The

Australian

Mathematical

Society

(Inc)

Reports for

the

one-hundred-and-twenty-first Council Meeting 2016

Reports on meetings Report from Vice-President (Annual Conferences) Reports from the Society’s subcommittees Reports from Special Interest Groups Report from NCMS Report from AustMS Public Ocer Award committee reports

Page 1 of 87 ANZMC8—59th Australian Mathematical Society Annual Meeting Monday September 28 to Thursday October 1, 2015. Vladimir Ejov September 23, 2016

The 59th Australian Mathematical Society hosted by the School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics and Statistics of Flinders University, from Monday September 28 to October, 1, 2015. Thirteen plenary speakers in 2015 - nine international and 4 from - are internationally renowned in their respective fields, including two Fields medalists. Plenary speakers represented a cross-section of mathematics across the world today. Four plenary speakers in 2015 were women. The plenary speakers were Martino Bardi (University of Padova), Manjul Bhargava (Princeton), Aurore Delaigle (Uni- versity of Melbourne), James Demmel (University of California, Berkeley), Jerzy Filar (Flinders University), Clement Hongler (EPFL Switzerland), Frances Kirwan (), Frances Kuo (University of New South Wales), Michael Shelley (New York University), Terence Tao (University of Californiq, Los Ange- les), Ruth Williams (University of California, San Diego), Konstantin Zarembo (Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics), Wadim Zudilin (Newcastle). There were 362 registered mathematicians registered for a four-day program cov- ering a wide range of topics in pure and applied mathematics and statistics. There were 20 special sessions comprising 282 presentations including 13 keynote speakers. The special session organisers worked hard and e↵ectively as they created a high quality meeting. Many of their e↵orts were inspirational and created confidence that Aust MS annual meetings are of consistently high quality. The meeting was preceded by the AustMS Early Career Researcher Workshop held at the new Tonsley campus at Flinders University the Melbourne Parkview Hotel in St Kilda with 75 registered participants, It was organised by Norman Do (Monash University), Pouya Baniasadi (Flinders University) and Dale Ward (Flinders University) and included six invited speakers. The evening program consisted of social events and public lectures. On Sun- day evening the Women in Mathematics Dinner with 82 registered participants was hosted at Tonsley building, Flinders University by the Women in Mathemat- ics Special Interest Group of the Australian Mathematical Society and funded and supported by an ARC Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship to Professor . On Monday evening there was a Reception at Adelaide Town Hall, followed by public lecture by Terence Tao and Musical Recital conducted by Jan Slo- vak and Ray Booth. On Tuesday night a simultaneous chess competition was held at Flinders University featuring Australia ranked 2 female player Giang Nguyen. The Conference Dinner was held on Wednesday evening at Stamford Glenelg Hotel. The indigenous opening address was read by Auntie Georgina Williams. The conference was opened by the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science Christ- pher Pine, followed by Flinders University Vice Chancellor Colin Stirling. Also 1

Page 2 of 87 2 participated SA Government representative Katrine Hildyard, SA MP for Elder Annabel Digance and Aust MS President Tim Marchant. This opening ceremony was followed by the announcement of the award of the Australian Mathematical Society Medal to Scott Morrison by Tim Marchant. The talk by the medal winner was given on Wednesday October, 30 during morning plenary session. There were 86 registered students at the conference, many competing for one of the student prizes for best talk. The winners were Matthew Tam (University of Newcastle) for the talk ”Reconstruction Algorithms for Blind Ptychographic Imaging” and and Murray Neuzerling (La Trobe University) for the talk ”‘Using algebra to avoid robots”. The Mathematics Education Special Session was extremely successful. It was one of the largest special sessions at the meeting with 26 registered participants. In combination with the recently created Mathematics Education Special Interest Group of the AustMS this bodes well for the Mathematics Education Special Session in future years. The conference had an income of $??? and expenditure of $??? including re- payment of seed money back to the Australian Mathematical Society. It gratefully received support from the Australian Mathematical Society, the Flinders University, MASCOS and AMSI. I would like to thank all of those who helped to make Aust MS 2015 such a great success. In particular, thanks to the Program Committee members, the special session organisers, the local organisers, the ECR workshop organisers, the sta↵and student volunteers in the School of Computer Science, Engineering Mathematics at Flinders University, John Banks for setting up the registration system; all played a vital role in the smooth running of the conference. Special thanks to the Australian Mathematical Society and Flinders University for supporting this conference in various ways. The next annual meeting is being hosted by ANU. I wish John Urbas and his team all the best in their preparations for the 60th Annual Meeting.

Page 3 of 87 The 2015 Early Career Workshop of the AustMS, Budget Report 27 October 2016 Aims The Early Career Workshop (ECW) of the Australian Mathematical Society (AustMS) is intended for graduate students and early career academics working in the mathematical sciences. The workshop brings these people together to discuss issues concerning ECRs in the mathematical sciences and to obtain valuable career advice through various presentations, panel discussions, and other activities. Organisers Michael Coons (University of Newcastle, AustMS Early Career Representative) Norman Do (Monash University, AustMS Early Career Representative) Dale Ward (Flinders University, local organiser) Dates and Host Flinders University hosted the event at their Tonsley Park Campus. The upshot of this is that they processed all of the necessary catering payments for the ECW and (presumably) invoiced AMSI and AustMS after the event. Demand The number of participants for the ECW has been relatively high in recent years, with 57 registered participants in 2012, 64 in 2013, and 73 in 2014. Recall that starting in 2015, the standard ECWs will now be held only in even years. As 2015 was an odd year, it was decided that a shorter one-day workshop would be held. As this was the first ‘short workshop’, we could only assume that the demand would be constant, so assumed around 70 participants. We planned, and to the best of my knowledge paid, for that number. Format We followed a similar format to the previous workshops, but with three speakers. They were Bj¨orn R¨u↵er (Newcastle), Anne Thomas (Sydney), and Timothy Trudgian (ANU). During the forum, we were fortunate to have Scott Morrison (ANU) join us. The topic was ‘Research’ as broadly defined. Budget summary The budget for the 2015ECW was a real issue. No preliminary budget was given or agreed upon; the funding was only agreed upon as we were negotiating with caterers. There is no total amount approved, but only the bid for $44 per person for catering and a $600 budget for dinner. For dinner, because of the Sunday workshop, there was a huge overlap with the Women in Maths Dinner, so I just took the remaining people to a local pub. We were fortunate that all of the speakers and organisers had other funds, so that the ECW did not incur any costs for speakers other than gifts—a bottle of South Australian shiraz for each of them (3).

Item Cost Catering (excluding dinner, 70 people) 3080.00 Dinner at local pub (15 people) 347.00 Gifts 92.97 Total 3519.97

Final comment After dealing with the budgets and organising this even for one-day (really only a ‘fat half day’), I don’t think that these smaller odd-year workshops are worth it. We had many people sign up and not many come, probably about 50 of the 70 showed up. The quality of the conversations was good, but everything was too rushed with ECW the afternoon before the main meeting. In the future, I suggest putting all of the e↵ort into the even-year main ECWs.

1 Page 4 of 87 SECOND EARLY CAREER WORKSHOP OF THE AUSTRALIAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY HELD IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE ANZIAM CONFERENCE

6 – 7 FEBRUARY 2016, QT CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA

Melanie Roberts, Roslyn Hickson, Leesa Sidhu

PURPOSE The purpose of the Early Career Workshop (ECW) is to support Early Career Mathematicians (ECMs) in their career development, through an event that fosters networking and professional development, as well as to encourage membership of ANZIAM and the Society and participation in the ANZIAM conference.

TARGET AUDIENCE The Early Career Workshop is open to members of AustMS, or the ANZIAM division through the New Zealand Mathematics Society, within 5 years of conferral of their PhD. This includes current research higher degree candidates. Career interruptions are recognised and considered on a case-by-case basis.

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ECW The ECW arose from a proposal made at the 51st Annual AustMS meeting at La Trobe University in 2007. It was suggested that an annual workshop be held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting.

In 2014 the ECW was held in conjunction with the ANZIAM meeting for the first time. The ECW now alternates between the ANZIAM meeting and AustMS meeting on a bi- annual basis, with both workshops being held in conjunction with the conferences held in even years. The locations of past meetings are as follows:

Page 5 of 87 • 2009 Adelaide, South Australia • 2010 Caloundra, • 2011 Wollongong, New South Wales • 2012 Ballarat, Victoria • 2013 Leura, New South Wales • 2014 Rotorua, New Zealand [first ANZIAM workshop] • 2014 Melbourne, Victoria • 2016 Canberra, Australian Capital Territory [second ANZIAM workshop]

ORGANISING COMMITTEE • Melanie Roberts, IBM Research – Australia (Chair and ANZIAM Early Career Representative) • Roslyn Hickson, IBM Research – Australia (immediate past ANZIAM Early Career Representative) • Leesa Sidhu, UNSW Canberra (local organiser)

PROGRAM The ECW was held over the Saturday and Sunday immediately prior to the ANZIAM conference. The program consisted of three sessions with two panels, with a focus on understanding career opportunities in academia and industry and developing skills to improve opportunities for current students and recent graduates. The Saturday afternoon session focused on developing research careers in academia and industry, with speakers Prof. Peter Taylor and Dr Jane Sexton, including a panel discussion and a practical activity. Sunday consisted of two sessions, with Dr Adelle Coster and Dr Michael Plank speaking on establishing collaborations, and Dr Steve Barry and Dr Melanie Roberts on interviewing for technical positions in industry with a practical activity. The panel sessions involved all speakers and organisers as well as Ms Alexandra Hogan. Please see the attached program for complete details of the workshop.

ORGANISERS’ COMMENTS The Early Career Workshop was a successful event, bringing together early career mathematicians for two half-days of networking and professional development. The informal feedback we received from participants during the workshop and ANZIAM

Page 6 of 87 conference was positive, as was the feedback from a survey completed by participants (see section on Participant Feedback). Below is a selection of comments that demonstrate the value of the workshop to participants:

“Without exception every session was immensely valuable, and the workshop was very well organised.”

“It was very informative. I learnt a lot about future career choices and about life in academia and industry in general.”

“You can have an academic career and still have a life”

“People with different lifestyle choices/priorities can take different career paths and be successful -- there is no 'one way' to be a good researcher.”

“Research and an academic career should be fun!”

“There is a lot of variety to be had in an academic career”

“People with different research backgrounds can bring really different perspectives to the table”

“There are many pathways, and many interesting problems to solve”

In response to feedback from previous workshops, we sought to include speakers at all stages of their career and from a variety of backgrounds. In particular, we considered gender balance, inclusion of mathematicians from industry and academia, and a diversity of career paths. This diversity was appreciated by the participants, as reflected in the comments of two participants:

“I particularly enjoyed having a range of experience levels on the panel - from PhD candidates through to professors. And the career path of each speaker was varied and different, allowing me to envisage my own career path in many different ways!”

“This year's mix was great, i.e. ECR to professors and almost equal academia/industry!”

Page 7 of 87 Participant numbers were lower than expected (at 24 participants), especially in comparison with previous years, and only one student from New Zealand attended. Although the registration site opened early and registrations were initially strong, they did not continue as expected. It is suggested that in future the organising committee liaises with the ANZIAM Conference committee to enable registration for the workshop in conjunction with the conference registration. It is not well understood why registrations were low, however we did receive feedback that some did not attend due to the additional night’s cost in accommodation, while other PhD students thought the workshop was not for them. It is recommended that in future care is given to the description of the workshop to ensure that postgraduate students are directly mentioned, along with other ECMs.

We feel that holding the workshop prior to the conference was advantageous for the participants, as they were able to put into practice what they learnt at the workshop. This also made the conference more welcoming, particularly for those new to ANZIAM. Participants commented that they “[felt] more confident”, were “more relaxed" about their presentation and “talked to a wider variety of people” as a result of attending the workshop. One participant indicated that they applied for an ECR grant as a direct result of their workshop participation.

The majority of participants were PhD students, with a small number of postdoctoral researchers and other ECMs. While the program is very valuable to current research higher degree students, we feel that ECMs who have completed their studies are not being well served through the current program, which should be considered further.

FINANCIAL REPORT Thanks to the financial support from AMSI, AustMS and ANZIAM, together with presenters self-funding all or part of their attendance, the workshop was able to be offered free of charge to all participants. The final budget is detailed below:

Venue Fees $1000.00* Catering – venue $2800.00* Catering - dinner $510.90

Page 8 of 87 Gifts – presenters $304.30 Accommodation – presenters $625.00 Chocolates – participants $12.69 Total $5252.89

*The venue fees, catering at the venue, as well as expenses for audio equipment and printing of name tags were all absorbed within the ANZIAM 2016 budget.

Accommodation for presenters:

• $220.00 for one night’s accommodation for Melanie Roberts • $220.00 for one night’s accommodation for Roslyn Hickson • $185.00 for one night’s accommodation for Adelle Coster

The committee thanks all presenters for self-funding their travel to the workshop, and Peter Taylor and Michael Plank for self-funding their accommodation.

PARTICIPANT FEEDBACK Feedback from participants was overall positive. The venue and facilities were rated well by participants, and overall all sessions were found to be of interest and relevant to participants as individuals, and felt to be relevant and of interest to a general audience of Early Career Mathematicians.

A summary of key feedback points is included below, with a full summary of all responses provided in the attached document.

The workshop was highly rated overall, with all respondents rating the workshop Good (42%) or Very Good (58%). The mix of academic and industry presenters were well received, with the majority of respondents indicating that they found the talks interesting and useful to themselves, but also relevant to people seeking a career in both industry and academia.

In the survey participants were asked to comment on the key message of the presenters. As the survey happened after the conference, we feel that the responses received demonstrate that strong messages were delivered by the presenters, and that the same presenter appealed to different participants in a variety of ways.

Page 9 of 87 Respondents were asked to indicate topics that would be of interest in future workshops, as well as the mix of speakers they would like to see. Their comments included:

Topics:

• How to write a grant application. Maybe done in the same style as the job applications thing... • I'd be interested in a presentation on fellowships versus postdoctoral positions, as well as something about applying for research positions overseas. • Work/life balance when trying to build a career? • Same as this year, maybe more on developing a professional identity • It might be good to get some tips on giving a conference presentation - not really obvious stuff, but more subtle tips from people that are particularly good at them.

Speakers:

• I'd prefer more academics but for the whole audience you got a good mix. • I'd be interested in hearing from a speaker who has pursued a teaching-based academic career. • Much like this workshop, a mix of ECR and more senior researchers in academia and research industry -- perhaps also representatives from non-research industry. • This year's mix was great, i.e. ECR to professors and almost equal academia/industry! • Same as this year • I think the mix was ok at ECW2016. Some thought about who from industry might have useful experiences and give a good presentation might be worthwhile.

Page 10 of 87 REPORT ON PREPARATION FOR AUSTMS 2016 ANNUAL MEETING: AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITY MONDAY, 5 DECEMBER TO THURSDAY 8 DECEMBER, 2016 Second Report 27 October 2016

Preparations are proceeding on schedule. The local organising committee comprises Vigleik Angeltweit, Joan Licata, Lucia Lu (who has taken over from Brittany Joyce who is on maternity leave) and John Urbas (conference director).

• Two plenary speakers, Miranda Cheng and Simon Levin, have withdrawn, Miranda because of a new baby, and Simon because of knee replacement surgery. The eleven remaining plenary speakers have confirmed they will attend. Accommodation has been arranged on campus. The plenary lectures will be held in the main lecture theatre of the Manning Clark Centre, which seats approximately 500. Refreshments and lunch will be served in the Manning Clark foyer.

• This year, instead of a public lecture, Terry Speed will give a special memorial lecture on the life and work of Peter Hall, to be held on the evening of Tuesday 6 December. This time has been chosen to allow participants of the Australian Statistical Conference 2016 to attend. This conference will be held in Canberra at the same time as AustMS 2016, so it is an appropriate joint event to commemorate Peter’s work. Jeannie Hall has accepted an invitation to attend.

• As of today there are 250 registrants. We expect to the final number will be around 350 to 400.

• 21 special sessions, a poster session, and an education afternoon have been arranged. So far there are about 140 registered talks. We have booked 17 lecture rooms of various capacities for the special sessions. The ANU has generously agreed to waive the room hiring fees, resulting in a saving of over $20,000.

• The Early Career Workshop will be held at the Academy of Science on Saturday/Sunday 3-4 December.

• The Women in Mathematics Dinner will be held in the Great Hall of University House. As well as $5000 provided by Nalini Joshi, the WIMSIG has secured $2000 in funding from the Australian Signals Directorate.

• There will be a reception at Fellows Garden at University House on Monday 5 December, starting around 6pm. In case of wet weather, the reception will be in the Great Hall.

• The conference dinner will be at QT on Wednesday evening, 7 December. This is a ten minute walk from the ANU campus. The dinner will be held jointly with the Australian Statistical Society, so we expect it to be a somewhat bigger event than usual. It is difficult to give an estimate of final attendance at this stage because registrations from the statisticians are rather low so far.

Page 11 of 87 • The council meeting on Sunday 4 December will be held in University House.

• The AGM is scheduled for Wednesday 7 December during the lunch break.

• AMSI is organising a barbecue on the afternoon of 8 December at the conclusion of the meeting.

• The income from registrations currently stands at around $102,000. The Australian Signals Directorate has offered an additional $3,000 (this is still to be confirmed). I have only today learned of the capitation fee. Assuming our final registration numbers and income are similar to last year’s, I expect we will be able to return at least $35,000 to the society.

