Discrete Mathematics

Congratulations to Michael Brand, who has won the Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal for the best PhD thesis completed in the Faculty of I.T. at Monash University in 2013. One such medal is awarded in each Faculty, each year, at Monash. He also won the 2013 Faculty of I.T. Doctoral Medal which has criteria for other contributions as well as thesis excellence. The thesis is titled “Computing with Arbitrary and Random Numbers“. Michael’s main supervisor was Graham Farr, and associate supervisor was Ian Wanless. Michael will graduate in May 2014.

Nick Wormald‘s research is featured in in the latest issue of Monash Magazine. The article explains well the nature of some of Nick’s work, and of graph theory and pure mathematics generally, to non-technical readers.

Heiko Dietrich is co-organising a session on “Software, algorithms, and applications of computational group theory” at The 4th International Congress on Mathematical Software (ICMS 2014), which is a satellite conference of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM 2014).

Congratulations to Ian Wanless for his promotion to Professor. Richly deserved!

Today, Simon Angus from the Monash Department of Economics spoke on the topic of graphs in economics. Here is an expanded version of his slides.

This week most of the group members are attending 37ACCMCC at The University of Western Australia. Nick Wormald and Graham Farr will be giving plenary lectures.

Congratulations to Norman Do, winner of a 2013 Victorian Tall Poppy Award.

Congratulations to Heiko Dietrich and David Wood for receiving DECRA and Future Fellowships respectively.

Members of the group visited the exhibition Illuminations by Andrew Baird at the Australian Synchrotron. These portraits include one of a combinatorialist and member of our group, Arun Mani. In the portrait Arun is holding a matroid. Two members of the group, Arun’s PhD supervisior, Graham Farr and PhD student Rosalind Hoyte, can be seen viewing the portrait in this photo.

Recently, Graham Farr spoke about William Tutte and Norman Do spoke about Évariste Galois at the laborastory.