School of Mathematics & Applied Statistics (SMAS)

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News 2008

JB Douglas Postgraduate Award

Damian Collins, a Ph.D. student within the School, was recently awarded equal first prize in the J.B. Douglas Postgraduate Awards. Each year, the NSW Branch of the Statistical Society of Australia conducts a competition for these Awards, for which the various University Departments in NSW that teach Statistics or Econometrics may each nominate one postgraduate student. The nominees make a presentation on the work in their theses, and are judged on the content, presentation, etc. of their talks.

Damian’s presentation was entitled “Approximate likelihood approaches for estimation in generalized linear mixed models”. He compared various methods that statistical packages use to solve a very important computational problem. Damian’s work will be of considerable benefit to the developers of such products, including the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI), for which Damian works.

Damian’s thesis was supervised by Ken Russell, with very significant contributions from Professors Brian Cullis (NSW DPI) and Robin Thompson (Rothamsted Experimental Station, UK)

In the photo, Damian (on the right) is receiving his Award from Dr Eric Beh, President of the NSW Branch (and himself the holder of a Ph.D. from the University of Wollongong) [Nov 08]

ARC Discovery Grant Success

The School is proud to congratulate the following staff on their recent ARC Discovery grant awards, for projects to commence in 2009:

Prof Jim Hill and Dr Barry Cox, "Mathematical and mechanical models in nano-engineering and nano-medicine" 4 years, funding: $610,000 and
Dr Aidan Sims, "Co-universal operator algebras" 3 years, funding $186,000.

More detail about these projects is available from the Research Office page.

Aidan Sims was also successful with another external ARC discovery grant submitted through UNSW as was A/Prof Jacqui Ramagge with University of Newcastle. [Oct 08]

New staff appointments

It was recently announced that Dr Natalie Thamwattana and Dr Barry Cox, researchers in the area of Nanomechanics, have both accepted offers of continuing appointments within SMAS.

Thanks to the Dean, Prof. Joe Chicharo, the DVC-R, Prof. Judy Raper and the VC, Prof. Gerard Sutton, who have made these appointments possible, there is now a bright long-term future for the Nanomechanics group. [Oct 08]

Student's "t" party

Many researchers will know of, and use, the Student t-test in their research.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the publication of the paper that brought this test into existence, and to mark the 71st anniversary of the death of "Student" (a pseudonym used by William Sealy Gosset), staff and research students were invited to a "t" party on Thursday, 16th October. Gosset's statistical work was motivated by his employment as a brewer (eventually Master Brewer) for Guinness.

The proceedings included a brief presentation on Gosset, his life, the family of t distributions and the t- test. Guests enjoyed (Student's) Tea and Guinness cake.

Opposite is a photograph of the Guinness brewery in Dublin, taken by Ken Russell during a conference [Oct 08].

Tibra Capital prizes and scholarships

Tibra Capital have signed a four year scholarship support arrangement with UOW worth $75,000 a year.

The details are two 1st year scholarships worth $7K each and four Work Integrated Learning Scholarships (WILS) worth $15K each to be offered every year.

The scholarships are open to all students doing Mathematics degrees and the first round of WILS scholarships will be advertised shortly. The successful students will do 12 weeks work experience at Tibra Capital, over the summer break.

It is a fantastic opportunity for maths students to gain valuable work experience (and start careers) in the growing field of Mathematical Finance.

Also, Tibra Capital is sponsoring three undergraduate prizes, worth $500 each, for UoW maths students.

Thanks go to Tim Berry and Josh Quigley, from Tibra Capital, for the outstanding level of support they are providing to UoW maths students, under this program.

Trailblazers Award

UOW has just finished its 4th Trailblazer innovation competition. One of our PhD students, Guanghua Lian, was among 19 finalists and he was highly commended for his work entitled “Closed-form exact solution approach for pricing variance swaps”.

The detailed story can be read on the website:

http://media.uow.edu.au/news/UOW047187.html

Congratulations to Guanghua for this outstanding achievement.

Photo: Trailblazer award recipient Guanghua Lian, left, is seen here with Professor Song-Ping Zhu from Informatics and Andrew Davis from UniQuest Pty Ltd.

Recent achievements

Three members of the School have recently been recognised for their research activities.