John Urbas AustMS 2016 Conference Director 27 October 2016

Page 12 of 87 The 2016 Early Career Workshop of the AustMS Pre-Meeting Update 4 Novemember 2016 The Early Career Workshop (ECW) will be held on the weekend of 3–4 December 2016, preceding the 60th Annual Meeting of the AustMS at the Australian National University. Organisers Michael Coons (University of Newcastle, AustMS Early Career Representative) Norman Do (Monash University, AustMS Early Career Representative) George Willis (University of Newcastle, Fellow of AAS)1 Host The ECW will be held at the Shine Dome of the Australian Academy of Sciences. Participants will be housed at Burton and Garran Hall on the ANU campus. Financial and planning assistance is being provided by the MSI at the ANU. John Urbas and the MSI sta↵have been extremely helpful; the ECW has benefitted extremely from the help and care of the MSI sta↵and the sta↵of Burton and Garran Hall. Demand The number of participants for the ECW has been relatively high in recent years, with 57 registered participants in 2012, 64 in 2013, and 73 in 2014. We expect interest in the 2016 ECW to be smaller than that of the Melbourne ECW (2014) given that the 2016 AustMS will not be held in a major city. Our preliminary budget (below) is based on the expectation of 65 participants: 57 PhDs/ECRs, 6 speakers and 2 organisers. Format We will invite six speakers in total, comprising three early career researchers and three career advice speakers. As in the previous two years, the early career researchers will be encouraged to give presenta- tions on their research with the backdrop of their own career trajectories. The theme of the workshop is “addressing your audience.” The speakers are

Danesh Jogia (DSTG) • Masoud Kamgarpour (Queensland) • Matthew Kennedy (Waterloo, ECR Plenary) • Giang Nguyen (Adelaide) • (Sydney) • Aidan Sims (Wollongong) • Budget summary We were granted 18,000AUD, subject to submission of a detailed proposal to be submitted later. As of now, we are under budget, but last minute things may come up and put us closer to our budget limit. We are keeping a detailed list of expenditures with the help of Lucia Lu (MSI Research Administrator).

1Prof. Willis has been added to the list of organisers for the sole benefit of getting a 25% discount on the venue—members of the Academy are entitled to this discount.

1 Page 13 of 87 REPORT ON PREPARATION FOR AUSTMS 2017 ANNUAL MEETING: TUESDAY 12th - FRIDAY 15th DECEMBER, 2017

This report covers preparations for the AustMS 2017, to be held at Macquarie University Tuesday 12th to Friday 15th December.

The Program Committee was formed in late 2015 and comprises: Julie Clutterbuck (Monash University) Xuan Duong (Macquarie University) Gary Froyland (UNSW) Vladimir Gaitsgory (Macquarie University) Jan De Gier (Melbourne) Giang Nguyen () (University of Western Australia) Jacqui Ramagge () Paul Smith (Macquarie University) Ole Warnaar ()

After correspondence with a number of suggested speakers to ascertain availability, the final list of individuals who have accepted invitations to give Plenary Lectures is as follows.

International Speakers Georgia Benkart University of Wisconsin– Representation theory and Lie algebras Madison, USA Young-Ju Choie Pohang University of Automorphic forms, automorphic Science and Technology, representations, number theory Ivan Corwin Columbia University, Integrable probability USA Helene Frankowska Université Pierre et Non-linear control, viability theory, set-valued Marie Curie, Paris 6, analysis Steve Hofmann University of Missouri, Harmonic analysis USA Andrei Okounkov Columbia University, Representation theory USA Maryna Viazovska Humboldt University of Number theory, discrete Berlin,

National Speakers Yihong Du New England Non-linear PDEs Catherine Greenhill UNSW Graph theory, random algorithms Phil Pollet Queensland Applied probability Michael Small UWA Complex systems Hans De Sterk Monash Computational mathematics

Page 14 of 87 We consider this choice of speakers provides a good balance of genders, research fields and geography. In addition there is the ANZIAM speaker for AustMS-2017, to be advised by the ANZIAM Invited Speakers Committee shortly.

The local organising committee so far comprises Paul Smith (co-Director), Xuan Duong (co-Director), Richard Garner (Treasurer), Steve Lack (Secretary), Christine Hale (Administrator), Ji Li, Ross Moore (Website & IT), Frank Valckenborgh, and Elena Vynogradova. Additional members will be recruited towards the end of the year, as required.

Local arrangements are progressing well. We are pleased to report that appropriate rooms for the Plenary Sessions and for the parallel sessions have been secured on campus. The Macquarie Theatre (capacity approximately 500) is suitable for the plenary lectures, and 20 other nearby lecture rooms suitable for parallel sessions (each of capacity 50-60) are now reserved for the duration of the conference; one room for the AustMS Council business meeting on Monday 11th is likewise secured.

Arrangements for bank accounts, the creation of the webpage, the conference dinner will commence soon; arrangements for accommodation, advertising posters, the ECR workshop immediately preceding the conference AustMS 2016, the Women in Mathematics event, and other planning matters will start late this year and early 2017.

Paul Smith & Xuan Duong AustMS 2017 Conference Directors 27 October 2016

Page 15 of 87 1. Report to Council from the Vice President (Annual Conferences) 2016

Matter for Discussion by the Council. I would like to request the Council to discuss the matter of having an ECR representative on the Program Committees of the AustMS meetings.

The name of the ECR member of the PC of the AustMS meeting in the year x+2 can be provided by the PC of the ECR Workshop in the year x.

60th Annual Meeting, 2016. The meeting is to be held at ANU in Canberra from 5 to 8 December. The preparation for the meeting is well on track, and all relevant information available at this stage (plenary speakers, the conference program, etc.) can be found on the conference webpage.

I would like to thank the Conference Director John Urbas and all members of the Local Organizing Committee for their time and efforts. I would also like to thank John Banks for his role as the conference webpage carer .

Note that this year, instead of a public lecture, we will have Peter Hall memorial lecture that will be delivered by Terry Speed.

Note also that this year AustMS meeting will be accompanied by two satellite Mathsfest Workshops one before the meeting (Advances in Ergodic Theory, Hyperbolic Dynamics and Statistical Laws, 28 Nov – 2 Dec) and one straight after the meeting (Nonlinear and Geometric Partial Differential Equations, 9-13 Dec).

61th Annual Meeting, 2017. The 61th Annual meeting will be held at Macquarie University from 12 to 15 December 2017. The Directors of the meeting are Xuan Duong and Paul Smith.

The Program Committee has selected twelve plenary speakers. They have been invited and they have accepted the invitations. These are: Georgia Benkart (Wisconsin, USA), Ivan Corwin (Columbia University, USA), Young-Ju Choie (South Korea), Hans De Sterk (Monash), Yihong Du (New England), Helene Frankowska (Paris 6, France), Catherine Greenhill (UNSW), Steve Hofmann (University of Missouri, USA), Andrei Okounkov (Columbia University, USA), Phil Pollet (UQ),Michael Small (UWA), Maryna Viazovska (Humboldt University of Berlin). We also expect to receive the name of the ANZIAM plenary presenter soon.

62nd Annual Meeting, 2018. Subject to the approval by the Council, the 62th Annual Meeting of the AustMS will be held at the University of Adelaide in December 4-7, 2018. The AustMS Steering Committee has pre-approved Dr Thomas Leistner as the Director of the meeting and ratified the composition of the Program Committee. The names of the PC members are as follows: Ben Burton (UQ), Alan Carey (ANU), Julie Clutterbuck (Monash), Alice Devillers (UWA), Peter Forrester (Melbourne), Gary Froyland (UNSW), Vlad. Gaitsgory (Maquarie), Thomas Leistner (Adelaide), Giang Nguyen (Adelaide), Jacqui Ramagge (Sydney), Lesley Ward (UniSA)

Vlad Gaitsgory, VP(AC)

Page 16 of 87 Report for AustMS Council on the activities of the Standing Committee on Mathematics Education in 2016

The members of the standing committee in 2015/2016 are: Birgit Loch (Chair; Swinburne University of Technology) Amie Albrecht (South Australia; University of South Australia) Philip Charlton (New South Wales; Charles Sturt University) Heather Lonsdale (Western Australia; Curtin University) Lilia Ferrario (Australian Capital Territory; Australian National University) Des Fitzgerald (Tasmania; University of Tasmania), now Kumudini Dharmadasa (Tasmania; University of Tasmania) Deb King (Victoria; ) Barbara Maenhaut (Queensland; University of Queensland) Katherine Seaton (AustMS PD unit coordinator, Latrobe University)

Activities in 2016: The committee met twice via Skype over the year (in November 2015 and June 2016), with another meeting planned in November 2016, and will continue to meet online twice a year. Items discussed and resulting activities:

• Standing Committee membership changes. Council voted to include the coordinator of the AustMS PD unit as a member on the Standing Committee, so we welcomed Katherine Seaton to the Committee. Alice Devillers (UWA) stepped down from her role as WA representative at the end of her term, and was replaced by Heather Lonsdale (Curtin University). Heather was welcomed to the Committee. Des Fitzgerald announced his retirement from the Committee. Kumudini Dharmadasa has just commenced as Tasmania representative on the Committee. We would like to thank both Alice and Des for their contributions to the Standing Committee over the last years.

• Revision of the Program Review scheme. Last year, interest was expressed by Committee members to involve the Standing Committee in this revision, as the Program Review was seen as very important particularly for universities with small mathematics departments. In addition, twice, the Standing Committee Chair was approached this year by representatives from Mathematics Departments, requesting information on expected standards for a mathematics degree, showing the importance of re-establishing the program review scheme. We are awaiting further advice on next steps from the new Chair of the Program Review working party, Tim Marchant.

• Accreditation as teaching fellow. Teacher accreditation was discussed at last year's AustMS Council meeting as a direction Council would like to investigate further. Katherine explained the history of trying to establish such an accreditation, based on the PD unit. Some universities are allowing it as a unit in their graduate certificate of teaching and learning. Successful participants are also given a certificate. No formal TAustMS or similar accreditation currently exists. The Committee considered the possibilities of adopting the UK’s Higher Education Academy teaching fellowship scheme and the HERDSA scheme. The Chair discussed the differences between the two schemes with A/Prof Chris Tisdell from UNSW, who has experience with both schemes. The HERDSA fellowship is very difficult to achieve, there are only about 30-40 fellows in total, and it is a laborious process. Teaching excellence is the main criterion. The HEA (UK) fellowships allow accreditation at different levels, and are awarded on the basis of demonstrated competence. This might be more appropriate for AustMS teaching accreditation. Some universities are already using the HEA scheme for their staff, e.g. the ANU: https://services.anu.edu.au/training/anu-educational-fellowship-scheme. The Standing Committee plans to form a small working party to put forward a proposal to Council, for example based on existing accreditation (HEA), modified accreditation, the AustMS PD unit, or following a completely different path.

Page 17 of 87 • The ALTC/AustMS PD unit. This unit was funded by an ALTC grant in 2009-2011 under the lead of Leigh Wood, supported by the AustMS. It is hosted on the AustMS wiki, and coordinated by Katherine Seaton. Enrolment is free for any member of the society. This unit is the responsibility of the Standing Committee after it was handed over by Leigh Wood last year. o Unit content update. The material is getting out of date as it was written 6 years ago and teaching approaches and technology have moved on. Enrolments have been low, as many mathematicians who start the unit find they are too busy with other tasks, and at many universities this unit cannot be taken as an elective in graduate certificates for learning and teaching or to replace teaching induction courses. A funding application was submitted to the Office for Learning and Teaching in 2015 for a $30,000 extension grant, with co-funding approved by AustMS Council of $10,000, to increase participation in the unit by updating its content, undertaking an active advertising campaign, and taking a national approach to embedding it in graduate certificates of teaching and learning. Supporting letters were included from the Australian Council of Deans of Science (ACDS) and the AustMS. The project team consisted of Birgit Loch as Chair of the Standing Committee and member of the original project team, Katherine Seaton as the unit coordinator, Diane Donovan as a member of the original project, Lilia Ferrario, Philip Charlton and Amie Albrecht as Standing Committee members. Unfortunately, this bid was unsuccessful. Since then, a proposal was approved by Council to provide $8,000 to undertake the urgent updating of the content, revisiting of the description of teaching technologies and inclusion of recent approaches to teaching such as blended learning and the flipped classroom. Katherine Seaton and Birgit Loch are leading this update which is anticipated to be completed by mid-2017. o Recruitment strategy. Once the material is updated, a better advertising strategy needs to be found as emailing via the AustMS and ACDS lists appears to have little effect. As a first step, we are considering to hand out flyers at relevant mathematical conferences in December including the AustMS conference), and present at the Heads of Mathematics meeting in February on the benefits of participation in the unit to mathematics lecturers and tutors. Another approach would be a “naming competition” to raise awareness of the unit, and give it a more appealing title.

• Induction unit for ANU science tutors. Lilia Ferrario and her ANU colleague Beth Beckman have extracted parts from the AustMS PD unit that are relevant to tutors. This material has been used for the first time in semester 1 this year at the ANU to induct new tutors, in combination with face to face induction. This program is currently being evaluated. Standing Committee members reported a range of approaches to tutor training, often non-discipline based. This tutor unit was seen as useful beyond the ANU, or at least parts of the unit could be integrated locally. The original ALTC-funded material was released under a Creative Commons license that allows changes to be made to material with the understanding that the modified material is released back to the community under a Creative Commons license. Katherine Seaton and Birgit Loch have just been given access to the material and will investigate how the material may be released back, and what, if any, changes may need to be made so it is relevant to the community.

• 2016 AustMS Conference. The Standing Committee is investigating if it is possible to reinstate a teaching PD session at the AustMS conference. From 2010, a workshop on teaching PD followed the AustMS conference for a couple of years, as part of the outcomes of the ALTC project that resulted in the PD unit. Rather than a full day after the conference, this could be the free evening, with a guest speaker, over a meal.

• Additional activities planned by the Committee. o Regular educational articles in the Gazette. Standing Committee members will suggest to colleagues to contribute educational articles or contribute articles themselves. Suggested topics were the preparedness for university, lectures, lecture recording, blended learning, casualization of teaching, electronically invigilated exams (with 360 degree cameras), online assessment in general, interactive tools but also resistance to change. Another topic suggested is the new VCE curriculum in Victoria, to make AustMS members aware of the changes that are coming from next year. For example, students will no longer learn about the absolute value function before entering university mathematics. The Gazette editors have agreed to consider regular articles from the Standing Committee.

Page 18 of 87 o Creation of a Standing Committee website on the AustMS Wiki, containing mathematics education related information of interest to AustMS members.

Page 19 of 87 Report of the ACCREDITATION COMMITTEE of the Australian Mathematical Society 2015-2016

Accreditation Committee membership: Brailey Sims (UoN) - Chair Benjamin Burton (UQ) Ian Doust (UNSW)

The Council’s decision to offer Fellowship to high profile members of the mathematical sciences (including those newly admitted to the Australian Academy of Science) together with an initiative by the President (Professor Tim Marchant) to personally invite all relevant level E academics to seek membership and Fellowship of the Society resulted in a “bumper crop” of Accreditations, particularly of new Fellows, during 2014 -15 [see my previous report]. The continued pursuance of these strategies over the last 12 months has produced a pleasing and one hopes sustainable number of new Fellows. However, the number seeking Accreditation at the lower levels of MAustMS and GAustMS remains disappointingly small.

The period September 2015 to October 2016 has seen 13 successful (and no unsuccessful) applications for accreditation:

FAustMS (11) Richard I HARTLEY Bruce HENRY Birgit LOCH Malcolm SAMBRIDGE Noel F SMYTH Susan SCOTT Fedor SUKOCHEV Christopher TISDELL Matthew P WAND Robert WILLIAMSON David R WOOD

MAustMS (1) Melanie E ROBERTS

GAustMS (1) Imededdine JERBI

The Committee applauds the President for undertaking a revamp of the Accreditation pages of the Society’s web site, which has rendered them more relevant and informative for prospective applicants from both academic and non-academic circles.

Page 20 of 87 Building on the initiatives outlined above the Committee recommends that:

The Council establish a working party including representatives from industry and the teaching profession to investigate ways to increase the utility and popularity of Accreditation by the Australian Mathematical Society especially at levels other than that of Fellow, including the possibility of new, or rebadged, levels of accreditation.

Once again, I must record my indebtedness to May Truong and Peter Stacey for their invaluable support without which the Committee could not function. Thanks also Tim Marchant for his continued efforts to promote the Society’s accreditation program and to my fellow Committee members for their valuable input. Special thanks to Elizabeth Billington for her many years of diligent service on the Committee, and welcome to Ben Burton who has taken over her role.

Brailey Sims Chair Accreditation Committee

25 October MMXVI

Page 21 of 87 Australian Mathematical Society Nominations and Publications Committee Report to Council 2016

This committee consists of: Secretary, P.J. Stacey; President-elect, K.A. Smith-Miles; A.L. Carey; J. Ramagge.

Publications work The Editor of the Bulletin has agreed to serve for a further three year term,

Nominations work In accord with its terms of reference, the committee supplemented the formal call in the Gazette for nominations to Council by an invitation to members to suggest Council subcommittees on which they were willing to serve. Both invitations were repeated in a general email to members. Two members had been nominated for Council by the closing date for nominations. The committee therefore sought a member from Tasmania to nominate for the re- maining position.

Other committees or oces for which suitable members were found, their informal agreement obtained, and their names suggested to Council for consideration at the December 2016 meeting, include:

the Early Career Representative 2016-20; • the AustMS Medal Committee; • the Medal Committee; • the Gavin Brown Prize Committee; • the Mahler Lecturer Committee; • the Standing Committee on Mathematics Education; • the Fellowship Committee; • the Accreditation Committee; • the Student Conference Support Committee. •

P.J. Stacey (Secretary) October 2016

Page 22 of 87 Mahler Lectureship Committee report, November 2016

The Mahler Lectureship Committee currently consists of Wadim Zudilin (outgoing chair), Marcel Jackson (chair), Alex Ghitza (incoming chair), Vlad Gaitsgory (Vice President (conferences)) as well as one of the directors of the 2017 AustMS conference, Paul Smith.

As is already known, the full tour of the 2015 Mahler lecturer Manjul Bhargava did not proceed beyond the AustMS conference, and the committee is hoping that we are hoping to deliver a more complete set of lectures for 2017.

At this stage we do not have a clear choice of lecturer, though a number of names have been discussed, and the committee is gradually honing in on some targets. An issue at this point has been balancing the value of snaring an emerging superstar against the uncertainty that this holds; and finding someone who can vouch for the expository skills of the speaker. We are hopeful of making beginning discussions with a potential speaker in the near future.

Page 23 of 87 Report of the AustMS Fellowship Committee for the 2016 AGM

Starrred items

We have marked with a (*) items which we request the Council to discuss.

Committee members

Sid Morris (incoming chair), David Pask (chair) and Lesley Ward (outgoing chair).

Purpose of the Fellowship Committee

The AustMS Fellowship Committee is responsible for awarding the Society’s Lift-Off Fellowships and the annual Alf van der Poorten Travelling Fellowship. Council allocated funding of $35,000 per annum to fund up to seven Lift-Off Fellows per year for the 2013–17 financial years. The Alf van der Poorten Fellowships are funded by the family of the late Alf van der Poorten.

