematical Congress See http://www.primath.org/prima2013/ 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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