Discrete Mathematics

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.

Welcome to Tony Huynh, who today starts a 2-year post-doctoral research fellow position working mainly with David Wood. Tony’s research interests are in structural graph theory, matroids and combinatorial optimization.

Graham Farr was interviewed about Alan Turing on ABC Radio last night. This was prompted by the announcement that Turing will be on the new 50-pound note. Here is a recording of the entire programme; the interview is in the time range 2:34 – 2:48.

Three group members have had papers accepted to the 60th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2019) to be held in Baltimore in November.

Andrii Arman, Jane Gao, Nick Wormald.
Fast uniform generation of random graphs with given degree sequences.

Vida Dujmović, Gwenaël Joret, Piotr Micek, Pat Morin, Torsten Ueckerdt, David Wood.
Planar Graphs have Bounded Queue-Number.

Congratulations to Srinibas Swain, who submitted his PhD thesis on 26th February. The title of the thesis is Graph parameters: theory, generation and dissemination. Main supervisor was Graham Farr, associate supervisors were Kerri Morgan (now at Deakin University) and Paul Bonnington.

Update: Srinibas has passed and his PhD was conferred on 7th August 2019. Congratulations, Dr Swain! Srinibas is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Information Technology Guwahati.

In today’s ARC grant announcements, Heiko Dietrich, David Wood and Mikhail Isaev each received Discovery Projects. Congratulations Heiko, David and Misha!

Tim Wilson and Kevin Hendrey submitted their PhD theses today, both supervised by David Wood. Congratulations Tim, Kevin and David! Tim’s thesis title is “Anagram-Free Graph Colouring and Colour Schemes”. Kevin’s thesis title is “Extremal Graph Theory for Minors, Improper Colourings and Gonality”.

Update February 2019: Both Kevin and Tim have passed. Congratulations Dr Hendrey and Dr Wilson!

Hearty congratulations to Daniel Horsley, who has just been promoted to level D (Associate Professor), effective from 1 Jan 2019.

Congratulations to Kai Siong Yow, who submitted his PhD thesis on 11th September. The title of the thesis is Tutte-Whitney polynomials for directed graphs and maps. Main supervisor was Graham Farr, associate supervisor was Kerri Morgan.

Update: Kai Siong has passed and his PhD was conferred on 6th February 2019. Congratulations, Dr Yow! Kai Siong is now at the Department of Mathematics, Universiti Putra Malaysia.

Great work by Darcy Best, whose PhD thesis “Transversal This, Transversal That” was officially ratified by the powers-that-be on June 20. So he is now a dinky-di doctor of philosophy. If you have any philosophical ailments, book an appointment. I’m sure his fees are reasonable.