Discrete Mathematics

Monash University is recognised as a “global leader” in discrete mathematics in the latest research report of The Australian newspaper. Only 20 research groups in Australia (across all disciplines) were given this status.

Nick Wormald was named the top researcher in Australia in theoretical computer science, and David Wood was named the top researcher in Australia in both discrete mathematics and pure & applied mathematics.

James Wilson and Heiko Dietrich.
Group isomorphism is nearly-linear time for most orders.
FOCS 2021.

Jane Gao, Reshma Ramadurai, Ian Wanless, Nick Wormald.
Full rainbow matchings in graphs and hypergraphs.
Combin. Probab. Comput. 2021.

Anthony B. Evans, Adam Mammoliti, Ian M. Wanless.
Latin squares with maximal partial transversals of many lengths.
J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 2021.

Daniel Horsley, Bridget S. Webb.
Countable homogeneous Steiner triple systems avoiding specified subsystems.
J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 2021.

Vida Dujmović, David Eppstein, Robert Hickingbotham, Pat Morin, David R. Wood
Stack-number is not bounded by queue-number.
Combinatorica 2021

Congratulations to Eileen Pan for completing her M.Phil. degree, supervised by Heiko Dietrich. Her thesis Groups of small order type has also been published in the Journal of Symbolic Computation. Eileen will start a Warwick-Monash joint PhD, supervised by Heiko Dietrich and Adam Thomas.

Today, Tim Chan submited his PhD thesis Substructure Densities in Extremal Combinatorics co-supervised by David Wood and Dan Kral (Warwick). The normal procession to the Graduate School was replaced by a procession to the Nott. Congratulations Tim!

Update 19th June: Tim’s thesis has been accepted!

The Combinatorics and Graph Theory special session of yesterday and today’s AustMS meeting featured the following talks by group members:

• Ajani De Vas Gunasekara. An Evans-style result for block designs
• David Wood. Stack-number is not bounded by queue-number
• Daniel Horsley. Fraisse limits of Steiner triple systems

And the Algebra special session featured the following talks by group members:

• Heiko Dietrich. Some comments on group isomorphism
• Xueyu Pan. Groups of small order type
• Subhrajyoti Saha. Orbit Isomorphic Skeleton Groups

Congratulations to James Saunderson for receiving an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award for a project “Realising the potential of hyperbolic programming”.

Great news for Subhrajyoti Saha, whose PhD Thesis “Finite p-Groups and Coclass Theory” has just been approved. Subhra was supervised by Heiko Dietrich (with Ian Wanless as associate supervisor). Congratulations Subhra!

Congratulations to Kevin Hendrey who has been awarded the 2019 Vice-Chancellor’s Commendation for Thesis Excellence for his PhD thesis
Extremal Graph Theory for Minors, Improper Colourings and Gonality.
Kevin is now a post-doctoral research fellow at DIMAG in Korea.

Congratulations to Heiko Dietrich who has won one of this year’s Victorian Young Tall Poppy Science awards. The awards recognise outstanding research and academic achievement, as well as excellence in communication and community engagement to promote an understanding of science.

Congratulations to Hooman Reisi Dehkordi, who submitted his PhD thesis “The Hanani-Tutte Theorem and Non-separating Planar Graphs” today. Hooman’s main supervisor is Graham Farr, associate supervisor is David Wood, and external associate supervisor is Peter Eades.

Update: Hooman has passed and his PhD was conferred on 16th April 2020.