Latest news

We are delighted to announce that Professor Ben Green FRS will join us as the new Waynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics. Ben is an outstanding mathematician who is well known for his work in additive combinatorics among other topics. He has held chairs at Bristol and Cambridge.

General

Cranes & Fork Lifts:- Tower Crane TC2 is expected to be dismantled mid February. The south block is served with tower crane TC1 and will be supplemented with roof cranes. Internal materials are largely served by a fork lift and with use of the tower crane when required. The “moling” hole is expected to be closed off in the next fortnight.

Entrance:- The pedestrian entrance has temporarily moved from Gate 1 to Gate 7 while electrical main cables are drawn through ducts to the power room.

Future works for February

Architectural Metalwork:- Entrance feature stair is installed together with the main elements of the basement staircases. Stair core balustrading has started in core 2.

Screeding:- Screeding (sand & cement layer to obtain a flat floor) has commenced.

Waterproofing & Flat Roof:- 3rd & 4th Level main roof to the north has been waterproofed while the south has had the 3rd and part 4th level waterproofed. Other levels will follow.

Cladding:- The north block is complete. All elevations to the south block have commenced with mainly corner sections to complete.

Glass Atrium Roofs:- The north atrium roof is largely enclosed. The south minor atrium main support beams and gridwork are in place with glass substantially installed. South major atrium has main support beams installed, with temporary cover / “tent” over the middle area.

Reconstituted Stone:- The Stone contractor Techrete are largely complete on the north and are progressing on the south block with the stone fins that surround the windows, with a priority to those above the Entrance.

Lifts:- The lift contractor Thyssen have completed the first car lift in the north. The passenger lift to the south has commenced and is expected to be complete in January. The 2nd car lift is expected to take 7 weeks.

Mechanical & Electrical:- The corridor areas in the north have commenced. Services contractor, Crownhouse, have largely installed internal drainage, sprinklers, ductwork, pipework and containment at the basement & mezzanine. Cabling and wiring will be ongoing in the coming weeks.

Internal Fitout:- All zones have commenced on the north while 6 out of 8 zones have commenced on the south. Door Frames have recently commenced in the north & south.

Joinery:- Carcass works for balustrading within the at South Atrium continues while timber balustrade panels have started being installed in the north.

Smoke Curtains:- Carcass works for smoke curtains started on 21/1/2013. A smoke curtain, when deployed in the event of a fire, will direct smoke away from escape routes.

Recent Site Photos

This year's Nomura Lecture will be held on the 6th June 2013, by Paul Milgrom, Shirley and Leonard Ely Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. He is well known for his fundamental contributions to auction theory and incentive theory. He is also an excellent speaker

Time/location: 5.30pm Martin Wood Lecture Theatre

Title: Strategy-Proof Auctions for Complex Procurement

Abstract: Some real resource allocation problems are so large and complex that optimization would computationally infeasible, even with complete information about all the relevant values. For example, the proposal in the US to use television broadcasters' bids to determine which stations go off air to make room for wireless broadband is characterized by hundreds of thousands of integer constraints. We use game theory and auction theory to characterize a class of simple, strategy-proof auctions for such problems and show their equivalence to a class of "clock auctions," which make the optimal bidding strategy obvious to all bidders. We adapt the results of optimal auction theory to reduce expected procurement costs and prove that the procurement cost of each clock auction is the same as that of the full information equilibrium of its related paid-as-bid (sealed-bid) auction.

The Nomura Lecture poster can be found here

Xunyu Zhou and Mike Giles are teaching on the 12th Winter School on Mathematical Finance in the Netherlands.  Xunyu will be covering 
Mathematical Behavioural Finance, while Mike will be discussing Adjoint Methods in Computational Finance.

Future works for January

Architectural Metalwork:- Entrance feature stair is installed together with the main elements of the basement staircases.

Blockwork:- Largely finished with a number of walls to service rooms to complete.

Waterproofing & Flat Roof:- 3rd & 4th Level main roof to the north has been waterproofed while the south has had the 4th level part waterproofed.

Cladding:- The north block is complete. All elevations to the south block have commenced with mainly corner sections to complete.

Glass Atrium Roofs:- The north atrium roof is largely enclosed. The south minor atrium main support beams and gridwork are in place with glass substantially installed. South major atrium has main support beams substantially installed, with temporary cover forming a “tent” over the middle area.

Reconstituted Stone:- The Stone contractor Techrete are progressing on the north and south blocks with the stone fins that surround the windows, with a priority to those above the Entrance.

Lifts:- The lift contractor Thyssen have completed the first car lift in the north. The passenger lift to the south has commenced and is expected to be complete in January. The 2nd car lift is expected to take 7 weeks.

Mechanical & Electrical:- The majority of plant has been delivered including the generator. Services contractor Crownhouse have largely installed internal drainage, sprinklers, ductwork, pipework and containment at the basement & mezzanine. Cabling and wiring are ongoing in the coming weeks.

Internal Fitout:- All zones have commenced on the north while 5 out of 8 zones have commenced on the south. Door Frames have recently commenced in the North.

Joinery:- Carcass works for balustrading within the at South Atrium have commenced and the carcass is virtually complete in the north.

Smoke Curtains:- Carcass works for smoke curtains are expected in January. A smoke curtain, when deployed in the event of a fire, will direct smoke away from escape routes.

Recent Site Photos

Jared Tanner is one of the founding editors of the new IMA journal Information and Inference which published its first issue recently. All content will be free to access for the first two years of publication of the journal.

General

Cranes & Fork Lifts:- Tower Crane TC2 is being used to secure the reconstituted stone fins. The south block is served with tower crane TC1 and will be supplemented occasionally with a small “city crane” and a roof “spider” crane . Internal materials are largely served by a fork lift and with use of the tower crane when required.

