WIMSIG NEWSLETTER — February 2021

WIMSIG Executive Committee

Thanks to all who nominated and voted in the recent election for the WIMSIG Executive Committee. As of February 1, the members of the committee are as follows:

  • Catherine Greenhill (UNSW Sydney) — Chair
  • Jessica Purcell (Monash) — Immediate Past Chair
  • Serena Dipierro (UWA) — Secretary
  • Valentine Wheeler (UOW) — Treasurer
  • Julia Collins (ECU) — Ordinary member
  • Xiaoping Lu (UOW) — Ordinary member
  • Ellena Moskovsky (Monash) — Student member

In addition, Joanne Hall (RMIT) will continue as the Newsletter Editor and Amy Glen (Murdoch) will continue as the Website Editor. Both Joanne and Amy have served WIMSIG since its formation in 2013 and we are very thankful for their continued service.

On January 31, the terms of the following people came to a conclusion.

  • Jennifer Flegg (Melbourne) — Secretary (2020)
  • Sevvandi Kandanaarachchi (RMIT) — Ordinary member (2020)
  • Rose Crocker (The University of Adelaide) — Student Member (2020)

A big thank you to Jen, Sevvandi, and Rose for their time and effort in service to WIMSIG and best wishes for their future endeavours.

Congratulations to Emeritus Professor Cheryl Praeger

In the recent Australia Day Honours List, Emeritus Professor Cheryl Praeger (UWA) was awarded an AC (Companion of the Order of Australia). This is the highest civil honour that the government can bestow and wonderful recognition of Cheryl’s mathematical and mentoring achievements. Congratulations to Cheryl!

Math-life balance YouTube channel

Maria Yakerson (ETH Zürich) is starting a YouTube channel “Math-life balance” where she posts online interviews with mathematicians:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYRR0SgbYH59htIHkwTbqMw

In these interviews, Maria asks colleagues about their personal experience in maths, about different aspects of a mathematician’s job, about their struggles and life hacks. While serious matters are discussed, there is a lot of laughter and storytelling. Videos are posted on Fridays (US Central time zone). The first two interviews, with Inna Zakharevich (Cornell University) and Hélène Esnault (Freie Universität Berlin), are already available. Updates to the schedule of interviews will appear at https://www.muramatik.com/math-life-balance/.

The Neumann Talk

The Newmann Talk is a new podcast hosted by UNSW PhD student Yudhi Bunjamin, who interviews past winners of the B.H. Neumann prize (prize for best student talk at the AustMS conference), of which he is a recent winner.

https://austms.org.au/the-neumann-talk-podcast/

Episode 2 interviews Trang Nguyen and Episode 8 interviews Adrianne Jenner. Along with the interviews, there are also bonus episodes about studying maths at university and what the traditional pathway in academia looks like.

OPPORTUNITIES

Science Meets Parliament

The 2021 Science Meets Parliament (SMP) event will take place from 2 March to 1 April in an online format. The website for this event is https://sta.eventsair.com/smp2021.

WIMSIG has been invited to nominate a member to attend SMP, as one of two delegates nominated by the AustMS.  Several members of WIMSIG have attended SMP in past years — Lesley Ward (UniSA), Giang Nguyen (Adelaide), Joanne Hall (RMIT), Jacqui Rammage (Durham), and several others — who all found it really fun and a valuable learning experience.

If you would like to attend this event, please email Catherine Greenhill (c.greenhill@unsw.edu.au) by Thursday 11 February, 2021​​ (note the short deadline!). Write a paragraph or two about why you would like to attend this event.  The WIMSIG Executive Committee will make a decision by Monday 15 February. Registrations close on February 22, 2021.

RMIT

The University of Melbourne

The University of Wollongong

MEDIA

Have you read an interesting article? Have some news? Have an opportunity available?

Please send items to WIMSIG-news@women.austms.org.au.

Note: Newsletters are published on the 1st day of each month (or soon after). The deadline for submitted items is the 27th day of each month.

To keep in touch in between newsletters, follow @wimsigAU on Twitter.