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.

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.

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.

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