Student membership and application numbers for fellowships

We have just begun the seventh year of the Lift-Off Fellowships scheme. To date, two Lift-Off applications have been received for the 2016/17 financial year, no final decision has been reached on these applications so far.

Financial Year Applications Awarded 3 Year Average 2010/11 8 33,238.76 2011/12 9 24,160.00 2012/13 6 15,000.00 24,162.92 2013/14 4 19,600.00 19,586.67 2014/15 7 27,538.00 20,712.67 2015/16 16 52,674.00 33,270.67 Total 50 169,300.76

The Alf van der Poorten Travelling Fellowship is only available in odd-numbered years and so was not awarded in 2016. Committee Comments: A number of issues have arisen which we would like to bring to the attention of Council.

(a) (*) FUNDING: Towards the end of the 2015/16 financial year the Committee had a sudden influx of 5 high quality Lift-Off applications which, if funded as we would like, would take us well over the $35,000 per annum budget. We did not feel it fair to push these applications into the 2016/17 financial year as it would create the same problem later in the year. The Committee, in consultation with Peter Stacey agreed that, $35,000 per year should be awarded over a three-year rolling average. This allowed us to partly fund these 5 Lift-Off applications. Unfortunately, the rolling average formulation will limit the amount to be awarded in the financial year 2016/17 to $24,788. If the number of good applications continues at the rate of around 10 per year, the Committee will have to half-fund these applications on average. Hence, even with this minor tinkering, the current funding system for the Lift-Off scholarships may not be sustainable in the longer term (under the current conditions) and the Committee asks the AustMS Council to review the funding arrangements as soon as possible.

(b) APPLICATIONS: The Committee is generally very pleased with the high quality and increasing quantity of the Lift-Off applications it received in the financial year 2015/16. We believe that this indicates that the AustMS Lift-Off scholarship scheme has become a great success. We believe the sudden rise in number of applications for the 2015/16 financial year is at least partly due to our increased efforts to publicise the scheme, in particular the flyer we made in 2014/15 to advertise all five of the AustMS and ANZIAM scholarships, fellowships and travel awards (see attached copy of the PDF at the end of the report), and also publicity through WIMSIG’s newsletters, website and events.

(c) (*) FEEDBACK &RESUBMISSION: During the financial year 2015/16 an unsuccesssful applicant asked for feedback on their Lift-Off application, which they duly received from the Committee. The applicant then asked if they could resubmit an amended Lift-Off application. The Committee was divided on this issue, and we seek clarification from the AustMS Council for future reference.

Page 24 of 87 AUSTMS FELLOWSHIP COMMITTEE REPORT 2016

(d) (*) LIVING EXPENSES: Many Lift-Off applications are either solely for living expenses or the budget is topped up to $5,000 by an item for living expenses. This is fine and permitted, but nearly all applicants did not justify this budget item well: A time period (see below) for these expenses is often not mentioned and a justification for the amount requested is missing. Students who enquire about living expenses from the Committee are now told that a reasonable rate would be a pro rata version of the current standard (APA) PhD stipend should be used in the budget unless other factors come into play. In the future the Committee believes that there should be specific comment to this effect on the Lift-Off section of the AustMS website and ask the Council for approval.

(e) TIMELINE: As mentioned above very few Lift-Off applications give a timeline for the project, as none is requested. When the Committee asked successful applicants from the 2015/16 financial year for reports recently, two concerned applicants (marked below) wrote to indicate that they have made no progress on their projects to date (due to † teaching and other commitments). Both indicated that they still intend to complete their projects. The Committee will use its judgement on a case by case basis on how to deal with this.

Membership of the 2016-2017 Fellowship committee

In 2016-17, Sid Morris will chair the Fellowship Committee, David Pask moves to the position of outgoing chair and Lesley Ward leaves the committee. David and Sid would like to thank Lesley for her help and sound advice during our time on the Committee. The AustMS Council needs to appoint an incoming chair for 2016-17 (we believe that this is in progress). If there are gender balance issues in the future WIMSIG would be happy to be consulted, in particular to help develop lists of potential Committee members.

The 2015–16 Lift-Off Fellowships

In the financial year 2015/16 there were sixteen applications for the AustMS Lift-Off fellowships. One was rejected (see comment (c) above) and one was inelligible (not AustMS member). The following fourteen applicants were awarded Lift-Off fellowships.

Applicant University Awarded Ndii, Meksianis Newcastle 4,924 Chen, Chen Adelaide 4,000 Bourne, Chris Wollongong 4,800 Tam, Matthew Newcastle 3,700 Howie, Joshua Melbourne 5,000 Tronnolone, Hayden Adelaide 3,000 Amenta, Alex Australian National 2,250 Ladiges, Daniel Melbourne 5,000 Ham, Nicholas Tasmania 5,000 † Afzaly, Narjess Australian National 3,000 Tartaglia, Elena Melbourne 3,000 Phillip, Schrader Western Australia 3,000 † Ashish,Goyal New South Wales 3,000 Do, Thoan La Trobe 3,000 Total 52,674

COMMENTS: To see why two of the successful candidates have been marked see comment (e) above. Of the 14 funded † applicants, only two are female (Narjess and Tartaglia). At about 14%, this is a long way below the percentage of women among mathematical sciences PhDs awarded: 38% in 2014 according to the 2014 AMSI Survey. We need to continue efforts to increase the number of women applying for the Lift-Off Fellowship. (And for the Alf van der Poorten Fellowship–last time that was offered we had four applicants, all male.)

Fellowship Reports

1. DR CHEN CHEN Dr Chen Chen’s research is in the area of modelling with Differential Equations. In the first month of the fellowship, I looked at the two-periodic diffusion problem proposed by Bunder & Roberts. I extend the problem by assuming Dirichlet boundary conditions to replace the original periodic boundary conditions.

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Introducing the new boundary condition made the problem more complicated. I then modified the original published algorithm to accommodate the new boundary conditions. Then I compared and contrasted the simulation models given by both multiscale modelling methods. As the model was linear, I also compared the eigen spectrum of the macroscale models given by two methods. The difficulty I faced during comparing the eigen spectrum came from that most of the eigenvalues are complex and sorting complex eigenvalues in the best order is the a trivial task (sic). During this fellowship, I completed a manuscript titled “boundary conditions for macroscale waves in an elastic system with microscale heterogeneity”, which summarises my PhD research. I plan to submit this manuscript to an A-ranked journal. With the funding provided by AustMS, I also managed to participated in emac 2015. During the conference, I presented and exchanged my research ideas on multiscale modelling with other mathematicians in this field. I thankfully acknowledge the support of AustMS and the Lift-off Fellowship. It provided me a fantastic opportunity to broaden my knowledge in multiscale modelling.

2. DR DANIEL LADIGES Dr Daniel Ladiges research is in the area of Fluid Dynamics For my Australian Mathematical Society Lift-off Fellowship I was awarded $5,000 for use as a stipend while continuing work begun during my PhD. My principal goal during this period was to write a manuscript for publication, which covered and extended on work contained in the final chapter of my PhD thesis. The chapter describes a variational method for obtaining approximate solutions to the Boltzmann equation âA¸Sthis˘ approach is ideal for simulating nano-scale gas flows. When this work was almost complete we decided to split the material into two separate papers. The first has been finished and will shortly be submitted to Physical Review Fluids, the second is nearing completion. In addition to the above, we have commenced collaborations with several experimental groups, using the techniques developed during my PhD to help interpret the results of experiments involving micro- and nano-scale gas flows. This includes work modelling the flows in nano-scale squeeze film pressure sensors in order to understand the effects of gas rarefaction, and simulating the flow through hollow core optical fibres in order to characterise the boundary conditions. We have collected a large amount of data and made several findings regarding each of these systems, which should form the basis for several papers in the near future. Finally, I am developing a general implementation of Monte Carlo algorithms from my PhD thesis, allowing simulation of 2D nano-scale gas flows. The program emphasises ease of use, and will be made freely available to researchers investigating nano-mechanical systems operating in a gaseous medium. This work has been significantly advanced since the beginning of my fellowship, and an initial version should be completed within the next month. I am shortly commencing a post-doctoral position, during which I will be able to see each of these projects through to completion. The Lift-off Fellowship was invaluable in starting my academic career, and I with to thank the selection committee, and my supervisor Prof. John Sader.

3. DR ASHISH GOYAL Dr Ashish Goyal’s research concerns the Mathematical modeling of hepatitis B and hepatitis D viruses. Outcomes: (1) The possibility of the existence of cell-to-cell transmission in the spread of hepatitis B virus was proposed and investigated for the first time using computational modelling. This project has recently been accepted for publication under the title of “Modelling the Impact of Cell-to-cell Transmission in Hepatitis B Virus” in PLOS ONE. (2) The impact of ignoring HDV presence in the population on socio-economic outcomes of policies aimed at eliminating HBV prevalence was studied and this study has been accepted for publication as “Recognizing the impact of endemic hepatitis D virus on hepatitis B virus eradication” in Theoretical Population Biology. (3) During the period of the fellowship, a new collaboration with Dr. Harel Dahari from Loyola University was established. We are currently investigating how HCV cures after a short term of direct antiviral agents related drugs. (4) I have additionally initiated a project aimed at explaining the correlated dynamics of HBsAg and HDV RNA levels in HBV/HDV coinfected patients. The model has been developed and initial testing of the model to the real world data has been performed successfully. Future work: The research during this fellowship helped improve our understanding of hepatitis viruses and may lead to the development of a successful vaccine and/or therapy. The models proposed are novel and generic in nature that can be employed for the investigation of other viruses. This probably will be a profit to the scientific community as our research can be employed as a building tool in fields such as mathematical biology, epidemiology and public health policymaking. This fellowship will definitely improve my career opportunities in the future.

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4. DR CHRIS BOURNE Dr Chris Bourne’s work is in the area of of Mathematical Physics known as Noncommutative Geometry and Index Theory. Summary of Research. The purpose of the Fellowship was for funding to attend the workshop on “Refining C-algebraic invariants for dynamics using KK-theory”, that was held at the University of Melbourne, Creswick Campus on 18-29 July 2016. The Fellowship also funded a research visit to the to work with A/Prof. Adam Rennie following the KK-theory workshop. During this period, I worked with A/Prof. Rennie on the problem of index theory of twisted crossed product C-algebras by Rd. Our motivation comes from continuous models of topological quantum systems in condensed matter physics, whose algebra of observables is a twisted crossed product acting on L2(Rd). In particular we studied the semifinite index theory of such algebras from the perspective of Kasparov theory. Expressions for the semifinite index pairing were derived and can be considered as the continuous analogue of the “noncommutative Chern numbers” studied by Prodan and Schulz-Baldes (3). We were able to generalise Prodan and Schulz-Baldes results as well as expand on earlier work of ours on the problem (1). We expect to finalise and submit these results for publication soon (2). References (1) C. Bourne, J. Kellendonk and A. Rennie. The K-theoretic bulk-edge correspondence for topological insulators. arXiv:1604.02337, 2016. (2) C. Bourne and A. Rennie. Chern numbers, localisation and the bulk-edge correspondence of continuous topological phases. To appear. (3) E. Prodan and H. Schulz-Baldes. Bulk and Boundary Invariants for Complex Topological Insulators: From K-Theory to Physics. Springer, Berlin, 2016.

5. DR JOSHUA HOWIE Dr Joshua Howie’s work is in the area of Topology, in particular Knot Theory. In my PhD thesis I introduced the class of weakly generalised alternating (WGA) links, and proved that they have essential checkerboard surfaces. I used the Lift-off fellowship to work with Jessica Purcell at Monash University to study the hyperbolic geometry of WGA links. We used the essential checkerboard surfaces to detect when a WGA diagram represents a hyperbolic, satellite, or torus link, including a complete classification for diagrams on the torus, a project begun in my thesis. For the hyperbolic WGA links, we were able to give criteria for when the checkerboard surfaces are accidental, virtually-fibred, or quasi-fuchsian. We also proved volume bounds on the complements of hyperbolic WGA links in terms of properties of a WGA diagram. I also used the fellowship to attend conferences in Europe in July. In particular, I presented my work at a low-dimensional topology summer school run by Central European University and Alfréd Rényi Institute in Budapest, Hungary, and at Knots in Hellas in Olympia, Greece.

6. DR HAYDEN TRONNLONE Dr Hayden Tronnlone’s research is in the area of Fluid Dynamics. Much of my thesis was devoted to the development of models for the stretching under gravity of fluid cylinders with internal air channels, leaving limited scope for a thorough comparison of the model with extruded preforms. Owing to this, I applied for an AustMS Lift-Off Fellowship that would provide financial support while I extended the brief analysis from my thesis into a thorough study of three representative preform designs, in each case comparing the behaviour observed in experiments with the predictions made by the model. This work showed that surface tension contributes significantly to deformation during preform extrusion and can explain some of the features observed in experiments; however, surface tension alone cannot explain all of the deformation. We concluded that surface tension and a second effect, extrudate swell, work in concert to deform the geometry once the fluid has left the die. In particular, extrudate swell may expand holes and reduce hole spacing, leading to a greater interaction between holes and hence greater surface-tension-driven deformation. The results of this investigation have been submitted for publication [1]. I would like to offer my thanks to AustMS and the Lift-Off Fellowship committee for providing me with the opportunity to continue this research. Through this Fellowship I not only received financial support between the completion of my PhD and the commencement of a postdoctoral position but was able to continue my work and identify avenues for future research and collaboration. I highly encourage all graduating PhD students to consider applying to this worthy scheme.

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References [1] Hayden Tronnolone, Yvonne M. Stokes, and Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem. Extrusion of fluid cylinders of arbitrary shape with surface tension and gravity. Submitted, 2016.

7. DR ALEX AMENTA Dr Alex Amenta’s research is in the area of differential equations. During my Lift-off Fellowship, working with Pascal Auscher, I improved the results of my thesis on adapted Besov-Hardy-Sobolev spaces and boundary value problems and added some new ones, with the intention of eventually publishing them as a research monograph. We finally finished this in July 2016 (1). Recently, Chen, Coulhon, Feneuil, and Russ showed that for Vicsek manifolds (whose large-scale geometry resembles the global geometry of a Vicsek fractal) of any dimension, (R ) holds if and only if p 2. Their proof of p  Lp-unboundedness of the Riesz transform for p>2 is quite simple, and during my Lift-off Fellowship I recognised that the combinatorial structure underlying this proof is that of a “spinal graph” (G, ⌃): an infinite graph G with a subset ⌃ V (G) such that G is a collection of finite graphs attached only along ⌃. For any spinal graph (G, ⌃) with ⇢ certain volume and dimension assumption–roughly speaking, ⌃ should be 1-dimensional, while G should have dimension greater than 1 (R ) fails for p>2 for all manifolds with geometry “close to” that of G. This gives a p mechanism for constructing manifolds which fail (Rp) for all p>2, and which need not have any fractal-like structure (unlike Vicsek manifolds). Following my Lift-off Fellowship I identified concrete examples of spinal graphs (G, ⌃) satisfying the relevant volume and dimension conditions: it is not obvious that many examples other the Vicsek graph exist, but indeed they do. However, the question of whether the associated manifolds satisfy (Rp) for 1

(1) A. Amenta and P. Auscher, Abstract Besov-Hardy-Sobolev spaces and elliptic boundary value problems with complex bounded measurable coefficients, arxiv:1607.03852, July 2016.

8. DR ELENA TARTAGLIA Dr Elena Tartaglia’s research is in the area Mathematical Physics We are interested in studying two-dimensional lattice models in statistical physics that satisfy the Yang-Baxter equation and are, therefore, exactly solvable. At criticality, these models exhibit universal behaviour that can be characterised by a corresponding conformal field theory. It is the aim of our research to study exactly solvable models and discover their corresponding conformal field theory. This AustMS Lift-off Scholarship has allowed me to conduct research further to my recent paper with collaborators Jean-Emile Bourgine and Paul A. Pearce titled “Logarithmic minimal models with Robin boundary conditions.” In this paper we applied Robin boundary conditions to the logarithmic minimal lattice models and showed that the conformal dimensions of the related conformal field theory, the logarithmic minimal models, has Kac label s taking half-integer values, instead of the standard integer values. The work during this scholarship began the search for boundary conditions corresponding to half- integer values for the other Kac label, r. We began by modifying parameters in the previous Robin boundary conditions, but this did not lead to the discovery of any new conformal dimensions. We are currently looking for a new solution to the boundary Yang-Baxter equation which gives conformal dimensions with half-integer Kac label r.

9. DR MATTHEW TAM Dr Matthew Tam’s research is in the area of optimisation. Stated abstractly, the feasibility problem asks for a point contained in the intersection of a finite family of constraint sets. Many fundamental problems arising in mathematics, science and engineering can be phrased in this language. For instance: systems of linear equations and inequations, imaging reconstruction (phase retrieval, ptychograpy), combinatorial optimisation (knapsack feasibility), and various matrix completion problems (correlation and distance matrix reconstruction). Iterative projection methods are class of general purpose algorithms which can be applied to these problems and remain popular due to their relative simplicity, easy-of-implementation, and experimentally observed good performance. These features are particularly appealing to the practitioner. Whilst there are a number of books which touch on the topic of projection methods, there exist few which are dedicated to their in-depth treatment and, those which do, offer little on current state-of-the-art. In this direction, two examples of recent progress in the area include the discovery the cyclic Douglas–Rachford method (1) and the use of regularity assumptions on the local geometry to analyse the methods in non-convex settings (2).

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I was fortunate enough to receive a Lift-off fellowship to fund a three week visit at the beginning of 2016 to the University of Alicante (Spain) where I was a visitor of Dr Francisco Aragón Artacho. During this visit, we commenced our ongoing preparation of a book, which we hope will provide an up-to-date account of projection methods covering aspects of both theory and applications. It is our hope that the book will be of interest to those working in optimisation theory as well as practitioners interested in using projection-type algorithms. I wish to thank the Lift-off fellowship for their generous support as well as Dr Aragón Artacho and the University of Alicante for their warm hospitality. References

(1) Borwein, J. M., & Tam, M. K. (2014). A cyclic Douglas–Rachford iteration scheme. Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, 160, 1-29. (2) Lewis, A. S., Luke, D. R., & Malick, J. (2009). Local linear convergence for alternating and averaged nonconvex projections. Foundations of Computational Mathematics, 9, 485-513.

