Discrete Mathematics

Darcy Best recently coached two Monash teams in the regional finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition (ICPC).

One team, Monash Epsilon (Daniel Anderson, Xin Wei Chow, Peter Whalan) has advanced to the ICPC World Finals 2017 as one of the top 130 teams in the world! The ICPC World Finals is the most prestigious and largest programming competition worldwide.

The second Monash team, Monash Omicron (Michael Cui, Ryan Hechenberger, Shizhe Zhao), finished in 7th place, solving 4 problems, including solving one problem in only 5 minutes–the fastest time in the contest!

Congratulations to former members of the group, Rebecca Stones (now at Nankai University, China) and Xiande Zhang (now at the University of Science and Technology of China), on being awarded Kirkman Medals by the Institute for Combinatorics and its Applications. The medal is a worldwide award for outstanding discoveries by early career researchers in combinatorics. Previous winners include former member Nick Cavenagh (now at Waikato) and current members Daniel Horsley and Ian Wanless.

In the recent worldwide IEEEXtreme 10.0 programming contest two Monash teams placed 4th and 5th out of the more than 2000 teams that competed. Both teams were coached by our very own Darcy Best. Darcy is a PhD student and veteran of several world finals in programming competitions.

In today’s announcement of ARC grants, Daniel Horsley received a future fellowship, while Jane Gao and Anita Liebenau received DECRAs. Congratulations to all!

Ian Wanless gave a most entertaining talk at The Laborastory today, as part of their annual villains edition.

Michael Brand has just had an article, “Can Facebook influence an election result?“, published in The Conversation. It has attracted a lot of interest, including an ABC TV interview, three radio interviews, and a quotation in the Washington Post.

Big congratulations to Daniel Horsley, who has just been awarded the Kirkman medal by the Institute for Combinatorics and its Applications. The medal is a worldwide recognition for outstanding discoveries by an early career researcher in combinatorics.

Congratulations to Darcy Best who won the Faculty of Science 3 Minute Thesis Competition as well as winning the people’s vote. Darcy will now represent the Faculty at the Monash-wide competition.

The Monash Discrete Mathematics Research Group is 10 years old today. Click here for the full history.

The School of Mathematical Sciences is hosting a Maths Graduate Open Day on Friday, 9 September, 2016. Potential postgraduate students from Australia and New Zealand will be invited to visit the School and meet with academics to discuss research topics, meet with current postgraduate students, spend some time on campus, and also enjoy an evening out in the city of Melbourne. Applications to participate close on Friday, 19 August 2016. Also see the `students’ page on the right.