Discrete Mathematics

Sophia Witham has won big at the Faculty of Science baking competition. Her Latin cube of order 5 won both the mathematics prize and the people’s choice awards. An amazing work — and believe me it tasted really good too. I’m really looking forward to her 4-dimensional hypercube in next year’s competition!!!

Huge congratulations to Dr Carly Bodkin, whose PhD thesis entitled “The combinatorics of binary matrices” has just been officially passed. The referees were impressed with the thesis and recommended it be passed with only minor corrections.

Carly was supervised by Ian Wanless.

Welcome to the following new PhD students in the discrete maths group:

• Raj Kaul (from Monash Uni, structural graph theory, supervised by David Wood)
• Neel Kaul (from Monash Uni, structural graph theory, supervised by David Wood)
• Nivedita Tewary (from Uni Auckland, New Zealand, supervised by Ian Wanless)
• Sophia Witham (from Uni Canterbury, New Zealand, supervised by Ian Wanless)

Prof Nick Wormald has been awarded the 2025 medal of the Combinatorial Mathematics Society of Australasia.

This medal is awarded at most once every three years, and recognises lifetime achievements in research, student supervision, service and promotion of the discipline of combinatorics.

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

Graham Farr and Rebecca Robinson have received the Faculty of IT Dean’s Award for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Education. This was for creating an equitable, engaging and supportive learning environment for their students in FIT2014 Theory of Computation by developing and implementing innovations including: post-lecture interviews with key figures in the field during the COVID-19 lockdowns to better engage with students, with many interview subjects being women; embedding notes on the history of computer science throughout the unit, highlight key figures from underrepresented groups who were instrumental to the development of the field; a mentoring program for new tutors to help them build confidence, with Rebecca herself mentoring women tutors.

We are currently advertising for a post-doctoral research fellow with experience in at least one of extremal graph theory, combinatorial design theory, or finite geometry. Enquires to Daniel Horsley.

The Monash discrete maths seminar is happening again after a long pandemic-induced pause. The group calendar is the best way to stay informed.