AustMS WIMSIG Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Awardees

Isobel Rose Abell (UniMelb) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 18 (April 2023) to participate in the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) conference at Penn State University (USA) in May, during which the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science is holding a workshop for early career researchers on Communicating Novelty and Controversy.

Olivia Borghi (UniMelb) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 18 (2023) to participate in the Women in Topology Research Conference in Bonn (Germany).

Eve Cheng (ANU) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 18 (2023) to participate in the 28th International Conference on Statistical Physics (Statphys28) in Tokyo (Japan) in August.

Tamara Hogan (UniMelb) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 18 (2023) to participate in the Young Topologists Meeting 2023 in Lausanne (Switzerland).

Maria Kapsis (UniSA) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 18 (2023) to participate in the 25th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM2023) in Darwin in July.

Eva Stadler (UNSW) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 18 (2023) to participate in the Gordon Research Conference “Reinvigorating Malaria Control, Prevention and Treatment: From Bench to Bedside to Bednets” in Spain and to meet with collaborators in Europe.

Caroline Wormell (ANU) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 18 (2023) to visit the University of Surrey to work with Dr Vytnova and to participate in the conference Dynamics, Bifurcations and Numerics in July.

Punya Alahakoon Mudiyanselage (The University of Melbourne) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 16 (2022) to participate in the European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology (ECMTB).

Bethany Caldwell (University of South Australia) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 16 (2022) to participate in the 15th ORCOS Viennese Conference on Optimal Control and Dynamic Games and the 19th EUROPT Workshop on Advances in Continuous Optimization, followed by EUROPT 2022.

Tumadhir Fahim Alsulami (La Trobe University) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 17 (2022) to participate in 66th Annual Meeting of the AustMS at UNSW Sydney.

Lucinda Harrison (The University of Melbourne) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 16 (2022) to participate in the European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology (ECMTB) in Heidelberg (Germany) in September 2022.

Himani Sharma (Macquarie University) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 17 (2022) to participate in 66th Annual Meeting of the AustMS at UNSW Sydney.

Em Thompson (Monash University) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 16 (2022) to participate in Reflections on Geometry: 3-Manifolds, Groups and Singularities — a conference in honour of Walter Neumann at Colombia University.

Paula Verdugo (Macquarie University) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 17 (2022) to participate in the International Category Theory Conference in Belgium and to visit EPFL, Lausanne.

Yawen Zheng (University of Wollongong) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 17 (2022) to participate in ANZIAM 2023, Cairns.

Hoa Thi Bui (Curtin University) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 15 (2021) for a research trip at the Department of Mathematics, University of Alicante, Spain.

Nargiz Sultanova (Federation University of Australia) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 14 (2021) to participate in the SIAM Conference on Optimization (international conference, to be held virtually).

Nargiz’s Report: I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the support from AustMS WIMSIG and the Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award which enabled me to attend SIAM Conference on Optimization (OP21) on July 20-23, 2021.

SIAM Conference on Optimization is one of the most prominent international conferences in the field, it is held every three years and showcases the latest research on the theory, algorithms, software, and applications of optimisation. Due to the current Covid situation, the conference has been held virtually this year. Nevertheless, there were over 500 participants from around the world, including many leading experts in the field.

It was a wonderful opportunity for me to present my research. The talk I gave on July 23 was part of a “Recent developments in Optimisation Algorithms” session and was entitled “Subgradient smoothing method for nonsmooth nonconvex optimisation”. In this talk I focused on the development of an algorithm using a smoothing technique that enables us to apply powerful smooth optimisation methods for solving general nonsmooth optimisation problems.

There were many great presentations at the conference, and one of the advantages of the virtual format is that all the talks were recorded which gives bigger visibility and opportunities for the participants to watch many talks of interest even post-conference.

Adriana Zanca (Melbourne) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 14 (2021) for a research visit to Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane.

Jessica Crawshaw (Melbourne) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 12 (2020) to attend the 2020 International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ICTAM) in Milan, Italy and the joint European Society for Matheamtical and Theoretical Biology and Society for Mathematical Biology (ESMTB-SMB) conference in Heidelberg, Germany.

Ellena Moskovsky (Monash) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 12 (2020) to attend the 2020 School and Workshop in Topological Recursion and a research visit at the Institut de physique théorique (IPhT, Paris-Saclay).

Eloise Tredenick (ANU) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 12 (2020) for the Forum “Math-for-Industry” 2019 — Mathematics for the Primary Industries and the Environment, Massey University, Albany Campus, New Zealand.