David Steel - highly commended in the Outstanding Achievement in Research Partnerships Award. This award recognises the outstanding contributions that David and his research team and their partners at the Australian Bureau of Statistics are making towards research excellence.

Anne Porter - A Carrick Grant (now renamed to the Australian Learning and Teaching Council) for a project entitled "Building Leadership Capacity for Development and Sharing of Mathematics Learning Resources across Disciplines and Universities".

Philip Laird - the individual Community Engagement Award for his significant and sustained commitment to the community in multiple roles over many years.

PhD Scholarship in Ocean Wave Modelling and Marine Renewable Energy Systems

The University of Wollongong is offering an APA(I) scholarship to a full time candidate, wishing to enrol in a PhD program, starting from July 2008. The stipend for this award is $30,000 per annum for three years (tax exempt), subject to satisfactory progress.

The successful candidate will be involved in the development of a new hydrodynamic wave model to study wave interaction with an Oscillating Water Column device used to convert ocean wave energy to electricity or to desalinate seawater.

For more details, please click here.

Honour for Matt Wand

Professor Matthew Wand has been elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences, in recognition of his internationally known work in semiparametric statistics and statistical analysis for flow cytometry.

Election to the Academy is an honour that is awarded for a career that has significantly advanced, and continues to advance, the world’s scientific knowledge. [March 2008]

AMSI Summer School 2009

The School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics will host the 2009 AMSI Summer School and A/Prof. Jacqui Ramagge has been appointed Director.

It will be held over Jan-Feb 2009 and will mean that UOW will host a number of high profile national/international guest lecturers and about 100 Honours/Postgrad students from all over Australia. The Summer School allows Australia's best students to do courses which are not normally available in their home institutions. [March 08]

Linkage Grant success



Dr Mark Tranmer, University of Manchester	Dr Robert Clark, UoW
Prof David Steel, Prof Ray Chambers and Dr Robert Clark, Centre for Statistical & Survey Methodology, UoW and Dr Mark Tranmer and Dr Mark Elliot of the Centre for Census and Survey Research, University of Manchester received a grant under the Linkage International Social Sciences Collaboration between the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the UK Economic and Social Research Council, with combined funding of $390,000. Their collaborative project aims to develop methods to better determine the impact of household structures and other groups/social networks on unemployment, poverty, educational attainment, crime victimisation and poor health. Only Seven grants were funded nationally. [March 08]

ANZIAM medal awarded to Jim Hill

Professor Jim Hill was awarded the ANZIAM Medal at the annual conference held 3-7 February 2008 in Katoomba.

ANZIAM is a Division of the Australian Mathematical Society which promotes industrial and applied mathematics in Australia and New Zealand.

The medal is the premier award of the Society and confirms Jim as one of Australia's leading mathematicians. It is also further evidence that the School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics is home to some of the best mathematicians and statisticians in the country.

The award was made for Jim's outstanding achievements in applied mathematics and services to ANZIAM. The citation, which was read out at the award ceremony, is available here.

Maths in Industry Study Group

The Mathematics and Statistics Industry Study Group held at the University of Wollongong from 28 January to 1 February investigated a range of topics including the shelf life of wine to tsunami risk modelling for Australia

(from left) Dr Andrew Fowler (University of Limerick); Dr Jane Sexton, (Geoscience Australia); Associate Professor Tim Marchant (MISG director, UOW); and Dr Maureen Edwards, (Assistant Director, MISG)

Industries bring a problem that they want solved to MISG, and the mathematicians and statisticians work in groups to mathematically model the processes involved. This leads to a better understanding of the problem, and, if all goes well, a solution.

The organisations attending the conference this year are Geoscience Australia, Integral Energy, New Zealand Steel, Provisor/Food Sciences Australia, Transpower New Zealand and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Details of the industry problems are available from the MISG website
and for an article by the Illawarra Mercury about MISG see http://illawarra.yourguide.com.au/news/local/general/mixing-maths-and-fine-wine/1172519.html

Accreditation

Late in 2007, the School applied to the Australian Mathematical Society (AMS) for formal accreditation of its undergraduate mathematical programs. The assessor's report was very positive, and the AMS has approved the accreditation of our degrees for a five year period, 2008 – 2012 inclusive.

Some of the strengths that were identified in the report were: