| The eight professors from Mathematics and Applied Statistics are back... The eight professors from Mathematics and Applied Statistics are back row (from left): Professor Martin Bunder, Professor David Steel, Professor David Griffiths, Professor Jim Hill and Professor Matt Wand; and front row (from left): Professor Ray Chambers, Professor Song-Ping Zhu and Professor Iain Raeburn |
Eight professors = maths success for UOW
21 Aug 2007 | Bernie Goldie
While mathematics departments across Australian universities have been in marked decline, Wollongong has chosen a different path and is now reaping the benefits.
“We have been purposely building up our School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics in expectation of a renewed interest in mathematics,” said Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Margaret Sheil, on the eve of her departure as the new CEO of the Australian Research Council.
“Our decision has paid off handsomely as students vote with their feet to come to Wollongong,” she said.
So confident is the University of Wollongong in the future for the discipline of mathematics that it now boasts eight full professors alone – the highest number in the University’s history with three of the professors having been appointed during 2007.
The School has recently attracted 21 honours students which is three times larger than normal intakes. Having 21 students outshines even some of the big mathematics departments at metropolitan universities.
Among its course offerings, UOW provides a four-year Bachelor of Mathematics and Finance degree which is equipping students with the combination of a finance background and quantitative skills.
The School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics says this has been providing an excellent springboard for jobs in the finance sector -- particularly in Sydney’s CBD.
And UOW’s statistics group has excellent links with the Australian Bureau of Statistics so statistics students quickly learn the professional advantages in graduating with an honours degree.
A versatile octet of maths professors
In January 2007 Matt Wand became the fourth Professor of Statistics at UOW when he moved from his professorial position at UNSW. Matt is the only UOW graduate among UOW’s eight professors. And he is one of eight Wollongong mathematics graduates to become a professor at an Australian university. Matt grew up in Wollongong and graduated from the University with 1st class Honours in mathematics and the University Medal in 1986. He earned his PhD at the Australian National University (ANU) in 1989. Subsequently, he held appointments at UNSW, Harvard, Rice University and Texas A&M University. As an undergraduate, Matt won every prize available to a statistics major at Wollongong, and in 1997 he was awarded the Moran Medal for Statistical Science by the Australian Academy of Science. He has been awarded prestigious fellowships from both the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.
Iain Raeburn did his undergraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh, and received his PhD from the University of Utah in 1976. After a year in Canada, he took a lectureship at the University of New South Wales; by the time he left in 1990, he was an associate professor. In 1991, he became the Professor of Mathematics at the University of Newcastle (New South Wales). During his 16 years there, he built up a major research group in Functional Analysis, which had strong international contacts and attracted visitors from all over the world. In 2007, he and a large part of this group moved to the University of Wollongong, where Iain holds a research chair.
Song-Ping Zhu joined UOW in January 1991 as a lecturer. His research has mainly focused on two areas, wave modelling and financial mathematics. He has worked on nonlinear waves generated behind floating and submerged objects and diffraction and refraction coastal waves over bathymetry. Recently, Song-Ping has found application of his research in renewable energy (using ocean waves to generate electricity and/or desalinising sea water) and won a large ARC Linkage grant for a further development of converting ocean wave energy to electricity. In financial mathematics, he has concentrated in pricing various financial derivatives such as American options. His greatest contribution to this area so far is his discovery of an analytical exact solution for the valuation of American options. He has published close to 100 papers in international journals and conference proceedings and attracted funding for several research projects from the ARC and private industry.
Martin Bunder, now the longest serving member of staff in the Faculty of Informatics, was appointed to the then Wollongong University College, as a postdoctoral fellow in 1969 and to a lectureship later that year. He attained his chair by promotion and is a former Dean. Martin has published about 130 research papers, mainly in mathematical logic. Martin was, for some years, the chairman of the Logic in Australasia committee of the (international) Association for Symbolic Logic and has been an editor of several journals.
David Steel is Director of the Centre for Statistical and Survey Methodology. He leads a research team focusing on survey methodology, sample survey design and analysis methods for complex social and economic data. Ten ARC or NHMRC grants have supported this research since 1995. He has extensive experience in developing sample design and estimation procedures for a wide range of sample surveys through his 17 years experience with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), before joining UOW in 1992. David is an accredited statistician with the Statistical Society of Australia and a member of the accreditation committee. He has undertaken survey design consultancies with national and international agencies and has active links with government and industry, including projects with ABS, UK Office for National Statistics, NSW Health, Statistics New Zealand and NZ Ministry of Health on methodological issues associated with their survey programs.
Jim Hill has extensive experience in many areas of applied mathematics, including finite elasticity, heat transfer, nonlinear diffusion, granular materials and more recently nanotechnology. He currently has five books and more than 200 research publications in high-quality international journals, with 745 individual citations. Further evidence of the international recognition of his research comes from his appointment to the Editorial Boards of three international journals: Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, Journal of Applied Mathematics, which is published by Oxford University Press (1989-2003); and since 1995 Journal of Engineering Mathematics, published by Kluwer Academic Press; and Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids, published by Sage Science Press. He has been an Associate Editor since 1982 of the ANZIAM Journal of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, which is published by the Australian Mathematical Society. For his contributions to Applied Mathematics, Jim was awarded a DSc from the University of Queensland in 1988. He has been awarded two five-year fellowships from the Australian Research Council: a Senior Research Fellowship in 1997 to work on Granular Materials, and an Australian Professorial Fellowship in 2004 to work on Nanomechanics. The latter Discovery Project involved total funding of $1.2 million. Since 1983 Jim has received 13 major research awards (ARC Large Grants, ARC Discovery Projects, National Research Fellowship, National Teaching Company Scheme) totalling $3,716,000, which is a very significant amount for a non-experimentalist. Jim is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and a Companion of IEAust. He is committed to research with practical outcomes and works closely with engineering and industry.
Ray Chambers is Professor of Statistical Methodology at the Centre for Statistical and Survey Methodology. Before moving to Wollongong in March 2006, Ray was Leverhulme Professor of Social Statistics and Director of the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute at the University of Southampton, UK. Ray started his statistical career as a cadet in the Australian Bureau of Statistics, moving to Canberra from Perth in 1973. He worked at the ABS till 1983 when he moved to the then Bureau of Agricultural Economics. With the assistance of a Commonwealth Public Service Scholarship, Ray completed his PhD in Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USW, in 1982. In 1991 Ray became an academic, taking up a senior lecturer position at the ANU and then moving to Southampton in 1995 to take up a Chair in Social Statistics. His research interests include sample survey design and analysis, robust statistical methods and statistical modelling and inference. Ray is a member of the International Statistical Institute and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. He is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series A), the Journal of Official Statistics and the Annals of Statistics.
David Griffiths was the first professorial appointment among the current professors, taking up the position of Foundation Professor of Statistics in 1987. David is currently the Chair of Academic Senate and is a former Faculty Dean and Departmental Head. His cross-disciplinary research has involved him in collaboration and research supervision across five faculties. David also pioneered cross-Faculty/off-campus/in-house (for Government and Business)/off-shore teaching programs at UOW, and he will shortly achieve the distinction of teaching in all nine faculties as well as the Graduate School of Business.
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