10. DR NARJESS AFZALY Dr Narjess Afzaly’s work is in the area of Graph Theory.

The focus of my PhD studies was on the efficient isomorph-free generation of different classes of graphs. Our results were considerably in excess of the previous results of the many people who worked on the same problems. I have been awarded a Lift-off Fellowship that facilitates my visit to Professor Brendan McKay at the Australian National University where I continue my research and prepare journal publications as follows:

Employing advanced generation algorithms, we have identified and catalogued the set of small Turán graphs for • collections of short cycles. Currently we are preparing 4 manuscripts based on these results. We have introduced a new method of canonical labeling and a modified version of the Orderly Generation based • on the new method. Our aim is to expand the application of this novel method to other classes of combinatorial objects such as Latin rectangles. During my PhD studies, in collaboration with C. Menon, we have developed an efficient algorithm to generate • 4-regular graphs. It is the most efficient known software for graphs up to 18 vertices. We are currently preparing a manuscript on this topic for publication.

Duties of the chair of the Fellowship Committee

For future reference, the duties of the chair of the committee include:

1. Ensure that all fellowship applications submitted to the council are considered within a reasonable time-frame. 2. Inform the applicants of the Lift-Off Fellowships of the decision of the committee. 3. Draft a letter for the chair of the society to send Ms Joy van der Poorten to tell her about the successful applicant for that years’ Alf van der Poorten travelling fellowship and to request that she transfer the funds to the society. 4. Maintain the Lift-Off and Alf van der Poorten fellows at the society’s pages at: www.austms.org.au/Lift-Off+Fellows • www.austms.org.au/Alf+van+der+Poorten+Fellows • In particular, add details of the successful fellow to the relevant fellowship pages. 5. Ensure that the Lift-Off Fellows submit a report on their Fellowship to the editors of the Gazette. 6. Draft a letter for the President of the Society to send to Joy van der Poorten to inform her of the Committee’s decision on the travelling scholarship. 7. Submit an annual report to the Council of the Society for inclusion in the reports for the at the AGM. The report should summarise all of the decisions made by the committee in the preceding year, together with any items for discussion by the Council. 8. Try to ensure that the Lift-Off and Alf van der Poorten Fellowships are widely advertised.

ATTACHMENT –AUSTMS FLYER – SEE OVER

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Supporting professional mathematicians in Australia, both pure & applied

Sup port for pos mathematics in Australiatgr aduat e

A027641

Support to Australian mathematicians for their caring responsibilities, while they travel for conferences or research visits

– Page 7 – Page 30 of 87 AUSTMS STUDENT SUPPORT SCHEME REPORT TO COUNCIL, AUGUST 2016 Summary In 2016, the student support scheme operated for the fourth year. This scheme is designed to partially fund students for presenting a paper at approved conferences. In 2016, there will be no Australian Mathematical Sciences Student Conference (AMSSC), so the only supported conference will be the annual meeting of AustMS. The advantages of SSS in terms of professional development, are generally well understood. These include broadening networks, gaining experience in public presentations and in applying for funding, including preparation of a budget. For this reason the rules of the scheme are interpreted quite strictly, with faulty applications penalised by reduced funding. Many students applied for full member’s registration, rather than reduced student’s registration. They were not penalised for this, as the reduced registration fee was apparent only after hitting the registration link on the main conference web page. SSS application deadline was set at two weeks before the (initial) conference's early bird deadline, and outcomes were provided around a week after the SSS deadline. This greatly helped a smooth registration process. This year, we had 36 applications from which 33 were partially funded, up to a maximum of 50% of actual expenses. Allocations of 40% actual costs were typical. These numbers are very close to last year’s. However accommodation costs seem to be rising. We used up all of AustMS allocation of $15,000. For 2017, we request a budget of $16,000 which will not necessarily be fully spent. The budget will also depend on whether there will be a sanctioned student conference. In that case, it is recommended that students who apply for support at both conferences be given lower priority for the second. One of the rejected applications did not include an abstract or personal case for support, one did not receive an endorsement from their supervisor or acting supervisor and one student applied from overseas, in

Page 31 of 87 the hope that after joining AustMS he would be given support for overseas travel. Part of the reply was that this would be contrary to the broad aims of AustMS in fostering mathematics in Australia. Nevertheless, it might be helpful if the AustMS had some policy on partial or zero support for overseas student applicants, for example Australians enrolled in overseas universities. The whole process was greatly helped by the AustMS online application system that had been developed by Jérôme Droniou. Although under the three-year rotation system, Jérôme will be the next member to depart, he has kindly offered to assist with the software, when needed. James Parkinson will be the next chair of SSS Committee. Some Issues While we noted some improvement, some applications did not respect the funding rules – in particular the limit of funding of half the total expenses. Supervisors should beware of clicking on “I support this application” without reviewing it and pin-pointing to their students possible mistakes they had made. When the scheme is in higher demand, we will need to be even stricter in defining acceptable applications. We include in an appendix to this report the wording that was used in 2015 on the AustMS annual meeting conference, and we suggest using a similar text in the years to come.

Phil Broadbridge (Chair) Jérôme Droniou (outgoing Chair) James Parkinson (incoming Chair) 21st October, 2016 Appendix I: Suggested wording for conference organisers to use "Students giving a talk at this conference are eligible for the AustMS Student Support Scheme, covering up to half of travel, registration and childcare costs. All information, including the funding rules, application deadline and application online form, can be found here [link to the

Page 32 of 87 AustMS SSS page].” Appendix II: Recipients of support for the AustMS annual meeting: Nirav Shah, Alex Casella, Jon Xu, Scott Lindstrom, Timothy Buttsworth, Chao Lu, Trang Thi Thien Nguyen, Volodymyr Vascovych, Dominic Tate, Devika Shylaja, Thanh Tung Le Nguyen, Elizabeth Bradford, Yian Xu, Joshua Ting, Tianshu Liu, Steve Su, Gurtek Gill, Kirsty Chalker, Christopher Taylor, Jessica Liebig, Michael Mampusti, Tanzila Chowdhury, Michael Hendriksen, Hao Guo, Lucy Ham, Branko Nikolic, Timothy Bywaters, Kieren Clancy, Shonal Singh, Thomas Dyer, Alexander Kerschl, Ramón Alcalá, Kyle Rosa. The University of Queensland 650+483, The University of Sydney 333+306+440+435+600, The University of Melbourne 433+500+480, The University of Newcastle 180, Monash University 433+530+558, University of SA 463+650, La Trobe University 560+550+558, University of WA 558+685, University of NSW 450, Australian National University 120, RMIT University 520, The University of Wollongong 425+375+270, University of Western Sydney 403+340, The University of Adelaide 390, Macquarie University 450+450, Flinders University 405

Page 33 of 87 Membership and Marketing Committee Report

AustMS Annual Meeting 2016

A new Membership and Marketing Committee was approved by Council in April 2016. The purpose of the committee is to provide advice and leadership to Council on a wide range of issues relating to member recruitment and retention.

The major responsibilities of the committee are

1. Provide advice to the President and Council on proposed initiatives and strategies to recruit and retain members and to increase membership value

2. Provide operational oversight of existing membership and marketing initiatives and plans

3. Develop initiatives to increase the number of Society members based in the industry, commercial and government sectors.

4. Encourage suitably qualified Society members to apply for optional accreditation

5. Undertake member surveys and focus group discussions regarding their membership needs and services provided

6. Source and analyse data on Society membership trends

The current membership of the committee is Prof. Tim Marchant (Chair, UOW), Prof. Geoff Prince, (AMSI), A/Prof Brailey Sims, (Chair of Accreditation Committee, UNewc), Prof. Lynn Batten, (Deakin), Dr. Elliot Tonkes, (Energy Edge) , Dr. Melanie Roberts, (IBM Research) , Dr. John Roumeliotis, (NAB).

An initial meeting was held in June 2016. Some issues discussed were the purpose of the committee, social media options for holding committee discussions, a proposal for a possible professional practice program and the need for membership data.

A range of membership data trends (including non-academic and industry memberships) will be sourced from the AustMS office for the next meeting, to be held in December 2016 or February 2017.

Prof. Tim Marchant, Committee Chair

Page 34 of 87 Report of the Victorian Algebra Group: Sep. 2015 – Oct. 2016

Office Bearers Brian Davey (Chair), Marcel Jackson (Treasurer), Asha Rao (Secretary), Kathy Horadam, Lawrence Reeves, Deborah Jackson, Ian Wanless (Ordinary members).

Annual General Meeting • Held on 14 August, 2016. • Attended by all office bearers except Kathy Horadam, Ian Wanless and Deborah Jackson. • Report on 33rd Victorian Algebra Conference tabled by Brian Davey (see below for details). • Treasurer’s report tabled (see below for details). • Decision that 2016 VAC would be held at La Trobe University, City Campus. 2017 VAC to be organised by Murray Elder at the University of Newcastle. • The decision was made to change the name of the group to Australian Algebra Group, subject to approval from the Executive of the Australian Mathematical Society. The V.A.G. Executive requests that approval be granted by the AustMS.

Executive of the VAG for the 2016 – 2018 period • Nominations of Office bearers was done at the AGM. Graham Clarke, as returning officer, conducted elections following the AGM – the following executive group was elected unanimously for the Oct 2016 – Sep 2018 period: • President: Lawrence Reeves • Secretary: Asha Rao • Treasurer: Marcel Jackson • Ordinary Members: Brian Davey, Kathy Horadam, Deborah Jackson, Ian Wanless

Report on 33rd Annual Victorian Algebra Conference Report tabled by James East, Conference Organiser.

• Conference Organisers: James East and Roozbeh Hazrat with support from Western Sydney University’s Centre for Research in Mathematics (CRM). • Location and days: The conference was held at Parramatta campus of Western Sydney University from 30 November 2015 to 2 December 2015. • Participants and Programme: o There were 58 participants: 35 from New South Wales, 13 from Victoria, 1 from Tasmania, 1 from Queensland, and 7 overseas participants from 5 countries. The full list is given at the end of this report. o The programme consisted of 12 plenary talks and 20 contributed talks. Plenary talks were 40 minutes plus 5 minutes for questions and changeover. Contributed talks were 20 minutes plus 5 minutes for questions and changeover. • Gordon Preston Prize: was awarded to Chris Taylor for his talk on “Algebras of incidence structures: representations of regular double p-algebras”. An honorable mention was

Page 35 of 87 awarded to Cameron Rogers (University of Newcastle) for his talk “Using random walk distributions for determining Folner sequences”. • Twitter was busy during the conference (check out #vac33wsu) and a photo competition was held. The prizes (stylish CRM hoodies) went to Brian Davey, Murray Neuzerling and Neil Saunders. • Plenary Speakers: o Jon Berrick - Yale-NUS College o Daniel Chan - University of NSW o Volker Gebhardt - Western Sydney University o Anthony Henderson - University of Sydney o Detlev Hoffman - Technical University of Dortmund o Andrew Mathas - University of Sydney o James Mitchell - o Arun Ram - University of Melbourne o Jacqui Ramagge - University of Sydney o Anne Thomas - University of Sydney o Ian Wanless - Monash University o George Willis - University of Newcastle

• Funding and Budget:

Victorian Algebra Group information tabled by the V.A.G. Treasurer, Marcel Jackson.

2014/2015 Expenditure Expenditure 2014/2015Income Income

Student dinner contribution $110.00 AustMS Grant (2016) $1,000.00 4 x $130 student travel contributions $325.00 5 x $65 student travel contributions $520.00 Interest $0.12 Total $955 $1,000.12

A very generous contribution from the School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics and the CRM covered:

• the $200 Gordon Preston Prize, • $2308 catering costs, • $1188 toward the costs of some plenary speakers.

Participant List

Ramon Abud Alcala Macquarie University Jon Berrick Yale-NUS College Sangeeta Bhatia University of Western Sydney

Page 36 of 87 Nathan Brownlowe University of Sydney Kamil Bulinski University of Sydney Timothy Peter Bywaters University of Wollongong Alex Casella University of Sydney Daniel Chan University of New South Wales Michael Coons The University of Newcastle Brian Davey La Trobe University Jie Du University of New South Wales James East Western Sydney University Attila Egri-Nagy Western Sydney University Murray Elder The University of Newcastle Andrew Francis University of Western Sydney Richard Garner Macquarie University Volker Gebhardt Western Sydney University Samuel Asante Gyamerah – Nick Ham University of Tasmania Lucy Ham La Trobe University Robert C Haraway University of Sydney Roozbeh Hazrat University of Western Sydney Anthony Henderson University of Sydney Michael Hendriksen Western Sydney University Detlev Hoffmann TU Dortmund Ju Huang Fujian Normal University Marcel Jackson La Trobe University Deborah Jackson La Trobe University Alexander Ferdinand Kerschl University of Sydney Muhammad Shuaib Khan The University of Newcastle Tomasz Kowalski La Trobe University Slaven Kozic University of Sydney Jan Kuhr Palacky University Olomouc Chi Mak University of New South Wales Michael Arthur Mampusti University of Wollongong Andrew Mathas University of Sydney Peter McNamara The University of Queensland Szabolcs Mikulas Birkbeck, University of London James Mitchell University of St Andrews Alexander Mundey University of Wollongong Murray Neuzerling La Trobe University Gennady Arshad Notowidigdo University of New South Wales Jan Paseka Masaryk University Arun Ram The University of Melbourne Lawrence Reeves The University of Melbourne Colin David Reid The University of Newcastle Cameron Rogers The University of Newcastle Stuart Serdoz University of Western Sydney Christopher Taylor La Trobe University Don Taylor University of Sydney Anne Thomas University of Sydney Stephan Tillmann University of Sydney Mircea Voineagu University of New South Wales

Page 37 of 87 Ian Wanless Monash University George Willis The University of Newcastle Jon Xu The University of Melbourne Shona Yu University of Western Sydney Sanming Zhou The University of Melbourne Ruben Zilibowitz University of Western Sydney

Page 38 of 87 Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group (WIMSIG)

2015/2016 Annual Report to the Australian Mathematical Society

November 7, 2016

Contents

1 Executive Committee 3

2Events 3 2.1 Women in Maths Gatherings ...... 3 2.2 Embeddedevents...... 3 2.3 Endorsedevents ...... 4

3 Advocacy 4 3.1 Writtensubmissions ...... 4 3.2 Presentations ...... 5 3.3 MediaInterviews ...... 6

4 WIMSIG Delegates 7 4.1 Connections with other organisations ...... 7 4.2 Newsletter...... 8 4.3 Website ...... 8

5Projects 9 5.1 TravelAwards ...... 9 5.2 WIMSIG Conference 2017: Celebration of Women in Mathe- matics...... 10 5.3 Proposed online archive of Hanna Neumann’s work ...... 11

6Membership 11

7 Elections 11

8Funds 12

9 ? Future funding source for Women in Maths Events at AustMS and ANZIAM annual meetings ? 12

1

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10 ? Good Practice Scheme ? 13

11 Appendix: Travel Award Reports, Rounds 1–4 14

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This report includes activities from September 2015 to October 2016.

1 Executive Committee

Lesley Ward, Chair • Giang Nguyen, Treasurer • Joanne Hall, Secretary • Lynn Batten, Committee Member • Deborah Cromer, Committee Member • Asha Rao, Immediate Past Chair • 2Events

WIMSIG currently supports three types of events: Women in Maths Gath- erings, Embedded Events, and Endorsed Events.

2.1 Women in Maths Gatherings WIMSIG organised nine Women in Maths Gatherings around the country in the last year. Funding was provided by the host organisations.

November 2015 Gatherings were hosted by UAdelaide, QUT, Monash • and USyd.

June 2016 Gatherings were hosted by Flinders University, UTS, UQ, • UCanberra and UTas.

These Gatherings are open to people of any gender. They provide a venue for discussion of gender equity and are a great way to build informal networks. The Gatherings are well supported by the host organisations. In each case the host organisation provides a venue and catering. Some events have been attended by Heads of Schools and other influential decision-makers.

2.2 Embedded events WIMSIG actively supported women’s gatherings at four national events, in most cases funded by the event. Members of the WIMSIG Executive Committee took lead roles in many of these events.

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September 2015: Women in Mathematics Dinner at 59th AustMS • Annual Meeting, Flinders University (Funded by Nalini Joshi’s ARC Georgina Sweet Laureate Fellowship)

January 2016: Women in Mathematics Lunch at ANZIAM (Funded • by Nalini Joshi’s ARC Georgina Sweet Laureate Fellowship)

January 2016: Women in Mathematics evening at AMSI Summer • School

July 2016: Women in Mathematics Networking Event at AMSI Winter • School

The above four events have each been held for the past two or three years. Planning is under way for the following Women in Maths events, to be held in the next few months. Nov/Dec 2016: Women in STEM lunch at BioInfoSummer, University • of Adelaide

December 2016: Women in Mathematics Dinner at 60th AustMS An- • nual Meeting, ANU (Funded by Nalini Joshi’s ARC Georgina Sweet Laureate Fellowship)

January 2017: Women in Mathematics Lunch at ANZIAM Annual • Conference (Funded by Nalini Joshi’s ARC Georgina Sweet Laureate Fellowship)

2.3 Endorsed events WIMSIG endorsed several conferences, workshops and lectures organised by others. See the full list at http://www.austms.org.au/WIMSIG+Events. WIMSIG is happy to advertise to our membership any conference or workshop that has specific and suitable measures in place to increase fe- male participation. Such measures could include female invited speakers, women’s gatherings, financial incentives (travel funds or reduced registra- tion), suitable arrangements for childcare upon request, or any other e↵orts to attract female participants. WIMSIG’s advice sheet for organisers of such events is available at http://www.austms.org.au/WIMSIG+Events.

3 Advocacy

3.1 Written submissions The Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group consults with a number of organisations wanting to increase the participation of women in their

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Page 42 of 87 Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group particular jurisdiction. WIMSIG considers this to be an important service to the mathematical community. In each case WIMISG endeavours to write a formal written response.

12 May 2016: Letter to AustMS Council regarding a suggestion to • adapt the London Mathematical Societies Good Practice Scheme. See Section 10 for further discussion.

