Old News

Vacation Scholarships

See the Vacation Scholarships web page for more information. Note that applications close on September 26.

University of Sydney Postdoctoral Fellowships

Up to 10 awards (across all disciplines) will be offerred in 2009. Full information is available at
http://www.usyd.edu.au/research/fellowships/.
Note that all applicants should contact the Head of School before August 8th.

nGAME seeks Research Associate, Technical Officer and Administrative Officer

(Applications closed 27/4/2008)

Special Public Lecture by Fields Medallist Terence Tao

Structure and Randomness in the Prime Numbers, 7 February 2008, 5:30–6:30pm, in the General Lecture Theatre. More details are available.

ANZIAM 2008 at Katoomba

The Australasian Applied Mathematics Conference, ANZIAM 2008, was held in Katoomba from 3rd to 7th February 2008. See the website http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/ANZIAM2008/ for more information.

Tenure track positions in Pure Mathematics advertised

(Applications closed 20/1/2008)

Executive officer sought for Access Grid project

(Applications closed 20/1/2008)

Recent Advances in Asymptotic Probability and Statistics

The School of Mathematics and Statistics hosted a workshop entitled Recent Advances in Asymptotic Probability and Statistics, with Time Series Applications, on 10th to 12th December 2007.

Sydney students win prizes for best student talks

At the Annual Meeting of the Australian Mathematical Society Neil Saunders was awarded the B.H. Neumann prize, jointly with Norman Do from the University of Melbourne. Neil's talk was entitled "The Minimal Permutation Degree for a Class of Finite Complex Reflection Groups". Tegan Morrison was given an honourable mention for her talk entitled "Tronquee Solutions of Higher Order Painleve Equations".

And Shona Yu won the G.B. Preston Prize for her talk "The Cyclotomic Birman-Murakami-Wenzl Algebras" at the Algebra Conference of Victoria.

BH Neumann Award to Dr Bill Palmer

Bill Palmer is a recipient of a BH Neumann Award for 2007, awarded by the Australian Mathematics Trust.

Lectureship in Statistics advertised

(Applications closed 5/11/2007)

University of Sydney Postdoctoral Fellowships

(Applications now closed.)

Up to 10 awards will be offerred in 2008. Full information is available at
http://www.usyd.edu.au/research/fellowships/postdoc.shtml.
Note that all applicants should contact the Head of School well in advance of the final closing date.

The timeline is as follows:

27 July – final day for eligibility exemptions or clarifications to the Research Office;
10 August – final day for applicants to contact Head of School;
14 September – closing date for full applications and referee reports to Research Office.

Nalini Joshi to be President of Australian Mathematical Society

Professor Nalini Joshi is President-Elect of the Australian Mathematical Society.

GL07 Conference

Geometry and Lie theory: a conference marking Gus Lehrer's 60th birthday, held in July 2007. See the conference web page for more information.

Prizes and Scholarships Presentation Evening

The School's annual Prizes and Scholarships Ceremony was held on the evening of Monday 30th April 2007.

Eugene Seneta honoured by Australian Academy of Science

Emeritus Professor Eugene Seneta and was presented the Hannan Medal for 2007 at the Australian Academy of Science's annual three-day celebration of science and scientific research, Science at the Shine Dome, held on 2nd, 3rd and 4th of May 2007.

Conference marking Professor Gavin Brown's 65th birthday

On 5th and 6th of March 2007 the School of Mathematics and Statistics hosted a conference called "Expansions, inequalities and approximations", in honour of the mathematical achievements of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, Professor Gavin Brown.

For more information, see the conference web page.

Hannan Medal for 2007 awarded to Eugene Seneta

The Australian Academy of Science has awarded the Hannan Medal for 2007 to Emeritus Professor Eugene Seneta, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to research in statistical science.

Public Lecture: Ramanujan's Life and Notebooks

Srinivasa Ramanujan was born in Southern India in 1887 and died there in 1920, aged 32. He had only one year of college, but his mathematical discoveries, made mostly in isolation, have made him one of the last century's most influential mathematicians.

An account of Ramanujan's life will be presented in a public lecture by Professor Bruce Berndt of the University of Illinois, at 5:00 pm on Thursday October 27 2006, in the Eastern Avenue Lecture Theatre (grid reference K19 on the campus map).

Professor Berndt is the Australian Mathematical Society's Mahler Lecturer for 2005.

Mathematics and Statistics ARC success

Several members of the School of Mathematics and Statistics have obtained funding from the Australian Research Council for research projects commencing in 2007.

(People marked * are not members of the School.)

A.A. Markov, Markov Chains, and Google

A public lecture by Emeritus Professor Eugene Seneta FAA, Thursday 24 August 2006, 6pm in the Eastern Avenue Lecture Theatre, University of Sydney. More details are available here.

Vacation Scholarships 2006 - 2007

Talented undergraduates are invited to apply for vacation scholarships in mathematics or statistics. See the vacation scholarships web page for more information. (Applications now closed.)

Andrew Mathas awarded Australian Mathematical Society Medal for 2006

Congratulations to Andrew Mathas on the award of the Australian Mathematical Society Medal for 2006. The medal is awarded each year for distinguished research in the mathematical sciences, and is presented at the opening session of the Annual Meeting of the Society. Here is the citation from the medal presentation ceremony.

Ben Wilson gives best talk by a student

Ben Wilson has been awarded the BH Neumann prize for the best talk by a student at the Annual Meeting of Australian Mathematical Society. There were 36 student talks altogether, and the judges praised their quality. Ben's talk was entitled "Highest-weight theory for Lie algebras of truncated currents".