Eloise’s Report: I am privileged to be awarded the AustMS WIMSIG Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award for attending the Forum “Math-for-Industry” 2019 — Mathematics for the Primary Industries and the Environment, Albany Campus, Massey University, New Zealand was held 18th to 21st November (https://apcmfi.org/app/webroot/fmfi2019/).

For four days, there were presentations on Industrial and Applied Mathematics, a networking event with Industry partners who regularly contribute to projects to Mathematics in Industry Study Groups (MISGs), poster presentations from research students and an excursion around the beautiful Auckland (Waitemata) harbour. The opportunity to network with industry partners and academics was important as industrial applications directly relate to my research. I was interested in networking with Dr Steven Psaltis, Dr Elliot Carr, Prof. Graeme Hocking, Dr Brendan Florio, Assoc. Prof. Winston Sweatman and Prof. Mark McGuinness, who work on transport in porous media, which has been the basis of my research.

On the 21st, I presented the talk: Agrochemical droplet evaporation and diffusion through plant cuticles: surfactant effects. To be an invited speaker at this conference as an early career researcher (ECR) was a rare and prestigious honour and there were few other ECRs in attendance. My presentation was very well received. An interesting discussion point was that my research originated as an MISG project, which re-enforced the importance and outcomes of MISG meetings.

Highlights of the forum were talks on electrical power production including geothermal and fusion, especially a talk entitled: Alternative Energies: Is it Time for fusion?, by Nick Long, and three presentations on the projects from MISGs from Dr Brendan Florio, Prof. Graeme Hocking and Prof. Mark McGuinness.

The forum was attended by around 60 people with 25 invited speakers and 17 poster presentations by research students. The forum attracted delegates from all over the world including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, China, Malaysia and Thailand.

Prior to the forum, on 14th November, I also utilised the travel opportunity and visited the industrial supervisor of my PhD, Dr Alison Forster, Plant Protection Chemistry New Zealand (PPCNZ), for a day of research and collaboration at Scion Laboratories, Rotorua.

I would like to thank AustMS and WIMSIG for the support on this very worthwhile trip to New Zealand.

Jessica Kasza (Monash) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 10, 2019.

Jessica’s Report: Thanks to the generosity of WIMSIG, I received a Cheryl Praeger Award to support my attendance at the Society for Clinical Trial’s 2019 annual conference, which took place from May 19-22 in New Orleans, USA. The Society for Clinical Trials annual meeting brings statisticians in direct contact with the people who actually implement the trials that we design: this interdisciplinary communication is essential to ensure best practice in the planning, conduct, and reporting of clinical trials.

At this conference I presented a contributed talk entitled “Staircase cluster randomised trial designs”, in the Cluster Randomization Trial Design contributed session. In this talk I described joint work with Andrew Forbes of Monash University and Richard Hooper of Queen Mary University London, on a new type of multiple-period cluster randomised trial design that I am investigating which incorporate the benefits of the popular “stepped wedge” cluster randomised trial, while reducing the burden to be placed on clusters. This talk generated a lot of discussion with audience members, including from one attendee who mentioned that their clinical collaborators had already shown interest in implementing such trials. I also had the opportunity to attend inspiring talks on the use of hypothetical randomised trials in the analysis of observational data, multiple-period cluster randomised trials, and the ethical implications of cluster randomised trials, among many other topics.

I was also fortunate to discuss current and future research collaborations with Karla Hemming of the University of Birmingham, Monica Taljaard of Ottawa University, and Liz Turner of Duke University: leader investigators in the statistical aspects of cluster randomised trials. We spent many happy hours discussing cluster randomised trials, not only during the conference and at lunches and dinners, but also on a tour of the Louisiana Bayou, where we were joined by several alligators.

Gobert Lee (Flinders) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 11 (2019) for a research visit to the University of Rennes and the Anti-Cancer Centre Eugene Marquis (Rennes, France), as well as to attend the 19th IEEE International Conference on BioInformatics and BioEngineering (BIBE’2019) in Athens in October 2019.

Gobert’s Report: In October 2019, I visited the Laboratoire Traitement du Signal et de I’Image (LTSI), University of Rennes, and the Anti-Cancer Centre Eugene Marquis, Rennes, France. The visit aims to foster research collaboration and resulted in fruitful discussions in auto-contouring of tumour for brain cancer radiation treatment (RT-) planning.