8 June 2016: Letter to organisers of Simon Marais Mathematics Com- • petition, commenting on their draft proposal for a new high-school mathematics competition.

15 June 2016: Letter to AMSI Board regarding female representation • on event organising committees.

15 Sept 2016: Letter to B.H. Neumann prize committee regarding • impact of selection processes on the number of female students nomi- nating to be considered for the prize.

3.2 Presentations Annual Council of Heads of Schools of Mathematical Sci- • ences: The Chair of WIMSIG (Ward) gave an invited talk: WIMSIG Report, and Hot Topic: Gender Equity at the ACHMS meeting, 17 February 2016. Her slides are posted at http://www.austms.org. au/WIMSIG+Events. Highlights:

– Data on rates of participation by women in the tertiary sector in Australia, by discipline and by level (Bachelors/Honours/PhD/ Casual/A/B/C/D/E). Data from the 2014 AMSI Survey (24 uni- versities) indicate the percentages of women among those com- pleting degrees, and those employed, in the mathematical sci- ences: Bachelor completions 41%, Honours 38%, PhD 37%, Ca- sual teaching 32%, Level A 29%, B 31%, C 25%, D 19%, E 9%. These percentages are lower than those for the aggregated natural sciences, which are themselves lower than for all other discpline groupings. – Request to Heads of School to send jobs ads to WIMSIG, through the email address [email protected] publicise them through the WIMSIG newsletter and website. – Known mechanisms that diminish gender equity. Focus on im- plicit bias and how it plays into evaluations throughout an aca- demic career. – Example 1: The “Jennifer and John” study, Moss-Racusin et al., PNAS 2012. US biology, chemistry and physics professors

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(n = 127) evaluated application materials of an undergrad appli- cant for a lab manager position. The applications were identical except that half (n = 63) had a male student name and half had a female student name. The professors consistently rated the “male” student higher on (1) competence, (2) hireability, (3) how much mentoring they would o↵er the student, and (4) how much starting salary: 14% more than for the “female” student. These di↵erences were statistically sig- nificant. Professor gender, scientific field, and tenure status were not significant. – Example 2: Double-blind reviewing (neither author nor reviewer identity are revealed) was introduced by the journal Behavioral Ecology in 2001. “Following this policy change there was a sig- nificant increase in female first-authored papers, a pattern not observed in a very similar journal that provides reviewers with author information. No negative e↵ects could be identified, sug- gesting that double-blind review should be considered by other journals.—Budden et al., Trends in Ecol. and Evol. 23 (2008), no. 1, 4–6. – Practical measures that Heads of School and others can adopt to promote gender equity, especially the Harvard Implicit Associa- tion Test. Hosted RMIT Women in Research Network Presentation: Peer Men- • toring for Women going for Promotion, 27 Apr 2016. Speaker: A/Prof Birgit Loch. Asha Rao introduced the speaker and spoke about WIM- SIG’s e↵orts in supporting women in research in the mathematical sciences.

3.3 Media Interviews In April the University of Melbourne advertised three positions in the De- partment of Mathematics, open for female candidates only. This incited quite a bit of media discussion. Lesley Ward (Chair of WIMSIG) conducted several interviews with journalists for print, online and radio media. ELECTRONIC & PRINT ABC’s PM program, 18 May 2016: Melbourne University advertises • female-only jobs in bid to remedy gender imbalance in maths The Age, 19 May 2016: Melbourne Uni o↵ers women’s-only maths jobs • RADIO The Wire 101.5fm Adelaide, 20 May 2016: Women-only Math Jobs • O↵ered by University of Melbourne

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QUT News on 4EBfm, 19 May 2016 at 1pm • SYN90.7 Panorama, 19 May 2016 at 4pm • SBS Radio Hindi, aired about 28 May 2016. • 4 WIMSIG Delegates

WIMSIG currently nominates a member of the Programme Committee for the following events.

AustMS Annual Meetings • Engineering Mathematics and Applications Conference (EMAC) • These nominations have been at the invitation of the event organisers, and are done with the intention of helping to increase diversity of keynote speakers. We are willing to help in similar ways for other recurring confer- ences and one-o↵events.

4.1 Connections with other organisations AMSI. The Chair of WIMSIG has a bimonthly meeting with Cate • Parsons, AMSI Project ocer. On occasion the meeting also involves other AMSI sta↵such as Geo↵Prince, Inge Koch, Paul Ulrick, Simi Henderson, Maaike Wienk, Anne Nuguid, and Lauren Draper. Items discussed include data on women’s participation in Australian Univer- sity mathematics, women’s gatherings at AMSI flagship events, female representation among speakers and event committees.

AMSI Choose Maths. WIMSIG Chair Lesley Ward attended the launch • of the Choose Maths project 28 April 2015. Committee member Asha Rao attended the Choose Maths Awards, 26 August 2016.

Australian Academy of Science and Australian Academy of Technol- • ogy and Engineering. WIMSIG Executive Committee members Lesley Ward and Joanne Hall attended the SAGE Symposium, at the Aus- tralian Maritime Museum, 24 June 2016.

Australian Astronomical Society. Executive Committee members Lynn • Batten and Asha Rao attended the Diversity in Astronomy Confer- ence, hosted by the University of Melbourne, 28–29 June 2016.

Science Meets Parliament 2016. Executive Committee Members Les- • ley Ward (nominated and funded by AMSI) and Giang Nguyen at- tended Science Meets Parliament, 1–2 March 2016.

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Women in Technology WA. WIMSIG Webmaster Amy Glen attended • a Women in STEM Roundtable Meeting and Morning Tea at Gov- ernment House in , hosted by Her Excellency the Hon Kerry Sanderson AO (Governor of Western Australia) upon the invitation of Professor Lyn Beazley (Science Ambassador and WA Australian of the Year 2015), 11 October 2016.

4.2 Newsletter The Women in Maths Newsletter is a monthly newsletter containing infor- mation of interest to members of WIMSIG. The Newsletter is delivered via a mailing list and posted on the WIMSIG website, and is edited by Joanne Hall, WIMSIG Secretary. http://www.austms.org.au/WIMSIG+News The aims of the newsletter are to inform the WIMSIG membership of the activities of WIMSIG, and to stimulate discussion about gender equity in the mathematical sciences. The newsletter is published on the first or second day of each month and is divided into news, events, opportunities, media and research sections. The news section contains information about the activities of WIMSIG as well as news about female mathematicians who have done something interesting anywhere in the world, and gender equity projects of interest. The secretary receives news tips from many members as well as written articles. The events section advertises events in the mathematical sciences and events focussed on Women in STEM. WIMSIG has developed an advertising policy, and only advertises events that meet our guidelines. The opportunities section advertises jobs, scholarships and volunteer op- portunities. Some research organisations now have a written process that includes notifying WIMSIG whenever they have a position to advertise. We encourage all organisations to notify WIMSIG when they advertise a posi- tion. The positions will be advertised in the newsletter until the closing date. We have received feedback from our members that some have heard about opportunities in our newsletter first, and seeing an opportunity advertised the our newsletter motivated them to apply. The media and research sections contain links to media and scholarly articles about women in STEM. To join WIMSIG and receive the newsletter every month, send a request to [email protected].

4.3 Website www.austms.org.au/Women+in+Mathematics+group

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Page 46 of 87 Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group

The WIMSIG website is maintained by WIMSIG Webmaster Amy Glen. The website contains newsletters, event advertisements, job advertisements, a funding directory, resources on gender equity in STEM, Q&A with female mathematicians, information about the Hanna Neumann Lecturers and links to the Praeger and Street Awards. The Job Advertisements and Event Advertisements pages are becoming busier, as more organisations and event managers request an advertisement. Advertisements for jobs or events are done at no cost providing the organ- isation or event meets our advertising policy. Some research organisations now have a written process that includes notifying WIMSIG whenever they have a position to advertise. Positions will be advertised on the website un- til they close. For some opportunities (such as the UON Women in Science Chair) a WIMSIG committee member personally contacts people whom the committee deems suitable. The Gender Equity resources section of the website contains links to a variety of scholarly and media articles articulating some of the issues of women in mathematics or more generally women in STEM. The Q&A section of the WIMSIG website contains interviews with the female plenary speakers at AustMS and ANZIAM meetings since 2013: http://www.austms.org.au/WIMSIG-QA.

5 Projects

5.1 Travel Awards Since the 2015 Annual report, there have been three rounds of AustMS WIMSIG Travel Awards, with closing dates of Round 3: October 2015, Round 4: 1 April 2016, and Round 5: 1 October 2016). The latest round (Round 5) is still being finalised. Below is the report for Rounds 3 and 4. In these two rounds (Rounds 3 and 4), we received nine applications for the Cheryl E. Praeger Awards and three applications for the Street Awards. The rules for the Street Awards have now changed to permit applications from event organisers for funding to support childcare at their events. We have not yet received such Street applications. The Selection Committees consisted of Amie Albrecht (Chair), Deborah Street, and Barbara Maenhaut for Round 3, and Deborah Street (Chair), Barbara Maenhaut, and Yvonne Stokes for Round 4. The selection Com- mittee for Round 5 consists of Barbara Maenhaut (Chair), Yvonne Stokes, and Joanna Wang. During the reporting period there were eight Praeger awardees and two Street awardees. AustMS WIMSIG Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award:

R3 Emma Carberry (USyd), Visitor to USyd from Germany

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R3 Deborah Cromer (UNSW), Wellcome Trust Conf + Research visit, UK, 2015

R3 Chaitanya Oehmigara (ANU), MODSIM, Australia, 2015

R3 Melissa Tacy (Adelaide), Evolution of Singular Spaces + Research visit, France, 2016

R3 Elena Tartaglia (UMelb), ANZ Assoc. Math Physics, Australia, 2016

R4 Sangeeta Bhatia (Western Syd Uni), SIAM conf on Life Sciences + Research visit, US, 2016

R4 Rachael Quill (UNSW), 5th International Fire Behaviour and Fuels Conference, Australia, 2016

R4 Nadezda Sukhorukova (Swinburne), Mathematical Optimization Down Under, Australia, 2016 AustMS WIMSIG Award: R3 Emma Carberry (USyd), Visitor to USyd from Germany

R3 Deborah Cromer (UNSW), Wellcome Trust Conf + Research visit, UK, 2015 One Praeger awardee (Bhatia, Round 4) was unable to travel as planned, due to factors beyond her control, and so the funds originally allocated to her are now available for Round 5.

5.2 WIMSIG Conference 2017: Celebration of Women in Mathematics WIMSIG is organising Australia’s first women-in-mathematics research con- ference. The WIMSIG Conference: Celebration of Women in Australian Mathematics will take place on 24–26 September 2017, at the University of South Australia. The conference is open to people of any gender, but all the research talks will be given by women. The conference will include plenary speakers, parallel special sessions, a poster session, a professional development workshop, a conference dinner, and a panel discussion on gender and mathematics. The themes of the special sessions will range across the mathematical sciences, broadly defined, including areas of applied maths, pure maths, statistics, biostatistics, and mathematics in industry. We are submitting a funding proposal for joint consideration by the AustMS, AMSI, ANZIAM and SSAI, requesting their support of the Con- ference. We have already raised some funds from other sources and have developed a sponsorship prospectus aimed at attracting corporate funding.

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The Conference Steering Committee consists of Lesley Ward (UniSA, WIMSIG Chair), Giang Nguyen (Univ. of Adelaide, WIMSIG Treasurer), Lynn Batten (Deakin Univ., WIMSIG Exec Committee), and Sue Tyerman (Admin, UniSA). The Conference website, including a call for expressions of interest, is at http://www.austms.org.au/WIMSIG-conference-2017 .

5.3 Proposed online archive of Hanna Neumann’s work Subsequent to the development of an online archive of Kurt Mahler’s work, the Society invited suggestions for the establishment of similar archives for the work of other distinguished mathematicians. WIMSIG has taken some initial steps towards establishing an online archive of Hanna Neumann’s work. The Society has expressed its support for this project.

6 Membership

The WIMSIG membership list and mailing list are maintained by WIMSIG Secretary Joanne Hall. WIMSIG currently has 342 people on the mailing list, of whom about 181 are members of the AustMS. Membership is approximately 86% female and 14% male.

7 Elections

The 2016 WIMSIG Election round is now underway. The current Chair and Secretary intend to step down from these roles on the Executive Committee, when their current terms end on 31 January 2017. Some members of the current Executive Committee intend to re-nominate. The WIMSIG Executive Committee has drafted some changes to the Rules of Procedure. These proposed changes will bring the process, and especially the timing, for the appointment of the Chair of WIMSIG in line with those for the appointment of the President of the Society, and for the leadership roles of many other organisations. According to the current Rules and Procedures, the new WIMSIG Chair is elected in December and takes oce almost immediately, on the following 1 February, serving as Chair for two years and then as Immediate Past Chair for two further years. We propose that the election for the Chair of WIMSIG be held one year before the elected candidate takes up the position of Chair. In this way the Chair will spend one year as Chair-Elect, two years as Chair and one year as Past Chair. The Chair of WIMSIG is a high-profile role, and one that would benefit from a shadowing period. Over the past four years, since its inception, the Women in Maths Special Interest Group has completed several successful

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Page 49 of 87 Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group projects and has become better known amongst the Australian mathematical sciences community. These successes have led to more invitations for the WIMSIG Chair to attend events, speak at events, meet with industry people and do media interviews. In order to change the Rules of Procedure a vote must be held. This vote will take place at the same time as the current election of the 2017–2018 Executive Committee. Members of WIMSIG who are current members of the Society will receive a separate invitation to vote on this matter.

8 Funds

In 2015, WIMSIG submitted a three-year funding proposal (2015–2017), and was approved funding for $3,200 for operational purposes, including travel money to attend • events for advocacy (the session 2015–2016) $20,000 for the Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Awards (FY 2016–2017) • $3,000 for the Anne Penfold Street Awards (FY 2016–2017). • A summary of expenditures, and WIMSIG’s future funding request, have been prepared as a separate document by the WIMSIG Treasurer Giang Nguyen.

9 ? Future funding source for Women in Maths Events at AustMS and ANZIAM annual meet- ings ?

A Women in Mathematics Dinner has been held at each AustMS Annual Meeting beginning in 2013, and a Women in Mathematics Lunch has been held at each ANZIAM annual Conference since 2014. WIMSIG assists with these events, working with local organisers and providing an MC. These events have been funded by Prof. Nalini Joshi’s Georgina Sweet Laureate Fellowship. The duration of this funding source is five years. Hence, begin- ning with AustMS 2018 and ANZIAM 2019, a new source of funding will be needed to continue with these events. These Women in Mathematics events have highlighted the female ple- nary speakers and given an opportunity to discuss gender equity to an open audience. (The events are open to people of any gender.) They also help foster a sense of community and belonging, which is especially valuable for minority groups at large events. We request that the Society consider supporting these events into the future by including these events in the event budgets for future AustMS and ANZIAM annnual meetings.

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10 ? Good Practice Scheme ?

In 2015 AustMS Council suggested that the Women in Mathematics Spe- cial Interest Group adapt for Australia the London Mathematical Society’s Good Practice Scheme. The WIMSIG Executive Committee has discussed this suggestion and has decided that WIMSIG will not undertake this project. The Science Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) initiative is currently be- ing rolled out, with well over half of Australian universities participating in the initial pilot project. WIMSIG is already actively supporting SAGE. In addition many of our volunteers are involved in the implementation of SAGE within their own institutions. Adapting the LMS Good Practice Scheme may duplicate some of the SAGE project, which is not a valuable use of our volunteer resources. When the pilot phase of SAGE is complete, we may re-evaluate this position. We recognise that a Good Practice Scheme could have a significant im- pact, and indeed we note the recent award to the London Mathematical Society of the inaugural Royal Society Athena Prize, in recognition of ac- complishments including the LMS Good Practice Scheme; see https://www. lms.ac.uk/news-entry/12102016-1053/lms-wins-prestigious-athena- prize. It is worth noting that aspects of the LMS Good Practice Scheme ultimately formed part of the UK’s Athena SWAN charter, which in turn is the model for Australia’s SAGE initiative. If AustMS Council is still keen on the project of a Good Practice Scheme in mathematics, then we suggest that Council set up a committee for this express purpose. We believe that such a project would be most successful if undertaken by the Society as a whole, not only by WIMSIG. WIMSIG would be supportive of such a committee, and would be happy to contribute (for instance by recommending potential participants), but will not be taking responsibility for the project.

Joanne Hall Secretary Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group Australian Mathematical Society 4 November 2016

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11 Appendix: Travel Award Reports, Rounds 1–4

On the following pages we present the reports by all recipients to date of the AustMS WIMSIG Cheryl E. Praeger Award and the AustMS WIMSIG Anne Penfold Street Award. For completeness we have included the Round 1 and Round 2 reports (which were not given in full in last year’s Annual Report), as well as the current Round 3 and Round 4 reports.

Round 1: Vivien Challis (P)

Round 1: Joan Licata (P & S)

Round 1: Valentina Wheeler (P)

Round 1: Sylvia Young (P)

Round 2: Adelle Coster (P & S)

Round 2: Hang Wang (P)

Round 3: Emma Carberry (P & S)

Round 3: Deborah Cromer (P & S)

Round 3: Chaitanya Oehmigara (P)

Round 3: Melissa Tacy (P)

Round 3: Elena Tartaglia (P)

Round 4: Rachael Quill (P)

Round 4: Nadezda Sukhorukova (P)

14 7 November 2016

Page 52 of 87 Travel report for AustMS Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award – Vivien Challis

A Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award for $600 from the Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group of the Australian Mathematical Society covered most of the registration fee for me to attend the ANZIAM 2015 conference on the Gold Coast. I enjoyed attending and giving a talk at this meeting. It was great to have the opportunity to connect with new and old friends within the Australasian applied mathematics community, especially after taking a recent break for maternity leave.

ANZIAM 2015 had an impressive list of invited speakers, including five women. This was really great to see. The Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group held a lunch during the conference (funded by Prof. Nalini Joshi’s ARC Georgina Sweet Laureate Fellowship). This was an excellent opportunity to hear views of the female invited speakers and highlight issues that are important to female applied mathematicians, as well as to mathematicians with parenting or other caring responsibilities.