Emeritus Professor Seneta awarded 2006 Moyal Medal

Eugene Seneta, Emeritus Professor of Statistics, has been awarded the Moyal Medal for 2006. The Moyal Medal recognizes distinguished contributions to research in mathematics, physics or statistics.

More information abut the Moyal Medal can be found at http://www.maths.mq.edu.au/medal/overview.html.

Prof Cannon awarded 2006 Jenks Prize for Excellence in Software Engineering

Prof John J. Cannon has been awarded the 2006 Richard Dimick Jenks Prize for Excellence in Software Engineering applied to Computer Algebra, for the creation of Magma.

More information about the prize can be found on the prize web site at http://www.cis.udel.edu/~caviness/jenks/.

PDE conference in Prof Dancer's honour

The University of New England is hosting a conference entitled "Recent Advances in Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations" marking the 60th birthday of Professor Norman Dancer. For further information, see the conference web page.

John Mack recognized in Queen's Birthday Honours

Congratulations to John Mack who has been appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.

The citation reads "For service to mathematics education, particularly in the area of curriculum development, to the arts, and to a range of academic professional organisations."

Prizes and Scholarships

The list of students awarded prizes or scholarships for Mathematics and Statistics based on work completed in 2005 is now available here.

Recent appointments

Dr Jennifer Chan, formerly of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science of The University of Hong Kong, has recently commenced as a lecturer in Statistics.
Dr Rafał Kulik, formerly of the University of Wrocław, has recently commenced as a lecturer in Statistics.
Dr Emma Carberry, formerly a C.L.E. Moore Instructor at MIT, has recently commenced as a lecturer in Pure Mathematics.
Dr Clio Cresswell has joined the School as a Senior Lecturer, on a one year appointment shared by the College of Sciences and Technology, the Faculty of Science and the School. Clio will be involved with the development of the new BST degree, and with high school outreach.
Dr Anthony Henderson will commence as a lecturer in Pure Mathematics at the completion of his current postdoctoral fellowship,
Dr Leon Poladian will become a senior lecturer in Applied Mathematics at the completion of his current ARC Professorial Fellowship,
Dr Martin Wechselberger, formerly of the Mathematical Biosciences Institute at Ohio State University, has recently commenced as a lecturer in Applied Mathematics,
Dr Jean Yang, formerly of the Lung Biology Center of the University of California, San Francisco, has taken up a Lectureship in Statistics (Bioinformatics).

SUTMEG Seminar

The Sydney University Tertiary Mathematics Education Group held a seminar on the morning of Tuesday 6 December 2005, in Carslaw Lecture Theatre 173. The speakers were Deborah Hughes Hallett (University of Arizona & Harvard) and David Easdown (University of Sydney). See also the SUTMEG Web Page.

Prof Dancer listed as "highly cited"

The ISI Web of Knowledge lists Professor Norman Dancer as a highly cited researcher. One of Professor Dancer's papers, with co-author Shusen Yan, heads the list of most viewed articles in the journal Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations.

Two new appointments in Statistics

Dr Jennifer Chan, currently a lecturer in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science of The University of Hong Kong, has accepted appointment as a lecturer in Statistics. Dr Chan obtained her M. Phil. at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and her PhD at the University of New South Wales.

Dr Rafał Kulik has also accepted appointment as a lecturer in Statistics. Dr Kulik, who obtained his PhD at the University of Wrocław in 2002, currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Ottawa as well as an academic position at Wrocław.

Public lecture

From Babylon to Silicon Valley, an illustrated history of mathematics. Professor Bill Casselman, Eastern Avenue Lecture Theatre, 27th July 2005.

College award to David Easdown

Senior Lecturer Dr David Easdown has been awarded the 2005 College of Sciences and Technology Award for Excellence in Higher Degree Supervision.

Simon Singh talk a smash hit

It is a long time since an audience in the Stephen Roberts Lecture Theatre has enjoyed a lecture so much. Simon Singh, author of the best sellers Fermat's Last Theorem and The Code Book, as well as the recently published Big Bang, entertained, amused and informed a packed house for 50 minutes, conclusively demonstrating that good science is not dull.

In thanking Simon on behalf of the University, Senate member and Sydney media identity Adam Spencer urged academics to do more to publicize their work. Sadly, most of us are not as good at it as Simon Singh!

Sydney Applied Mathematics graduate promoted to Professor at Kent

Dr Elizabeth Mansfield, who took her PhD at the University of Sydney in 1991, has recently been promoted to Professor in the Institute of Mathematics, Statistics & Actuarial Science at University of Kent, UK. Her supervisor at Sydney was A/Prof Ted Fackerell (now retired).

BIG BANG – the history of the universe in 60 minutes

A public lecture by Simon Singh, 24th May 2005, Stephen Roberts Lecture Theatre.

Prizes and Scholarships Evening

The School's annual Prizes and Scholarships presentation ceremony was held on 26th April 2005. The full list of winners of the various awards, with photos taken on the evening, is available. And there are some extra photos as well.

Article by Professor Seneta is one of the "most downloaded"

The journal Historia Mathematica reports that Professor Eugene Seneta's paper "Mathematics, religion and Marxism in the Soviet Union in the 1930s" is one of their most frequently downloaded papers.

Web Quizzes using LaTeX

Senior Lecturer Andrew Mathas has won a Faculty of Science Teaching Award for a system he has developed for producing interactive web based quizzes. This system is now being used within the School of Mathematics and Statistics and also by the Faculty of Business and Economics.

More information is available on the manual page.

4000 Years of Mathematics in Images

A public lecture by Professor Bill Casselman, Stephen Roberts Lecture Theatre, 3 August 2004.

ARC Fellowship for Gus Lehrer

Congratulations to Professor Gus Lehrer, who has been awarded an ARC Professorial Fellowship.

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