Future projects will focused on machine learning based auto-contouring, applying mathematics and statistical theories in clinical area. Auto-contouring is a significant step in optimizing radiation dose delivered to the tumour whilst minimizing that to the surrounding healthy brain tissues. In addition to the fruitful discussions, I was given an insightful site tour at the Anti-Cancer Centre Eugene Marquis. The site tour gave me an invaluable experience and opportunity in better understanding the workflow in the RT department. During the research visit, I also gave a seminar to the Biomedical Engineering students at the University of Rennes. One of the purposes of the seminar was to inspire and encourage more women students to pursue quantitative research in Biomedical Engineering.

I also attended the 19^th annual conference of the IEEE International Conference on BioInformatics and BioEngineering (BIBE’2019) held in Athens, Greece. The conference is a leading conference in bringing two complementary disciplines, Bioinformatics and Bioengineering, together in advancing research and development in complex medical and biological systems. I presented two oral papers: (1) “ Prior guided segmentation and nuclei feature based abnormality detection in cervical cells” and (2) “Organs-at-risk contouring on head CT for RT planning using 3D Slicer — a preliminary study”. The latter paper was the first joint publication with University of Rennes and Anti-Cancer Centre Eugene Marquis on brain tumour radiotherapy — marking the beginning of a collaboration relationship. The two peer-reviewed conference papers are published in the Proceedings of BIBE 2019.

I would like to thank the support of the prestigious AustMS WIMSIG Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award which makes my research visit to the University of Rennes and the Anti-Cancer Centre Eugene Marquis, Rennes France possible. The Award also makes possible for me to attend and present two research papers at the IEEE BIBE’19 conference.

Huanhuan Li (Western Sydney) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 10, 2019.

Huanhuan’s Report:

1. 20 June-25 June 2019

I visited Prof. Xiao-Wu Chen at University of Science and Technology of China and discussed on Hochschild cohomologies for Leavitt path algebras with Prof. Xiao-Wu Chen.

2. 25 June-30 June 2019

I attended the National Conference on Representation Theory of Algebras at Beijing Institute of Technology. There were many great talks on differential graded categories, silting theory and etc.

3. 1 July-14 July 2019

I visited Prof. Pere Ara at Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. We discussed on derived localisations for differential graded algebras and homotopy categories.

I gave a 45 mins talk in the first week there with title “The injective Leavitt complex” on 4^th July at Centre de Recerca Matematica in Autonomous University of Barcelona.

During 1 July-7 July, Prof. Roozbeh Hazrat (at Western Sydney University) also visited Pere. We (Pere, Roozbeh and I) worked together on filtered K-theory for Leavitt path algebras over an arbitrary graph. We construct a quotient graph for two admissible pairs of an arbitrary graph E. Using this quotient graph, we could obtain a short exact sequence for the graph monoids.

4. 14 July-15 August 2019

I visited Prof. Steffen Koenig at University of Stuttgart in Germany. The first week there I attended the seminars there on Hopf algebras.

On 23^rd July I gave a one hour talk with title “The injective Leavitt complex” in the seminar classroom 7.527 of Pfaffenwaldring 57 building. I also discussed with Prof. Steffen Koenig on Leavitt path algebras and tilting objects in stable categories of certain algebras.

From 29 July to 10 August, I attended the two weeks of silting summer school and conference at University of Stuttgart. There were many great talks on silting theory and on the classification of preprojective algebras via derived equivalences and etc. I also presented my poster on “The injective Leavitt complex” during the summer school and conference.

5. 19 August-25 August 2019

I visited Prof. Xiao-Wu Chen at University of Science and Technology of China and we worked together on Hochschild cohomology of Leavitt path algebras.

Tanja Schindler (ANU) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 10, 2019.

Tanja’s Report: I visited Dr. Ade Irma (Chacha) Suriajaya and Dr. Junghun Lee at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, from 1 July to 5 July 2019. I first met Chacha at Number Theory Down Under in September 2018 in Canberra where we had the opportunity to discuss our research. While Chacha’s research is mainly in analytic number theory, my main background is dynamical systems and probability theory. I became interested in her research about ergodic value distributions of zeta functions. Based on that we decided to start a project to further study limit theorems for zeta functions over ergodic transformations over the real line.

My visit to Kyushu certainly enhanced this project. Firt of all we discussed a lot of mathematics and since we come from different backgrounds, we also tought each other a lot of background material for which we probably would have needed a lot more time to teach it ourselves.

Since we are certain now which are the most challenging obstacles and what are the most promising methods to tackle them, it is easier for us to continue our collaboration from different places in the world.

Additionally, I got the opportunity to give a seminar talk (title: “Strong laws under trimming – a comparison between iid random variables and dynamical systems”, see https://www.math.kyushu- u.ac.jp/eng/seminars/view/1560) in the algebra seminar on Wednesday 3 July, which was mostly attended by number theorists. So I was able to present my research to a broader audience than the researchers from probability theory I usually work together with. At the seminar dinner afterwards, I could also network with some other faculty members from Kyushu University.