Page 53 of 87 Report: I am grateful to the Australian Mathematical Society for supporting my recent research trip to the United States and . In December I travelled to the University of Georgia, USA, to visit a collaborator there. We've been working on a project together for a year and a half, with only a few opportunities to speak in person. This visit offered us the chance to resolve some technical issues in the first stage of our project, and we expect to have the paper finished early this year. We also laid the groundwork for a new paper on two-parameter families of Morse functions which we will continue to work on remotely. Right after the New Year, I visited the Chinese University of Hong Kong, giving a series of graduate talks and speaking in a special workshop on low-dimensional topology. The Chery E. Praeger Award was extremely valuable in defraying the costs which weren't covered by my hosts. In addition, my two-year-old son travelled with me to Georgia, and the Anne Penfold Street Award covered the cost of his childcare while I was working there. I am extremely appreciative for this support in the dual challenge of being a mathematician and a parent.

Joan Licata

Page 54 of 87 AustMS WIMSIG Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award

Valentina-Mira Wheeler - Report

The travel award facilitated my attendance at the 8th ANZ Maths Convention in Melbourne. At the invitation of A/Prof Daniel Daners I delivered a talk titled “Mean curvature flow with free boundaries and the use of Killing vector fields in Euclidean space” in the Special session in Harmonic Analysis and PDE. http://www.austms2014.ms.unimelb.edu.au/

This conference is the combined meeting of the AustMS and NZMS held every six years and is a high-quality event in mathematics in Australia and New Zealand. It has allowed me to publicise my results to the larger mathematical community and promote my work as a young female early career mathematician.

The conference was attended by many mathematicians in my field, as for example Daniel Daners, Julie Clutterbuck, Florica Cirstea, Maria Athanassenas, Jerome Vetois, Thierry Coulhon, Adam Sikora, Daniel Hauer, and many others allowing me to connect with peers and possible new collaborators, both Australian and European.

The results I presented treat the setting of a mean curvature flow solution with free boundaries. A section of my talk has also referred to the more complicated family of fully nonlinear curvature flow with free boundaries.

Presenting my results allowed me to obtain valuable feedback on my work in later discussions with Daniel Daners, Maria Athanassenas, Florica Cirstea, Julie Clutterbuck and Pierre Portal.

The conference also exposed me to different aspects of mathematical analysis, for example mathematical biology, geometry and topology, and computational mathematics; with results presented in other special sessions and plenary talks.

I enjoyed my time in Melbourne very much and I hope that I will be able to take advantage of another such prestigious travel award in the future.

Page 55 of 87 Report to Australian Mathematics Society Cheryl Praeger Travel Award Committee

– Visiting the University of Wisconsin – Madison, the US (September 29th to November 13th, 2015)

Dr. Sylvia Young

Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne

Dear AustMS Cheryl Praeger Travel Award Committee,

Receiving the Australian Mathematics Society Cheryl Praeger Travel Award was undoubtedly a turning point in my career. I applied for the Award as an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne. In late 2014, I heard from the Award selection committee that I was selected as an inaugural recipient of the Award. Soon after, I was offered a Research Fellow position by the University of Western Australia. I left Melbourne, and moved to a completely new city to me – Perth, in January 2015.

Thanks to the funds from the Award, as well as an invitation from Professor Daniel Gianola, I had an opportunity to visit the University of Wisconsin- Madison in the United States from September 30th to November 11th 2015. I have been admiring Professor Gianola's contributions to the developments of statistical genetics since the second year of my PhD candidature. However, I have never had a chance to meet with Professor Gianola in person previously. My PhD project was about modeling the mathematical association between genotypes and phenotypes in dairy cattle data. Although my current projects in Perth are more focused on genome-wide association study on human diseases, some state-of-the-art modeling methods can be commonly used in both animal and human data. Fortunately, the University of Wisconsin - Madision would have a course on “Prediction of Complex Traits Using Whole Genome Markers” exactly during my stay, which was lectured by Professor Gianola himself ! Therefore, the six-week course and a collaborative project made the major parts of my visit to Professor Gianola.

UW-Madison was esteemed for its outstanding expertises in statistics, genetics, biology and animal sciences. Professor Gianola is a leading statistical genetist with broad interests in complex traits of plants, animals and human. He also kindly offered a good number of new connections between me and statisticians on campus, some of which are well known, such as Professor Grace Wahba – a pioneer of “smoothing spline” and still an active statistician in her eighties, and Professor Brian Yandell – an amazingly knowledgeable statistician and the past chair of Department of Statistics at UW-Madison. Professor Daniel Gianola, together with his colleague Professor Guilherme Rosa in the Department of Animal Sciences and Professor Brian Yandell in the Department of Statistics, became my important mentors in Madison.

Three mentors and I had a meeting and decided to implement the models in Professor Gianola's lectures on one of datasets that I was working on. Results from those models would be benchmarks for my project. In order to extend conventional model, we discussed on how to improve the genomic prediction models by adding in interactive terms between genetic variants. This would be a second step in my research.

Madison professors taught me a lot. They have corrected some of my wrong unstandings, and guided me through how to choose appropriate ways to achieve research goals. Not only the techniques that I learned during my visit, but also the approach to develop research, were the precious harvests in my visit. My goal is to enhance the collaboration that we built, and to work towards joint publications with my Madison mentors in next years.

Apart from the above, I also visitied Professor Alan Attie's group on Madison campus. The Attie's lab belonged to Department of biochemistry. It seemed different from my background. But the Attie's lab and our lab in Australia have a common interest, i.e., we both use mice models to study how to cure human diabetes. Even if my major tasks were about human GWAS, the mice experiments in the Attie's lab were greatly intersting to me. Thanks to the permission by Professor Attie, I had attended their group meetings every week. I found that they had an excellent way to perform their

Page 56 of 87 study, which was to closely collaborate with statistical collaborators. Statistical collaborators would participate in their weekly meetings. Statistician made suggestions either on how to proceed with the analysis, or on the experiment design from the beginning. The research in the Attie's lab has significantly benefitted from this intense link with statisticians.

I also had extensive conversations on Madison campus. There were 16 individual meeting between myself with 8 statisticians during my 6-week stay in Madison. They were all excellent researchers, with strong expertise as well as strong personality. Professor Karl Broman, the author of package “qtl” in R software, was a representative example. He was fast-minded and picked up ideas so quickly. He was warm hearted, but never smiled. When he knew the answers to my questions, he would tell in details, such as the code. In case of questions that he was not in his areas, he would directly say “sorry I can not help you.” He always replied to my emails, even though he was extremely busy with many demanding projects. I went to his seminar once. His slides were so cool that they made audience (at least, me) feel like watching a movie in a cinema. In fact, his slides were written in a particular progrmming scripts (D3.js, JavaScript for interactive data visualization in web browsers which is quite different from Java) that required a big amout of efforts. He opened my eyes.

I gave two seminar to two groups in Madison. My first seminar was for the Attie's lab in the second week after my arrival. My second seminar was for Gianola's group in the last week of my visit. The topics of my seminars were both supposed to be about introducing my research in earlier this year in Australia. Interestingly, the slides in my two talks were slightly different. Unclear or incorrect terminologies in the first talk had been amended in the second talk – this was an evidence that my visit provided me with a chance to review my research.

I call my journey to the US a peer-reviewing trip. This is because my Madison professors are all leading experts in the field. They could highly likely be acting as reviewers when I submitted my work to journals. When I landed in Madison, how I wanted to convince them that my research was sound and deserved to be published. Soon I found that a lot of questions needed to be properly addressed before publishing my work. Thanks to their guide, I am currently doing my projects in a benchmarking way. For every single terminology that I corrected in my context, I would remember. I felt fortunate to have realized them during my academic visit, rather than after submitting my work. Please join me to thank the Madison professors who have put efforts in mentoring a visitor from Australia.

Sincerely yours,

Sylvia Young written at the University of Western Australia

December 13th, 2015

Page 57 of 87 Report on the Society for Mathematical Biology Meeting June 30 to July 3 2015 Atlanta, Georgia, USA

After a delay due to aircraft maintenance and thus an overnight sojourn in Dallas on the way to Atlanta, I arrived in time to be present at the SMB Executive Board meeting on June 29. I answered some of the committee members’ queries regarding the progress our committee had made towards the 2018 SMB meeting which is to be hosted at the University of Sydney. They were pleased and we are looking forward to hosting a large international contingent at the meeting.

In the area of mathematical biology many times your collaborators and co-authors are biologists rather than mathematicians, so this forum was very useful to network with other like-minded mathematicians.

There was quite a reasonable international representation at the meeting, although naturally the largest cohort was American. Indeed there were many antipodeans, showing the active nature of this area of mathematics in Australia.

The plenaries of the meeting itself were excellent with a wide range of topics in mathematical biology covered. Unfortunately, only 2 of the 9 were from female speakers, although the female representation at the meeting as a whole was much higher than many other mathematical conferences. Eve Marder was particularly inspiring – she is a biologist, but is one who sees the absolute necessity of modelling and mathematics in the understanding of how information is processed and decisions are made in biological function. Her presentation about degeneracy in neuronal oscillators touched on the interplay of experiment and modelling, and how individual responses should not always be averaged – difference being an important driver of differential behaviour.

The sessions, two of which I chaired, were also of high quality and ranged over numerous biological topics and mathematical techniques. Of particular interest to me were several sessions devoted to mathematical modelling in diabetes. It was wonderful to be able to see the progress being made on a number of fronts in this area as well as to meet and reconnect with researchers, some of whom I knew previously, but others only from their publications. My presentation was well received and I spoke with a researcher from Pfizer about possible future collaborations. I also followed up a previous meeting with Santiago Schnell (now President of the Society for Mathematical Biology), whom I had briefly met at a workshop in Feb 2014. He and his postdoc had followed through with a suggestion that I had made, and it was most gratifying to see that it had indeed provided a good line of investigation. Santiago is also particularly interested in ways to encourage women researchers, and we had a discussion about the AustMS awards I had received and he thought that these were interesting opportunities that the Society should similarly pursue.

I would like to again thank the AustMS WIMSIG for their invaluable support of the Cheryl E. Praeger and Anne Penfold Street Awards, making my participation in this meeting possible.

Adelle Coster July 2015

Page 58 of 87 Report Dr. Hang Wang

It is my great pleasure to acknowledge the support from the AustMS WIMSIG Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award. With this award, I was possible to have a very fruitful 3- week research travel to Montreal and Shanghai.

In the first week (29 June-3 July 2015), I participated the workshop “Noncommutative Geometry and Spectral Invariants” at the Université Du Québec À Montréal, Canada. During the workshop, experts in noncommutative geometry (NCG) communicated exciting developments in this field. Major topics include index theory and higher analogue for groupoids and applications to manifolds with boundary, spectral triples in different settings, quantum groups and NCG in mathematical physics and representation theory. I am familiar with most topics in the conference so I enjoyed learning from the talks. As one of the invited speakers, I gave the talk “Noncommutative geometry, equivariant cohomology and conformal invariants” on 30 July 2015, based on my series of joint papers with Prof Raphael Ponge (one of the organisers of the workshop). Quite a few mathematicians (Prof Bruno Iochum, Prof Piotr Hajac, Prof Paolo Piazza, etc.) got very interested in our work. It should be noted that I was one of the only two female speakers in the workshop. Besides the successful talk, I initiated some very inspiring discussions with Dr Yanli Song, where we tried to study a previous paper of mine in a new setting, and we have planed an exciting joint project together with my colleague Peter Hochs in Adelaide.

In the second and the third week I visited the Shanghai Centre of Mathematical Sciences at Fudan University in China. This travel was devoted to the collaboration with Dr Kuok Fai Chao, a junior member of the Centre. We made several important progresses on our joint paper about Base change and K-theory. In the meanwhile I had some very interesting conversations with members and visitors at the Centre and the University. In particular, I established a new collaboration with a visitor there working in mathematical physics. I also gave several talks in Shanghai. On 10 July 2015, I was invited to give a talk with the same title as the Canada conference in the research seminar of the East Normal China University, hosed by Distinguished Professor Huaxin Lin. There was a Summer School named “Advance Seminars in Functional Analysis” hosted by the Centre during my stay. In the afternoons of 15 and 17 July I was invited to work together with Dr Zhizhang Xie from Texas A&M University to host the discussion sessions, in which I introduced some interesting examples to the summer school participants, helping them to understand the lectures. It was a wonderful experience to interact with graduate and senior undergraduate students coming to this summer school from top universities in China.

Finally, I would like to express my deep appreciation of the support from WIMSIG, making these research experiences possible.

Dr Hang Wang University of Adelaide 22 July 2015.

Page 59 of 87 Report on Cheryl Praeger Travel Grant

Melissa Tacy

I used my Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Grant to partially support a research trip to Germany and France. The first two weeks of the visit were spent at Oberwolfach where I was working with my collaborator Julie Rowlett of Chalmers University as part of the Research in Pairs project. The final week of the research trip was spent at Centre International de Rencontres Math´ematiques (CIRM) in Marseilles to attend a workshop on evolution equations on singular spaces.

Research in Pairs The overall goal of our ongoing joint work is to generalise results in harmonic and semiclassical analysis, such as L2 and more general Lp estimates of quasimodes (approximate eigenfunctions), to singular geometric settings. The major diculty in obtaining such results is that the known techniques from smooth manifolds rely heavily on the underlying regularity. We therefore are working to replace these techniques with ones that rely on the geometric structure instead. While at Oberwolfach we focused on the restriction of eigenfunctions to fractal sets, in particular those given by iterated function systems. Fractal sets provide a good place to start this analysis as, while clearly not smooth, they have a great deal of structure and the self-similarity at all scales is valuable to us. We have been working on this project since July 2015, however being able to work together intensively greatly accelerated our progress. While at Oberwolfach we developed tools to replace the standard smooth toolkit and obtain L2 estimates restricted to fractals that depend on dimension alone (we already had examples to show that these are in fact sharp bounds). We are currently writing our results from this two week period and plan to continue the work into other non-smooth settings. While at Oberwolfach we overlapped with the yearly meeting of the “Imaginary” team who develop outreach connected with the institute. As a result of this Julie and I are providing them with some ideas to develop displays on mathematics and music (particularly its connection to harmonic analysis).

Evolution Equations on Singular Spaces This conference gathered together a number of experts in microlocal and semiclassical analysis to address the issue of moving such analysis to singular spaces. A particular focus is on understanding the e↵ects of boundary and corners. While there I had the opportunity to meet with a number of colleagues and collaborators. In particular with my collaborator Je↵Galkowski from Stanford University, we have previous work on boundary to interior norms of layer potential operators and the e↵ect of boundary geometry of such estimates. During the conference we took the opportunity to discuss further improvements to our work. Following this discussion we are now writing a paper showing under what geometric conditions our previous work can be improved (and where it is sharp). This conference also o↵ered the opportunity to meet Simon Chandler-Wilde and Euan Spence, two British numerical analysts whose work overlaps my area. Some of my previous results have been of use in controlling error for their numerical techniques and it is becoming increasingly apparent that many of the techniques of semiclassical analysis have much to o↵er in numerical fields. I have corresponded with Spence before but this is the first time we had met in person. Being able to meet them and learn more about the problems that they are interested in has given me an number of new avenues to pursue in my own research.

1 Page 60 of 87 REPORT FOR WIMSIG CHERYL E. PRAEGER TRAVEL AWARD AND ANNE PENFOLD STREET TRAVEL AWARD

E. CARBERRY

The funding I received from WIMSIG enabled me to invite my collabo- rator Prof Martin Schmidt (University of Mannheim, Germany) to visit me in Sydney and to defray the costs of additional childcare during his visit, as I temporarily went from working 3 days per week to working full-time. It was an extremely productive visit and we are now writing up two papers resulting from this intensive research time: Blowing-up Singular Whitham Flows and Constant Mean Curvature Tori in R3. This productivity and recognition has already helped me to achieve further grant success, with the award of a $60,000 Brown Fellowship for next year, which will relieve me of teaching and administration duties for the year as well as provide some research funding. It was particularly helpful that the grant was available to facilitate a collaborator visiting me rather than only supporting the reverse situation. As a sole parent of one-year-old twins it would not have been feasible for me to travel to Germany. Indeed even if that had been feasible, the situation of a collaborator doing the travel is more ecient in many ways as it allows the grant recipient to take advantage of existing childcare arrangements and support, rather than having to make temporary arrangements in a foreign country, as well as pay for childcare here whilst absent.

Date:October31,2016. 1

Page 61 of 87 Report for Cheryl E. Praeger and Anne Penfold Street Awards

I received travel funding and childcare support for an extended trip to the UK from 8th October – 14th November 2015 to both attend the Infectious Disease genomics Conference at the Welcome Trust Conference Centre, Cambridge UK from 14th – 16th October 2015 and to further my research collaboration with Dr Mark Jit at the London School of tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

At the Infectious Disease genomics Conference I presented my work on estimating the in-vivo HIV template switching and recombination rate, which was very well received. It was debated by a number of conference participants and the stimulating discussions that followed indicated a strong level of interest in my work at the international level. This was particularly inspiring for me, as I had not had a chance to present internationally recently. The talks I attended have motivated some new directions for my research. In particular I was alerted to a new dataset that we have since already used as evidence for some of our hypotheses in a manuscript under preparation. I had an opportunity to speak directly with a number of people whose work I had previously read and cited, and built up some new networks for potential future collaborations.

During the research visit with Dr Mark Jit we developed a mathematical model to assess the cost effectiveness of childhood vaccination against Respiratory Syncytial Virus. Vaccines against this virus are likely to be available in the next 5- 10 years, and our work will act as some guidelines for public health authorities when the vaccines are available for purchase. Out model was based on some previous analysis we had done of the burden of respiratory diseases by age and risk group, and built upon this work. By the end of the research visit we had drafted the majority of the paper and had clear timelines for the remainder of the work. Additionally we have plans for continuing this collaboration into the future.

Since I was out of Australia for over 5 weeks, I could not have made this research visit without taking my two children (3 years and 1 year) with me. I used funds from the Anne Penfold Street Award to pay for babysitting for my children while I was working in London. I used funding from the Cheryl Praeger Award to pay for my flight to the UK and for part of my conference fee.

I am very grateful for both of these awards, as they made a very productive research trip a real possibility through their financial support.

Page 62 of 87 Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award

Chaitanya Oehmigara-Trip Report

21st International Congress on Modelling and Simulation Sunday 29 November - Friday 4 December 2015 Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre, Broadbeach, Queensland

I was grateful to receive in November a Cheryl E Praeger Travel Award from the Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group of the Australian Mathematical Society. This award supported my attendance at the 21st International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM 2015).

