AF Pillow scholarship winner Alex Badran pictured with his degree sup...

Maths scholar scores another award

University Medal winner, Alex Badran, has recently returned from New Zealand where he was officially awarded the prestigious AF Pillow top-up scholarship. Only one of these scholarships is offered in Australia each year.

He was awarded the University Medal in December 2009 through the Faculty of Informatics as part of his Bachelor of Mathematics Advanced Honours degree.

Dr Xiaoping Lu (Mathematics and Applied Statistics) supervised his degree and Professor Song-Ping Zhu co-supervised it.

Alex’s AF Pillow award was announced at the ANZIAM (Australian and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics) conference held in New Zealand.

He was the only undergraduate presenting at the conference. At the mini NSW ANZIAM conferences held in 2007 and 2009, Alex won best student speaker – the only undergraduate to ever win this title twice.

The AF Pillow Applied Mathematics Trust offers an annual ‘top-up’ scholarship to a student holding either an Australian Postgraduate Award or equivalent award for full-time research in applied mathematics leading to the award of a PhD.

The aim of the scholarship is to increase the quantity and quality of postgraduate students in the field of applied mathematics in Australia.