I am very thankful for having received the Cheryl E. Praeger travel Award and for the hospitality of the maths department at Kyushu University which made this research collaboration possible.

Michelle Strumila (Melbourne) was awarded a Praeger Award in Round 10, 2019.

Michelle’s Report: I attended the Women In Topology Workshop at the Hausdorff Institute of Mathematics in Bonn, Germany. This was held from 26th to 30th August. We had previously been divided into groups to work on different projects. I was working with Natalia Castellana, Kathryn Lesh, Jelena Grbic, and Eva Belmont on fusion systems. On the penultimate day, Eva and I gave a talk on our research that week — “Fusion Systems and compact lie groups”. The following two weeks were spent at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona as a guest of Natalia, where we did further work on our project. I gave a talk in the topology seminar in the department of Mathematics on Monday 9th September, entitled “Extensions of infinity operads”. I returned to Melbourne on Tuesday 17th September.

Zahra Afsar (The University of Sydney) was awarded a Praeger Award (in Round 8, 2018) to attend the Women in Operator Algebras workshop, November 2-9, 2018, Banff, Canada.

Zahra’s Report: I am writing this report to provide details of my trip to Canada that was supported by Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Awards. I have received this award ($2410) on 21 Jun 2018 to support my attendance at the Women in Operator Algebras conference in Canada in November 2018. However, I also used this opportunity to extend my trip in Canada to visit Prof Mrcelo Laca at University of Victoria.

The Women in Operator Algebras (WOA) workshop was held at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery from 4-9 November 2018. BIRS is a world-wide recognised centre for hosting over 50 prestigious workshops and conferences in the mathematical sciences each year. The main objective of WOA was to tackle gender diversity in the area of Operator Algebra which has historically suffered from a severe gender gap. The workshop WOA included active collaborative research groups of 4-7 and each group had two expert co-leaders which are well known in the area. As a co-leader of one of these groups, I had an outstanding chance to collaborate with Prof Nadia S. Larsen (University of Oslo), Prof Judith Packer and Prof Carla Farsi (University of Colorado Boulder). Our project focused on a problem of simplicity of the operator algebras of a certain kind of semigroup known as the right LCM semigroup. During this workshop, we made very good progress. In fact the workshop helped me not only extend my collaboration to North American universities but also maintain my current collaborations with Nadia Larsen at European Universities. Furthermore, I had the chance to meet other well known mathematicians, such as Prof Dilian Yang (University of Windsor) and many other young mathematicians that could be my future colleagues.

During my trip to Canada, I was accompanied by my supervisor Prof Jacqui Rammage (The University of Sydney). Following her advice, I extend my trip in Canada to visit Prof Marcelo Laca (a very well known operator algebraist) at University of Victoria. Being familiar with Prof Laca’s publications, I was always looking for a way to collaborate with him. So I went to Victoria a week before WOA (29 Oct – 4 Nov). In the first week of my stay, I gave a talk in the Operator Algebras Seminar of the University of Victoria with the title of “The higher-rank non commutative solenoid and equilibrium states”. After this talk, Prof Laca, Prof Ramagge, Dr Camila F. Sehnem and I started to work on a project on a generalisation of the result of my talk. We realised that to established the project, it is better to extend my stay in Canada another week. Therefore I modified my flight to back to Victoria after WOA in Banff for another week (9 Nov – 17 Nov).

I would like to thank sincerely WIMSIG for the generous support of my travel to Canada.

Amy Glen (Murdoch University) was awarded a Praeger Award (in Round 8, 2018) to attended the 41st Australasian Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing (41ACCMCC), December 10-14, 2018, Rotorua, New Zealand.

Amy’s Report: I attended the 41st Australasian Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics & Combinatorial Computing (41ACCMCC), which was held at the Millenium Hotel, Rotorua (New Zealand) from December 10–14, 2018 (https://www.ivvy.com.au/event/NO71BW/).

The ACCMCC is an annual conference, attracting around 100 mathematicians (mostly from the Australasian region) each year. There are usually 7–8 plenary speakers, with a good balance across gender, career level, and research areas, and 2–3 parallel sessions of contributed talks each day. The conference also has a prize for the best student talk, named the CMSA Anne Penfold Street Student Prize in honour of Anne, who was the first President of the Combinatorial Mathematics Society of Australasia (CMSA), which oversees the ACCMCC annual series.