On Monday 30 November I presented a paper in the Solving Practical Inverse Problems session titled “Reduced Basis Model Reduction for Statistical Inverse Problems with applications in Tsunami Modelling”. I was awarded the Best Student Paper Prize of the Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand for this paper and my presentation.

MODSIM is a broad ranging conference that attracts attendees from a wide range of disciplines. I attended many presentations on topics related to my own areas of mathematical interest (model reduction and solving inverse problems), but that looked at these methods for a range of applications. This has given me many ideas for my own research. Conversely, I went to many very interesting talks on other mathematical areas with very diverse applications, and often saw how my work could be applied there. I made many new contacts who I look forward to working with in the future.

I would like to thank the AustMS Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group and the selection committee for granting me the Cheryl E Praeger Travel Award. Attending MODSIM 2015 has been an extremely valuable experience.

Page 63 of 87 Report for Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award

Elena Tartaglia, December 2015

ANZAMP 2015 Due to the generosity of the Women in Mathematics special interest group of AustMS, I was able to attend this year’s Australia and New Zealand Mathematical Physics (ANZAMP) conference in Newcastle. This conference attracts many researchers from across Australia and overseas, giving a attendees the opportunity to listen to many diverse and high-quality talks from across the field. The opening of this year’s conference also included a public lecture given by Nalini Joshi and Cassandra Portelli who spoke about their respective careers in mathematics and the importance of teaching mathematics in a way that allows students to problem solve and explore mathematics for themselves by collaborating in groups.

Benefits of attending the conference Attending this conference gave me to opportunity to present a talk on my latest work with my PhD supervisor Paul Pearce “Fused RSOS as Higher-level Nonunitary Minimal Cosets.” I gave the talk on the 10 December 2015. It was interesting to present my talk to academics from other universities and respond to their questions. I was also able to meet academics from many institutions in Europe, where Iamcurrentlyapplyingforpostdoctoralpositions.

1

Page 64 of 87 Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award Conference Report Rachael Quill, UNSW Canberra [email protected]

In April 2016, I attended the 5th Fire Behaviour and Fuels Conference at the Melbourne Convention Centre, with the financial support of the Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award. The conference was run jointly in Melbourne and Portland, Oregon, with a number of plenary sessions shared between the two locations via video link.

At the Melbourne conference, organised by the International Association of Wildfire Fire (IAWF) in conjunction with the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre (BNH CRC), I gave two presentations that were accompanied by extended abstracts to be published by IAWF (to be available at www.iawfonline.org). These presentations allowed me to communicate aspects of my PhD research to the joint academic and operational fire research community and gain valuable feedback, as well as strengthen my professional network within the industry. With approximately 30% of speakers being female at the Melbourne conference, these presentations also allowed me to contribute to the rising profile of women re- searchers and practitioners within a traditionally male dominated field.

The first presentation, Analysing the Impacts of Vegetation and Topography on Wind Fields over Com- plex Terrain, was presented in the ‘Fire Weather and Climate’ stream on Wednesday 13th April. The second, Evaluation of Operational Wind Field Models over Complex Terrain, was also presented on the Wednesday but in the ‘Fire Behaviour and Fire Behaviour Predictions’ stream. Both talks were well received, provok- ing in-depth discussion during each allocated question time as well as during conference breaks after the talks. During these discussions, I talked with a number of academics, professionals and practitioners from universities and agencies across Australia including Victoria University, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Tasmanian Fire Service. Since the conference, I have followed up with many of these connections to develop ideas for my PhD project as well as for new projects.

Prior to the conference, I was also invited to submit an article to Wildfire Magazine,publishedbyIAWF. Within this article (http://wildfiremagazine.org/article/fire-modeling-in-an-uncertain-world/), I summarised the work I was to present at the conference for a wider audience, from Australian academics to American fire fighters. The April-May 2016 issue of the magazine was circulated to IAWF members prior to the conference as well as being included in the conference packs given to attendees in both Melbourne and Portland. This article is to be re-published in the next issue of Fire Australia, published by the BNH CRC.

Page 65 of 87 MODU2016: Dr. N Sukhorukova: 18-22 July 2016, Melbourne. Mathematical Optimization Down Under. http://www.modu2016.org/

I gave two talks during this conference.

1. A generalisation of de la Vallée-Poussin procedure to multivariate polynomials (July, 21, morning session).

2. Constructive proof for polynomial spline approximation (replacing a co-author who was unable to attend on this day, July, 18, morning session).

This conference was a great opportunity for me to present my findings and discuss them with prominent mathematicians. In particular, I made a good contact with Prof. Constantin Zalinescu (University "Al. I. Cuza" Iasi). Prof. Zalinescu is a one of the leading experts in the area of convex analysis. Convex analysis techniques have proved to be very efficient for solving a wide range of Chebyshev approximation problems, including polynomial splines and therefore Prof. Zalinescu’s feedback is especially valuable.

Prof. Zalinescu also opened for me a rich field of applications for convex analysis to the area of Statistical Mechanics. Initially, I did not plan to discuss this area with him, but it appeared after his presentation and I would like to investigate this research direction as well.

I had a very fruitful discussion with other participants (Prof. A Eberhard, Prof. R. Burachik, Dr. R. Baier, Dr. V Roshchina and many others). These valuable discussions are essential, since they are more productive than e-mails or Skype meetings. Apart from research discussions, we also highlighted a number of strategies to make our collaboration more efficient. In particular, I learnt that I can access most their research seminars via Visinet (can be installed on a laptop). This is something I am going to use when travelling is not an option.

Page 66 of 87 Funding Proposal for 2016 – 2018 And Financial Report for 2015–2016

Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group (WIMSIG)

In late 2015, we requested and were approved for $3,200 for operational funds (the session 2015– 2016), $20,000 for the Praeger Awards and $3,000 for the Street Awards (FY 2016–2017).

We would like to request the same amounts for 2016–2018, in particular, $3,200 for operational funds for the session 2016–2017, $20,000 for the Praeger Awards and $3,000 for the Street Awards (FY 2017–2018).

Below is a list of WIMSIG expenditures for 2015–2016. Note that “a year” in the Operating Funds refers to the period between two consecutive AustMS Council meetings, whereas “a year” in the Travel Awards refers to a financial year. 1. Operational Funds

2015

Event Costs

Attendance at ACHMS annual meeting, by Lesley Ward (Chair) $464.72

Attendance at Choose Math launch, by Lesley Ward (Chair) $438.54

Attendance at Women in Astronomy meeting, by Joanne Hall (Secretary) $13.40

TOTAL $916.66

2016

Event Costs

Attendance at ACHMS annual meeting, by Lesley Ward (Chair) $965.99

Attendance at SAGE Symposium, by Lesley Ward* (Chair) $255.71

Attendance at SAGE Symposium, by Joanne Hall (Secretary) $757.76

TOTAL $1979.46

*With partial financial support from UniSA.

2. AustMS WIMSIG Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Awards

During the third and fourth rounds (Oct 2015 and Apr 2016), there were nine applications, requesting a total amount of $11,880. The WIMSIG Selection Committee allocated 8 awards. The

Page 67 of 87 total amount awarded was $12,860.20, of which $7,060.20 was allocated to the 2015–2016 FY, and $5,800 to the 2016–2017 FY.

For these two rounds, most applicants were not aware of the increases in the maximum award amounts (from $2000 to $3000 for an international travel award, and from $600 to $1000 for a domestic travel award). Thus, the WIMSIG Selection Committee decided, based on careful consideration of the applications, to award in certain cases to the maximum amount, even if that might exceed the requested amount. 3. AustMS WIMSIG Anne Penfold Street Awards

During the third and fourth rounds (Oct 2014 and Apr 2015), there were three applications, requesting a combined amount of $2250. The WIMSIG Selection Committee awarded two out of three, and each to the total requested amount ($750). One lot of $750 was allocated to the 2015– 2016 FY, and the other to the 2016 – 2017 FY.

Giang Nguyen, WIMSIG Treasurer October 2016

Page 68 of 87 The Australian Mathematical Society (Inc.) Applied Probability Special Interest Group 2016 Report

October 30, 2016

Office bearers

Joshua Ross (Chair, Univ. of Adelaide), Yoni Nazarathy (Secretary, Univ. of Queensland), Zdravko Botev (Treasurer, Univ. of New South Wales).

Annual General Meeting

Due to a slow start in 2016, the annual general meeting will be held at the Ap- plied Probability The Rock workshop, which will take place at Ayers Rock Resort between Monday 17-th and Friday 21-st April, 2017.

Budget Summary

No activities were organized in 2016 and no money was spent due to, amongst other reasons, a delay in setting up a bank account for the society. However, activities are planned for the upcoming year, when more resources will be available as a result of accumulated membership fees, see below.

Year Opening Balance Membership Income Expenditure Closing Balance 2016 $0 $509.01 $0 $509.01

Planned Activities for 2017

Some of the resources of the APSIG will be used to support distinguished speakers at the Applied Probability The Rock: An international workshop celebrating Phil Pollett’s 6-th birthday. Applied Probability The Rock (APR) will take place at Ayers Rock Resort between Monday 17-th and Friday 21-st April, 2017. APR is an international workshop on Applied Probability, bringing together leading researchers from around the world to share recent discoveries and begin new collaborations. It also provides an opportunity to celebrate the 60th birthday of one of Australia’s prominent Applied Probabilists, Professor Phil Pollett. The workshop aims to showcase the full range of topics in Applied Probability, and includes particular themes of ”Networks in Queueing and Telecommunications”, ”Stochastic Models in Biology” and ”Limits and Approximation”. These themes are reflected in the interests of the Keynote Speakers, who are Prof. Frank Kelly, Prof. Ruth Williams, Prof. Andrew Barbour and Prof. Erik van Doorn.

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Page 69 of 87 Report of Number Theory Down Under,Special Interest Group, AustMS, 2016

Oce Bearers Tim Trudgian (President), Mumtaz Hussain (Secretary).

Annual Meeting Held on 26th September 2016, at the Harbourview Function Centre in Newcastle. This • was on the final day of the conference Number Theory Down Under 4. Decision taken to hold next year’s meeting, Number Theory Down Under 5 at La Trobe • University in Bendigo, in September. A smaller-scale meeting, Capital Number Theory was held at the ANU on 8–9 April. • Another related meeting, Ergodic Theory and its Applications was held at Sydney • University, 18–22 July 2016.

Report on NTDU 4 Number Theory Down Under 4: Harbourview Function Centre, Newcastle, 23–26 • September 2016. The conference was dedicated to the 70th birthday of Prof. Richard Brent. Conference Organisers: Michael Coons, Alex Ghitza, Mumtaz Hussain, Tim Trud- • gian Participants: 45 participants from 19 universities. The full list of participants is • given at the end of this report. Conference Dinner: Held at Noah’s on the Beach (Newcastle) on 25th September. • The dinner was attended by 42 people from various universities including two special guests (Prof. Richard Brent’s son and daughter in law). Funding: Funding was secured from the following sources • – Grant from AustMS and AMSI – CARMA, The University of Newcastle – The University of Newcastle’s special grant for Prof. Richard Brent – Registration

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Page 70 of 87 Budget Summary Since the meeting was very recently held, the budget is still to be sorted by the admin sta↵ (Mrs Juliane Turnder). That will depend upon actual travel and accommodations costs of the invited speakers. Some of the details have come through but most of it still remaining. We will edit it once we know full details of the remaining speakers.

Accommodati Speakers Travel(max) on(max) Other Source Income 1 Shi Bai 1000 533.24 The UoN/AMSI/AustMS AMSI/AustMS 15000 2 YoungJu Choie 2000 600 AMSI/AustMS NTDU 500 3 Karl Dilcher 2000 605 The UoN/AMSI/AustMS CARMA 5000 4 Amy Glen 1537.91 600 AMSI/AustMS UON VC's grant 5000 5 Hidenori Katsurada 2000 600 AMSI/AustMS Registration 6 Simon Kristensen 1674.55 610.5 124 AMSI/AustMS 7 Brendan McKay 735 The UoN 8 Yohei Tachiya 2000 600 Coons/AMSI/AustMS 9 Paul Zimmermann 2000 629.3 The UoN/AMSI/AustMS 10 Bao-Wei Wang Venue Hire/Catering (Harbourview Function Center) 7568 CARMA/Registration Dinner, Noah's on the beach 3192.61 The UoN Miscelleneous 10760.61

List of participants Boldface indicates an overseas speaker.

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Page 71 of 87 Number Theory Down Under, 23--26 September, Harbourview Function Centre, Newcastle

First name Family name Affiliation Country ECR/Student Email address NTDU member

1 Shi Bai ENS Lyon France [email protected] N

2 David Bailey The University of Newcastle Australia [email protected] Y

3 Richard Brent The University of Newcastle Australia [email protected] N

4 Elliot Catt The University of Newcastle Australia [email protected] N

5 YoungJu Choie POSTECH Korea [email protected] N

6 Michael Coons The University of Newcastle Australia [email protected] Y

7 Shaun Cooper Massey University New Zealand [email protected] N

8 Lassina Dembele Warwick University UK [email protected] N

9 Karl Dilcher Dalhousie University Canada [email protected] Y

10 Alexander Fish Sydney University Australia [email protected]

11 Alex Ghitza The University of Melbourne Australia [email protected]

12 Amy Glen Murdoch University Australia [email protected] N

13 David Harvey The University of New South Wales Australia [email protected] N

14 Randell Heyman The University of New South Wales Australia ECR [email protected] Y

15 Michael Hirschhorn The University of New South Wales Australia [email protected] N

16 Mumtaz Hussain The University of Newcastle Australia ECR [email protected] Y

17 Hidenori Katsurada Muroran Institute of Technology [email protected] N

18 Bryce Kerr The University of New South Wales Australia ECR [email protected] N

19 Simon Kristensen Aarhus University Denmark [email protected] N

20 Chul-hee Lee The University of Queensland Australia ECR [email protected] N

21 Georgina Liversidge The University of Newcastle Australia Student [email protected] N

22 Kui Liu The University of New South Wales Australia ECR [email protected] N

23 Jim Macdoughall The University of Newcastle Australia [email protected]

24 Simon Macourt The University of New South Wales Australia Student [email protected] Y

25 Brendan McKay Australian National University Australia [email protected] N

26 Judy-anne Osborn The University of Newcastle Australia [email protected] N

27 Alina Ostafe The University of New South Wales Australia [email protected] N

28 Frncis Louis Peter Louis Institute of Arts and Sciences India [email protected] N

29 Johannes Schleischitz University of Natural Resoruces and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU) Austria ECR [email protected] N

30 Min Sha The University of New South Wales Australia ECR [email protected] Y

31 Igor Shparlinski The University of New South Wales Australia [email protected] N

32 Matt Skerritt The University of Newcastle Australia Student [email protected] N

33 Allan Steel Sydney University Australia [email protected] N

34 Nicole Sutherland Sydney University Australia ECR [email protected] Y

35 Yohei Tachiya Hirosaki University Japan [email protected] N

36 Tim Trudgian Australian National University Australia [email protected] Y

37 Bao-Wei Wang Huazhong University of Science and Technology China [email protected] N

38 Norman Wildberger The University of New South Wales Australia [email protected] N

39 Kam Hung Yau The University of New South Wales Australia [email protected] N

40 Amy Zhang The University of Newcastle Australia Student [email protected] N

41 Yinan Zhang Australian National University Australia ECR [email protected] Y

42 Paul Zimmermann INRIA France [email protected] N

43 Wadim Zudilin The University of Newcastle Australia [email protected] Y

44 Anna Zumalacarregui The University of New South Wales Australia ECR [email protected] N

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Page 72 of 87 MoCaO Report 2016

“Mathematics of Computation and Optimisation” (MoCaO, http://mocao.mathsig.org/) is a one-year old AustMS special interest group, created under the impulsion of members of SigmaOpt and the Computational Maths Group, both special interest groups of ANZIAM. MoCaO’s purpose is to make mathematics for optimisation and computation more visible in the mathematical community, and to foster the development of more comprehensive, systematic and rigorous mathematical approaches to numerical algorithms and techniques used in interdisciplinary applications.

Being newly formed, MoCaO doesn’t have an elected executive committee yet. The group is in currently preparing this election, which should be held in December 2016. The interim committee, until January 2017, comprises:

Acting Interim Executives: Prof. Jonathan Borwein (until his sudden disparition) and Dr. Jérôme Droniou Interim Secretary: A/Prof. Regina Burachik Interim Treasurer: Prof. Andrew Eberhard

A special mention should be made to the web site managers, Dr. Vera Roshchina (content) and Dr. David Allingham (technical support)

MoCaO currently has 65 members.

2016 Activities

• Mathematical optimization down under (18-22 July 2016, RMIT University) The MODU2016 workshop is embedded in Approximation and

Page 73 of 87 Optimisation research program sponsored by Federation University Australia, Swinburne University of Technology and MATRIX research institute. The MODU2016 workshop is sponsored by AMSI, AustMS, CARMA and RMIT University. The workshop focussed on the modern aspects of optimisation that involve deep interplay between computational problems and pure mathematical questions. We especially encouraged students and early career researchers to participate in this workshop. Organisers: Prof. J. Borwein, A/Prof. R. Burachik, Prof. A. Eberhard, Dr. V. Roshchina Keynote lecturers from Canada, France, Chile, Germany, Australia, USA.

• Special sessions at the AustMS 2016 (ANU) MoCaO was created partly because the special sessions, in the AustMS annual meetings, around optimization and computational mathematics had been very successful in the previous years. It’s all the more natural that MoCaO is directly involved in the organisation of two sessions in the upcoming meeting.

- “Mathematical and computational optimisation” Organisers: R. Burachik (University of South Australia) G. Li (University of NSW), and J. Jeyakumar (University of NSW). Keynote speaker: Miguel Angel Goberna Lopez (University of Alicante).

- “Computational Mathematics” Organisers: M. Hegland, Q. Jin, S. Roberts (ANU). Keynote speaker: TBA.

Page 74 of 87 Besides these specific meetings, members of MoCaO have been involved in 2016 in the organisation of a number of national and international events around mathematics for optimisation and computation: South Pacific Optimization workshop (SPOW 2016, New Caledonia); Numerical PDEs at Monash; Advanced numerical methods: recent developments, analysis, and applications (IHP, Paris); ACEMS Workshop: computational and mathematical foundations for Big Data Analytics (QUT); as well as a MATRIX workshop, Approximation and optimisation.

