Discrete Mathematics

Welcome (back) to Kevin Hendrey, who joins the group as a postdoctoral research fellow, working with David Wood. Kevin completed his PhD at Monash, and has spent the last five years at IBS in Korea.

Huge congratulations to Amber Gentle, who’s PhD Thesis “Covering problems on permutations” has officially passed examination. Both examiners rated the thesis very highly and only asked for minor corrections.

Amber was jointly supervised by Ian Wanless and Daniel Horsley.

David Wood is currently recruiting a 2-year postdoctoral researcher in structural graph theory. The application deadline is 14th April 2024.

Graham Farr, Dillon Mayhew and James Oxley have published an intriguing article Dominic Welsh: his work and influence on The Matroid Union.

We’re very excited to be advertising 5 permanent jobs at Monash. The positions can be in any area of mathematics, but discrete maths (including graph theory and combinatorics) is designated as a priority area. For the formal details see:

https://careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/job/660206/expressions-of-interest-multiple-positions-as-lecturer-senior-lecturer-associate-professor

Please spread the word and/or apply yourself. We can appoint young or established researchers, singles or couples. Monash discrete maths group is internationally important and Melbourne regularly features highly in lists of the world’s most liveable cities. So come and join us!

For any enquiries, email ian.wanless@monash.edu

Congratulations to Nina Kamčev for winning the inaugural CMSA Prize for her work completed at Monash University that led to the following papers:

N. Kamčev, A. Liebenau and N. Morrison, Towards a characterisation of Sidorenko systems, The Quarterly Journal of Mathematics.

N. Kamčev, A. Liebenau and N. Morrison, On uncommon systems of equations, Israel Journal of Mathematics.

The prize was announced today at the 45th ACC in Perth, where Nina gave an invited talk on her work.

The group once again featured in the Research Magazine of The Australian newspaper today.

Discrete Mathematics
Lead institution: Monash
Field leader: David Wood

Theoretical Computer Science
Lead institution: Monash
Field leader: Nick Wormald

Pure & Applied Mathematics
Lead institution: Monash
Field leader: David Wood

Group members were successful in today’s announcement of ARC Discovery Projects:

Fractional decomposition of graphs and the Nash-Williams conjecture. Daniel Horsley, Darryn Bryant (U. Queensland), Barbara Maenhaut (U. Queensland), Peter Dukes (U. Vic.).

The Global Structure of Sparse Networks. David Wood, Vida Dujmović (U. Ottawa).

Welcome to Abdul Basit, who is a new post-doctoral researcher in the Monash Discrete Mathematics Research Group, funded under Daniel Horsley’s ARC grant. Basit’s research interests include combinatorial geometry, extremal and probabilistic graph theory, and additive combinatorics.

Well it wasn’t quite an Oscar, but Nick Wormald has won an award surely worthy of the red carpet.

It is the Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal, awarded by the Australian Academy of Science in recognition for his outstanding achievements in mathematical research. The citation recognised that Nick is a world leader in his field: he has made major contributions in the areas of random graphs and processes, enumeration of graphs and maps, structural graph theory, theoretical computer science, and network optimisation. See

https://www.science.org.au/supporting-science/awards-and-opportunities/thomas-ranken-lyle-medal