At the 41ACCMCC, I presented a talk entitled ”On the Stern–Brocot tree, continued fractions, and Lyndon words”. And, as the Vice President of the CMSA, I also attended the final CMSA Council meeting for the year. At the subsequent AGM (held at the end of the first day of talks), I was voted back in as Vice President of the CMSA. I was, however, absent from the AGM because, at the time, I was at the local hospital getting my left elbow fixed up — necessarily so, because it had continued to bleed all day after I tripped over when out on an early morning run and left a chunk of the elbow on the footpath. Not the best start to the week, but it made the conference all the more memorable! Some photos are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ 4Gf3K3fKzAe81XTy9.

Being the conference in my field within the Australasia region, my attendance at the ACCMCC was important not only so that I could present recent work to fellow combinatorialists, but also for networking and collaboration opportunities. I would like to thank the AustMS and WIMSIG for supporting me on this very worthwhile trip.

Maria Kleshnina (The University of Queensland) was awarded a Praeger Award (in Round 8, 2018) to attend GTM 2018 (Russia) and ISDG2018 (France), June-July 2018.

Maria’s Report: I would like to acknowledge the WIMSIG Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Award, which allowed me to attend two leading conferences in game theory and travel with a research visit to INRIA, France.

I attended and presented at the Game Theory and Management Conference 2018 (St. Petersburg, Russia) and the International Symposium on Dynamic Games and Applications 2018 (Grenoble, France). These conferences provided me great opportunities to present and discuss my research project with leaders in the evolutionary game theory field. I presented a talk on incompetence in evolutionary games, which was followed by a very helpful discussion, and I received valuable feedback. The research visit gave me an opportunity to work in a great research environment at INRIA (Sophia Antipolis, France) and collaborate with Dr. Konstantin Avrachenkov. We are working on the stochastic perturbations in the discrete replicator dynamics and planning to publish a paper based on this work.

I am thankful to AustMS and WIMSIG for the support that made this exciting and productive trip possible.

Mythreye Krishnan (The University of Western Australia) was awarded a Praeger Award (in Round 8, 2018) for the ANZIAM Conference, February 4-8, 2018, Hobart.

Mythreye’s Report: I recently travelled to Hobart, Tasmania, to participate in the Australia-New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ANZIAM) 2018 conference, which exposed me to the latest applied mathematical research and facilitated an opportunity to present my ongoing research work to a larger scientific community.

The conference took place between the 4th of February and the 9th of February 2018. I attended about 30 talks including guest lectures from various invited speakers for the conference. I was fascinated by the amount of applied mathematical work taking place in biological studies. In particular, I was very much interested in the talk given by Dr Alys Clark on “Pregnancy and beyond: how mathematical modelling could improve early life health”, in which she discussed using mathematical models to study the oxygen intake for the new-born babies. I was also interested in the models to study the propagation of virus diffusion and in aiding the cancer cells destruction by Adrianne Jenner in the talk on “The effect of tumour heterogeneity on cancer treatments: the ninja virus”. All the talks enhanced my knowledge in the application of different mathematical modelling methods in studying various biological phenomenon.

In addition, I also presented my ongoing work on “Network using Michaelis-Menton kinetics: an algorithm to find target genes from expression data”. This was my first time presenting my results on an international stage and it helped me appreciate the experience of discussing my results, which I deem as an important factor in further pursuing my career in research.

I also attended the Women in Mathematics Lunch and the Conference Dinner, which again helped me in networking with a scientific community. My attendance at the conference has enhanced my knowledge and experience and it will aid me in the completion of my ongoing paper, my thesis and my research thereafter.

Tianshu Liu (The University of Melbourne) was awarded a Praeger Award (in Round 8, 2018) to attend XIX ICMP, Canada, July 2018.

Tianshu’s Report: I would like to thank the WIMSIG Cheryl Praeger Travel Award for its support in my recent fruitful trip to Canada. There were a few events of interest happening in July 2018: the workshop on Algebraic methods, the XIX International Congress in Mathematical Physics (ICMP) and its associated Young Researcher Symposium, all held in Montréal.

At these conferences, I was given the opportunity to speak about my recent research on the affine Kac-Moody algebra osp(1|2) and how to construct its minimal models using well-studied theories. The talks were followed by insightful questions and discussions from the audience, which certainly have engaged me to think from different aspects about my research. My knowledge in mathematics and physics were broadened by attending talks given by other speakers. They provided new ideas and directions for my future career. I also took this opportunity to meet my oversea collaborators — we worked efficiently on the paper we were working on together and managed to get it submitted during the meeting.