MoCaO poster competition

A competition was organised to find evocative pictures to illustrate a MoCaO poster/flyer that could be distributed during conferences and events, to advertise the group’s objectives and activities. We received a few contributions, of excellent quality. The winning pictures were created by Scott Lindstrom and Matthew Skerritt, doctoral students from CARMA, University of Newcastle. The prize was a free registration to the MODU2016 conference. Vera Roshchina used Scott and Matthew’s pictures to design the poster, which is attached to this report.

Future activities

We are encouraging the participation of new, emerging research groups in the MoCaO activities.

Page 75 of 87 We are currently planning several visits of optimizers who will contribute by giving broadcast talks or short courses. We also encourage all visitors to Australia who work in the field to engage with these activities.

We plan to continue organizing special sessions on optimization at the national events, as well as to encourage and promote participation at the broadcast seminars.

Financial report

Mid year of 2016 a special meeting of the interim executive has held in order to nominate signatories for the MoCaO account. MoCaO members were invited to attend by Visimeet and some indeed did attend. It was decided at this meeting that the current chair and treasurer should have access to the societies account.

In early September 2016 MoCaO opened a Society cheque Account with the

Bank of Melbourne. This was after approaching several other larger Banks and building societies only to be informed that they did not support low fee accounts for club or societies anymore. The Bank of Melbourne account was deemed to be the most suitable in this regard. This account gives us access to card and online banking facilities. We deposited the last two cheques that we had received from the AustMS and now the account contains the sum of $913.15.

To date no other transaction has occurred.

Report prepared by Jerôme Droniou (MoCaO Chair)

Page 76 of 87 Regina Burachik (MoCaO Secretary), Andrew Eberhard (MoCaO Treasurer), Vera Roschina (MoCaO content webmaster editor)

Date: Friday, 4 November 2016

Page 77 of 87 MoCaO Mathematics of Computation and Optimisation Special Interest Group of AustMS

Another special group?

Our main interest is in rigorous mathematical design and analysis of numerical algorithms for models based on differential equations and mathematical optimisation. Our group was established by a vote of the AustMS executives in 2015, and consists of 43 members.

Acting Interim Executives: Jonathan Borwein and Jérôme Droniou Interim Secretary: Regina Burachik Interim Treasurer: Andrew Eberhard

What we do Special sessions

Organise seminars, meetings and events This year, two special sessions at the 60th Members of our group have been holding regu- meeting of the Australian Maths Society are lar meetings and seminars. This year we have aligned with MoCaO: organised MODU2016 workshop, the upcom- ing CTAC conference and two special MoCaO Mathematical and Computational sessions at the AustMS meeting. Optimisation Organisers: Regina Burachik (UniSA), Jeya Communicate information Jeyakumar (UNSW) , Guoyin Li (UNSW) Our web page contains the information about upcoming meetings, visitors and other impor- Computational Mathematics tant events related to mathematics of computa- Organisers: Linda Stals (ANU), Steve Roberts tion and optimisation. (ANU), Markus Hegland (ANU)

Engage with industry and government The special session, Mathematical and Com- MoCaO fosters engagement of our research- putational Optimisation, will focus on new ers with industry and government bodies, pro- mathematical and computational develop- moting the use of modern mathematical tools ments and their applications in continuous for decision making, based on the intelligent and discrete optimisation, as well as in optimal use of big data and advanced modelling tech- control and calculus of variations. niques. The focus of the special session, Computa- Join MoCaO! tional Mathematics, will be on numerical anal- ysis and approximation theory and includes Simply check MoCaO box next time you renew numerical techniques for partial differential your AustMS membership. equations, parallel numerical algorithms, inverse problems and regularisation. E-mail us at [email protected] or visit our web page mocao.org. Dates: 5–8 December 2016 Location: ANU, Canberra

The background image was obtained by running the Douglas-Rachford algorithm for 1000 iterations starting at each pixel. The pixels are then coloured according to the proximity—after the fnal step—to feasible points or to attractive periodic points. Colors were chosen based on indigenous Australian art. The image is provided by Scott Lindstrom and Matthew Skerritt (University of PageNewcastle). 78 of 87 Report on activities of the NCMS

The National Committee for the Mathematical Sciences (NCMS) is one of twenty-two national committees administered by the Australian Academy of Science. It has representation from a number of societies and organisations in the mathematical sciences: Australian Mathematical Society (AustMS), Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI), Australian Association of Mathematical Teachers, Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia and the Australian Mathematics Trust. I took over from Professor Nalini Joshi in April of this year. Nalini had just seen the launch of the Decadal Plan for the Mathematical Sciences in March, which she had instigated a number of years earlier on behalf of the Australian Academy of Science. Nalini, ably assisted by the late Professor Peter Hall and Professor Geoff Prince (AMSI) making up the Executive Committee, in addition to sourcing funding for the initiative, drew together the many strands of the mathematical sciences community to put together a positive and aspirational document that aims to best position the discipline to serve the needs of Australia as a competitive knowledge based society. With the launch of the Decadal Plan, implementation of its recommendations again requires the cooperation, expertise and initiative of the wider mathematical sciences community. Some partial success on two of the three key priorities is already evidenced. Thus with priority two recommending a staged reintroduction of at least Year 12 intermediate mathematics subjects as prerequisites for all bachelors programs in science, engineering and commerce, the University of Sydney has announced that by 2019 no fewer than 62 degrees will require this prerequisite. And in Western Australia, students enrolled in the medium and high level mathematics subjects will get a 10 percent bonus from 2017. Priority three recommends the sourcing of seed funding for a new national research centre in the mathematical sciences. Aligned with this priority is the joint initiative between Melbourne and Monash universities of the research station MATRIX, which is physically located in Creswick in country Victoria, and began operation in June this year. Priority one relates to the retention and training of properly qualified teachers of mathematics. Hopefully it is implicit that this included too statistics. Professor Louise Ryan at UTS held the event STEMS: putting statistics into STEM in the Age of Data. Many concrete suggestions are documented in the subsequent report, many of which feed into priority one in that they relate to the advancement of statistics education in Australia at all levels. The Decadal Plan, in Appendix A, states that `The discipline, through the NCMS, will be formally monitoring the plan's progress on an annual basis. In keeping with this, on Monday December 5 a meeting is planned for this very purpose, and coincides with the week of the 60th Annual Meeting of the Australian Mathematical Society.

The first face-to-face meeting of the NCMS this year was held on June 3, at the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra. Chris Hatherly, Director of Science Policy and Projects took us through the seven key points of advocacy, which of course are all important when it comes to influencing policy. Bruce Ferrington, a member of the reSolve: Mathematics by Inquiry writing team gave us an overview of this project, managed by the Australian Academy of Science and AAMT, to produce resource material for the learning of mathematics via an enquiry approach at all levels of schooling up to Year 10.

Funding of the NCMS is very modest: the budget is only $3,000 per year for meetings. The Academy separately funds memberships of the IMU, although in recent years this expense has been shared by AMSI. The NCMS also endorces a Heidelberg Laureate Forum attendee (this year Mark Bugden from the ANU), but does not provide any funding, which in turn is shared between AustMS and AMSI.

Peter J. Forrester

Page 79 of 87 THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS CANBERRA ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES INSTITUTE TELEPHONE: + 61 2 6125 2908 THE JOHN DEDMAN MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES BUILDING FACSIMILE: + 61 2 6125 4984 EMAIL: [email protected]

ANU CRICOS Provider Code: 00120C

17 October 2016

Report of Public Officer, AustMS and

Report of Public Officer, AMPAI

The statutory requirements have, as always, been efficiently completed by the staff of the AustMS Canberra office. There is nothing else to report.

John Cossey, Public Officer, AustMS and AMPAI

Page 80 of 87 ReportoftheAustMSMedalCommittee,November2016

Membersofthecommitteein2016wereNickWormald(MonashUniversity)asoutgoing chair,PeterForrester(UniversityofMelbourne)asincomingchair,ChristineO’Keefe(CSIRO) asoneyearmember,andPeterBouwknegt(ANU)aschair.

Thisyearsixexcellentmathematicianswereconsideredbythecommittee,includingone femalecandidate.Fivearepuremathematiciansandoneisamathematicalphysicists.All werenominatedbythedeadline.Fivecandidateswerenominatedinpreviousyears,one wasanewnomination.

Atthebeginningoftheprocesswediscussedhowtodealwithrealandperceivedconflicts ofinterest.Duetoaconflictofinterestofthechairwithoneofthecandidates,the remainingthreecommitteemembersdiscussedandrankedthatcandidatewithoutthechair beingpresent(thesediscussionswereledbytheoutgoingchair).

Previousassessorreportsforrenominatedcandidateswereobtained,andassessorswho hadpreviouslyprovideddetailedreportswerecontactedbyemailtoaskiftheywishedto updatetheirreports.Alleitherprovidedanupdatedreport,orstatedthattheprevious reportcouldbeused(sometimesaddingacommentortwo).Newreportsweresolicited,in particularforthenewlynominatedcandidate.Onaverage5reportswerereceivedand consideredforeachnominee.

ThecommitteecommenceditsdeliberationsinOctober,consideringacombinationof factorstoassesstherelativestrengthsandweaknessesofthecandidates.Theassessor commentsaboutthequalityandimpactofeachcandidate’scontributionsinthefieldwere givenconsiderableweight,andothermeasuresofinternationalrecognitionwerealso considered.Overall,thecommitteewaslookingformathematicalcontributionsthatexperts inthefieldendorsedstronglyforlastingimpactinthefield.

Allsixcandidatesweredeemedtobehighlyaccomplishedmathematicians,andmost seemedpotentiallyworthyofthemedal.Thecommitteeunanimouslyagreedonthe preferredcandidateoutofthefivewithoutconflictsofinterest,andacomparisonwiththe sixthcandidatebythethreecommitteememberswithoutconflictofinterestdetermined theuniquebestcandidate.

ThedecisionwascommunicatedtoDrPeterStacey,theSecretaryofAustMS,on14 November2016.Twooftheunsuccessfulcandidateswillbeeligibleforrenominationnext year.

PeterBouwknegt Chair

Page 81 of 87 Report from Szekeres committee

A small number of excellent nominations were received. It was thought by the committee that in future the committee should be more active in encouraging nominations. Referee reports were sought for all the nominations and the committee was unanimous for the joint award of the medal this year.

J.H. Rubinstein

Page 82 of 87 SCHOOL of MATHEMATICS and PHYSICS CRICOS PROVIDER NUMBER 00025B

Report of the Gavin Brown Prize Committee of the Australian Mathematical Society for 2016

Membership of the committee: Professor J.F. Grotowski (Univ. Queensland) — Chair

Professor J. Ramagge (Univ. Sydney) — incoming Chair

Professor A.P. Bassom (Univ. Tasmania) — 1-year member

Professor Jon Borwein (Newcastle) was a member as outgoing Chair, up until his untimely death in August. A request from the Chair to have Professor Ole Warnaar (UQ) take up Jon’s role was approved by Council on 18 August.

The Prize:

The Gavin Brown Prize was established in 2011, and is to be “awarded annually for an outstanding and innovative piece of research in the mathematical sciences published by a Member or Members of the Society.”

To be eligible for the award of the Gavin Brown Prize, a publication must have at least one author who meets the following conditions:

1. he/she must be a member of the Society, and must have been a member of the Society for the calendar year at the time of publication of the paper (back-dating of membership is not allowed); 2. he/she must be normally resident in Australia, and must have been normally resident in Australia at the time when the research was carried out.

The Prize is typically awarded annually at the annual meeting of the Society. See http://www.austms.org.au/Gavin+Brown+Best+Paper+Prize for further details of the award.

Nominations:

Two nominations were received by the deadline of 27 May, 2016, via a system adapted from the AustMS Journal submission system, OJS. Both papers were deemed worthy of detailed consideration.

Deliberations:

The papers and nominations were circulated to Committee members, again using the AustMS Journal submission system platform. Jacqui Ramagge declared a conflict of interest for both nominated papers. The Chair took suggestions from the Committee for referees, and also considered names put forward by the nominators, before contacting 3 referees per paper (one declined, and a reserve was contacted). On the basis of the referee reports and their own judgement, the remaining Committee members unanimously agreed upon the winning paper.

Head The University of Queensland T +61 7 3365 3260 E [email protected] School of Mathematics and Physics QLD 4072 Australia F + 61 7 3365 1477 W www.smp.uq.edu.au

Page 83 of 87 Remarks:

1) Although somewhat cumbersome, the Committee strongly supported the failsafe mechanisms provided by the usage of the AustMS Journal submission system for handling nominations and distributing them to the Committee.

2) The change made to the nomination process to ask nominators to suggest assessors was a well-regarded move.

3) The external assessors were crucial to providing expert insight into the papers’ merits. Despite the effort needed (from the Chair) in chasing up referee reports.

4) Assessors were asked to comment on a specific assigned paper. However, because both nominated papers were in closely related areas, referees were invited to comment on the other paper if they were so inclined. This produced some very valuable insights.

5) Both nominations were of a high quality. However, two nominations is a small number for such a prize. It is also disconcerting to see no applied maths papers nominated. The Committee recommends the AustMS more actively promotes the Gavin Brown Prize and seeks nominations from a more diverse range of areas of the mathematical sciences.

6) The Committee and in particular the Chair would like to express sincere thanks to the Secretary, Peter Stacey, for his prompt, efficient and thoughtful assistance at every stage of the process.

3 November, 2016

School of Mathematics and Physics The University of Queensland T +61 7 3365 3277 E [email protected] Faculty of Science Brisbane QLD 4072 Australia F + 61 7 3365 1477 W www.smp.uq.edu.au

Page 84 of 87 B. H. Neumann Prize Committee report 2015

Joint winners

Murray Neuzerling (La Trobe University) Using algebra to avoid robots Matthew Tam (The University of Newcastle) Reconstruction algorithms for blind ptychographic imaging

Honourable mentions

Joshua Howie (The University of Melbourne) Hyperbolicity for weakly generalised alternating knots Adrianne Jenner (The University of Sydney) Mathematical modelling of oncolytic virotherapy and immunotherapy using deterministic and stochas- tic models Brendan Patch (The University of Queensland) A simulation algorithm for queuing network stability identification Danya Rose (The University of Sydney) Finding absolutely and relatively periodic orbits in the equal mass 3-body problem with vanishing angular momentum

Committee

The B. H. Neumann Prize Committee for 2015 consisted of the following people.

Pascal Buenzli Markus Hegland Julia Piantadosi Simon Clarke Marcel Jackson Charl Ras Norman Do Jonathon Kress Katherine Seaton Andy Hammerlindl Peter McNamara Anne Thomas

Judging

As has been the case in recent years, students were given the option of whether or not they wished to be judged for the B. H. Neumann Prize. Due to a glitch in the registration system, their intentions were not properly recorded. Thus, it was necessary to email all students prior to the meeting to determine whether or not they wished to be judged. I hope that this situation won’t arise again in future.

A total of 59 student talks were delivered at the meeting. Of those, 13 were not formally judged, at the request of the student. This left a reasonably long list of 46 talks to be judged. Ocially, students are required to be Australian Mathematical Society members to be eligible for the B. H. Neumann Prize, although this was largely ignored. As it turns out, the six students to eventually receive the B. H. Neumann Prize or honourable mentions are, at least according to their registration information, members of the Australian Mathematical Society.

Each member of the judging panel was allocated a number of student talks in such a way that every student talk was attended by at least two panel members. In cases where the student was known to give good presentations — for example, students who had won similar awards in the past — three panel members attended. Furthermore, each panel member was asked to judge at least two talks “out of their field”. This was to ensure that sucient information was obtained across the panel so that comparisons

1 Page 85 of 87 could be made between students who had given talks in disparate areas of mathematics. Moreover, all session organisers were also asked to provide feedback via email and this was received from 17 session organisers. This information is particularly valuable since panel members attending a student’s talk may not fully understand the context and content.

In my opinion, the competition appeared to be particularly strong, with about 15 students considered by the panel to be in contention for the prize. Discussion amongst the panel helped to whittle this number down to six. Of these, two talks really stood out and it was deemed unfair to choose between them. Needless to say, these two students were eventually awarded the B. H. Neumann Prize jointly and the remaining four students on our shortlist received honourable mentions.

As usual, the awardees were recognised at the conference dinner. The photo below shows the recipients of the B. H. Neumann Prize and honourable mentions with Professor Manjul Bhargava, who was awarded the informal “Blue Hat” prize for the best non-student talk at the meeting.

From left to right: Adrianne Jenner, Danya Rose, Brendan Patch, Professor Manjul Bhargava, Matthew Tam, Joshua Howie, Murray Neuzerling

Discussion points

Below are some discussion points that future incarnations of the B. H. Neumann Prize Committee may like to consider. Some of these have arisen from discussions in previous years.

The Australian Mathematical Society meeting registration form could be clearer about what it means to opt out of the B. H. Neumann Prize. Furthermore, it could stress that a student must be a member of the Australian Mathematical Society in order to be eligible for the prize.

2 Page 86 of 87 The scheduling of the judging could be further optimised if the number of parallel student talks was kept to a minimum. Also, it would be highly desirable if session organisers could schedule students earlier rather than later. This year, some sessions started as late as 3:20pm on the day of the conference dinner. It had previously been discussed whether there should be a separate category for honours and masters students. I personally don’t believe that there is much benefit in doing so, although others may disagree. It had previously been discussed that students should be able to seek feedback on their talks after the meeting. Given that a lot of information is collected by the committee, I am open to using this to help students in their professional development. However, the way in which this can be accomplished would require some careful thought prior to implementation. One of the student talks this year was jointly delivered by three people. If it had been a contender for the prize, it is not clear what the committee would have done. I guess we can cross that bridge when we come to it. It seemed rather striking to me that a disproportionately large number of female students decided not to be judged for the B. H. Neumann Prize. Whereas, only 18 out of the 59 student talks were by females, 7 out out of the 13 students who opted out were females. It is not clear to me why this is so, or whether any action should be taken. In any case, I have passed on this information to Lesley Ward, as Chair of the Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group.

Norm Do Chair of the B. H. Neumann Prize Committee 2015

3 Page 87 of 87