Sample Rooms:- 3 “early” office rooms are now largely complete ready for sample furniture in the new year

Visits:- The Mathematics Department tour took place on the 7/12/2012.

Future works for January

Architectural Metalwork:- Basement staircases (3 No) have commenced as has the feature stair at the Entrance.

Blockwork:- Largely finished with a number of walls to service rooms to complete.

Waterproofing & Flat Roof:- 3rd Level main roof to the north has been waterproofed and are now progressing to the 4th and 5th level roofs.

Cladding:- The north block is almost complete. All elevations to the south block have commenced with mainly corner sections to complete. The bulk of units will be installed by Christmas.

Glass Atrium Roofs:- The north atrium roof is largely enclosed. The south minor atrium main support beams are installed and the gridwork for glass has commenced. South major atrium has main support beams substantially installed.

Reconstituted Stone:- The Stone contractor Techrete are progressing on the north block with the stone fins that surround the windows.

Lifts:- The lift contractor Thyssen have completed the first car lift in the north. The passenger lift in the north is expected to be complete by Christmas. The passenger lift to the south has commenced and is expected to be complete in early January. The 2nd car lift is expected to take 7 weeks.

Mechanical & Electrical:- The majority of plant has been delivered except the generator which is due 17th December. Services contractor Crownhouse have largely installed internal drainage, sprinklers, ductwork, pipework and containment at the basement & mezzanine. Cabling and wiring are ongoing in the coming weeks.

Internal Fitout:- All zones have commenced on the north while 4 out of 8 zones have commenced on the south.

Joinery:- Carcass works for balustrading within the at South Atrium have commenced and the carcass is virtually complete in the north.

Smoke Curtains:- Carcass works for smoke curtains are expected in January. A smoke curtain, when deployed in the event of a fire, will direct smoke away from escape routes.

Recent Site Photos

On 11/12/2012 Marcus du Sautoy received an honorary DSc from Queen Mary University of London today for services to mathematics and science.

Professor Marcus du Sautoy was named Honorary Doctor of Science by Professor Shahn Majid of Queen Mary’s School of Mathematical Sciences. Marcus du Sautoy is a TV and radio presenter, author, writer for the UK’s leading newspapers, the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of New College. He has lectured at Queen Mary on several occasions, including the First Drapers’ Lecture (2006) and the flagship William Harvey Day in 2010.

Professor du Sautoy says: “Queen Mary was the springboard for my career as a grown-up mathematician. Having completed my DPhil at Oxford, my first year as a post-doc was spent in the extremely stimulating environment of the mathematics department at Queen Mary. Since that time I have kept in contact with many of the mathematical friends I made during my time at the university. It is a great honour that Queen Mary has decided to recognise my contributions to mathematics and science with this award".

Further details available

There were several electrical outages in Oxford earlier today that affected both the St Giles building and Dartington House. The electrical problems began about 5:48am and lasted until about 8:20. Southern Electric say two faults on their high voltage network caused the problems. Reports of an explosion in central Oxford this morning was actually the sound caused by large fuses breaking during a fire at an electricity sub station on Parks Road which further affected power to university buildings.

Although the departmental IT services largely weathered the electrical problems, the outages took out part of the university backbone network and hence left the departmental network inaccessible from outside the department (and also partially unusable within the department due to the backbone network outage preventing connection between buildings) until about 10am when power was restored to the failed section of the university backbone.

A network switch serving the 3rd floor of the St Giles building suffered an unrecoverable fault during the outages. It was replaced at 14:00 restoring service.

If you find problems with a desktop machine that are not resolved by rebooting it/turning it off and on again, or have problems with any other maths IT services please report the issue to @email as normal.

General

Cranes & Fork Lifts:- Tower Crane TC2 is being used to secure the reconstituted stone fins. The south block is served with tower crane TC1 and will be supplemented occasionally with a small “city crane” and a roof “spider” crane . Internal materials are largely served by a fork lift and with use of the tower crane when required.

Sample Rooms:- Three “early” office rooms are now virtually complete with carpet and finals being the last items installed.

Future works for December

Architectural Metalwork:- Three basement staircases are due by the end of the month and the entrance feature stair is targeted for 3/12/2012.

Blockwork:- Largely finished with a number of walls to service rooms to complete.

Waterproofing & Flat Roof:- Now that the perimeter to roofs are complete, the next areas will be the core 1 roof followed by 3rd level main roof works.

Cladding:- Corner units continue to be installed on the north block. All elevations to the south block have commenced. The bulk of units will be installed by Christmas.

Glass Atrium Roofs:- The north atrium roof is expected to be enclosed by 7/12/2012. The south minor atrium main support beams are installed and is ready for glass to be installed. South major atrium will continue to install main support beams.

Reconstituted Stone:- The Stone contractor Techrete are progressing on the north block with the stone fins that surround the windows.

Lifts:- The lift contractor Thyssen have completed the first car lift in the north. The passenger lift in the north is expected to be complete by early December. The passenger lift to the south has commenced and is expected to be complete in early January.

Mechanical & Electrical:- The majority of plant has been delivered except the generator which is due mid December. Services contractor Crownhouse continue with internal drainage, sprinklers, ductwork, pipework and containment at the basement & mezzanine.

Internal Fitout:- Under floor services are ongoing generally 1 week ahead of programme on the north block. On the South block the first zones E&F have commenced on 12/11/2012 in line with programme.

Joinery:- Carcass works for balustrading within the North Atrium have commenced.

Smoke Curtains:- Carcass works for smoke curtains are expected in mid December. A smoke curtain, when deployed in the event of a fire, will direct smoke away from escape routes.

Recent Site Photos