Latest news

Congratulations to Andrew Dancer, Anne Henke and Jan Kristensen, who have been awarded the title of Professor in the University's recent Recognition of Distinction exercise.

General

Position:- The project is approximately 1 week ahead of programme. The aim is to maintain the lead in the north of the site and to increase the good progress already made in the south.

Public viewing:- Viewing panels will be introduced adjacent to Gate 5 in the next few weeks for the public to better review progress

Balustrade: A mock up of the timber balustrade has been produced and will be brought to site in the next few days.

Precast Columns: An inspection of the precast columns was carried out on 12/1/2012 with the first delivery to site expected on Monday 16/1/2012.

The Big Dig:- The excavation is now predominantly done at which point over 47,000m3 of soil will have been removed. The gravel will be recycled and the clay used locally as fill material.

Maths Dept Visit:- The Maths Department visited the site on 6/1/2012. to view the latest progress.

Future works for January

The Big Dig:- The last remaining corner of excavation is to be completed in the next week. The removal of soil will change from loading the lorries at the base of the ramps to loading from ground level as the excavation diminishes.

GSHP:- The pipes that were sunk at the start of the project will now be cropped and joined to header connection pipes that will terminate in access ducts in the plant rooms. The works are over half way through and are presently working on the central area adjacent to the north. This will continue to the start of February.

Drainage & Slab:- The second pour on the north was done on 12/1/2012 using a concrete pump. The concrete pump is a separate vehicle with a telescopic flexible pipe to deliver the concrete to the desired position and is fed with premixed concrete lorries. It is targeted to have all the north slab complete by the end of January. The south is being prepared with steel reinforcement ongoing next week in readiness for the first pour on the south.

Plant Room & Services:- The lower plant room and service trenches are being excavated in the south.

Tower Cranes:- The two rower cranes are now erected for use on the project.

Recent Site Photos

Mike Giles has received the INFORMS Simulation Society 2011 Best
Simulation Publication Award for his 2008 Operations Research paper on
Multilevel Monte Carlo Path Simulation. (further details)

Vicky Henderson, Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford-Man Institute will
give a plenary lecture at the SIAM Conference on Financial Mathematics and
Engineering, 9-11 July 2012. http://www.siam.org/meetings/fm12/

The equipment providing the university IT network connection to Dartington House failed at about 10am on 27/12/2011. The equipment is not accessible to maths IT staff and hence we are awaiting a response from OUCS as to how we can resolve this problem quickly.

The loss of network connectivity to Dartington House will affect various departmental IT services. The departmental website and zimbra webmail service remain operational.

Update 11:45am 29/12/2011

Having so far not had the problem resolved by OUCS we have put in place a creative work around to restore the Dartington House connection and hence all maths services should be working again normally as of 10:20am on Thursday 29/12/2011.

A brief outage of a few minutes will still be needed in due course once OUCS fix their equipment and we remove the work around.

Should you experience continuing problems with any maths IT services please report the issue to @email as normal.

Update 4/1/2011

OUCS have now replaced the failed equipment.

Ongoing Works

Steel Propping:- Large steel props are largely installed to the north and south of the site. These brace at ground level along the capping beam in order to restrain the ground pressure from the surrounding sides of the building while digging continues.

The Big Dig:- Excavation of the soil within the footprint of the building started ahead of programme and is expected to continue until Christmas 2011. There will be over 47,000m3 of soil to be removed. The gravel will be recycled and the clay used locally as fill material. As the excavation proceeds the props and capping beam will be closely monitored to ensure there is no movement.

Cleaning of Piles:- As piles continue to be exposed piles (concrete “wall” below ground level) they are being cleaned and inspected.

GSHP:- The project has incorporated Ground Source Heat Pumps which when complete will supply heat in winter and supply cool in the summer. This is achieved by submerging pipes deep into the ground that can transfer the heat / cool temperatures to the building by use of pumps. The pipes that were sunk at the start of the project will now be cropped and joined to header connection pipes that will terminate in access ducts in the plant rooms. The two sections of the north were completed on 6/12/2011.

Hoarding:- The hoarding works adjacent to the main access road on the north, and to the pedestrian route on the south are now complete.

Maths Dept Visit:- The Maths Department visited the site on 9/12/2011 to view the latest progress.

Future works for December

The Big Dig:- The excavation overall is now just over three quarters complete. The north and south are down to the correct level, while the central section will continue just into the new year (w.c. 9/1/2012). The removal of soil will change from loading the lorries at the base of the ramps to loading from ground level as the excavation diminishes.

GSHP:- The pipes that were sunk at the start of the project continue to be cropped and joined to header connection pipes that will terminate in access ducts in the plant rooms. The first 2 sections of the south are ongoing and expected to be complete by 22/12/2011. The remainder of work to the centre will be carried out in January.

Drainage & Slab:- The passenger lift pit to core 2 has been excavated while the adjacent attenuation tank area has been blinded. The vehicle lift base has been cast together with the first area of the basement slab (16/12/2011).

Tower Cranes:- Crane bases are concreted. The 1st tower crane is planned to be erected by use of a mobile crane on the weekend of 7th & 8th January 2012. The 2nd tower crane is planned to be erected on the 9th & 10th January.

Recent Site Photos

OCCAM helps Moriarty plot world domination in the latest Sherlock Holmes movie:

Professor Moriarty, a mathematical genius, is a tough opponent. He is smart, evil, and relentless – a perfect match for Robert Downey Junior and Jude Law in the new Sherlock Holmes movie ("A Game of Shadows"), released on 16 December by Warner Bros. Moriarty's formulae for world domination, as seen in the film, aren't the stuff of fantasy. They are the stuff of Professor Alain Goriely and Dr Derek Moulton from the Mathematical Institute in Oxford who helped Warner Bros. give mathematical credibility to the movie. "Conan Doyle probably felt that equations didn't fit easily into his story" says Prof. Goriely. "However, on the screen they are perfect - powerful, beautiful, and mysterious. They tell us everything we need to know about the Professor. This guy is smart. Sherlock is in trouble and the clues are all on the board."

The Oxford pair’s brief was to design the blackboard in Moriarty's office, a gigantic board filled with intricate, beautiful, yet mathematically exact equations and formulas. "Unfortunately, Conan Doyle told us very little about Prof. Moriarty and we had to do some sleuthing of our own" says Prof. Goriely. The challenges were multiple and complex. The first task they faced was to give Moriarty some intellectual and mathematical depth consistent with the period from the hints and clues lightly sprinkled among the Sherlock Holmes stories. Then, they designed the code and cypher that Moriarty uses to carry his evil plots. "The code is based on Moriarty's fascination with the binomial theorem, the Pascal triangle, and the Fibonacci p-codes. It is elaborate and reliable as only Moriarty could have come up with" says Dr Moulton.

Dr Moulton and Professor Goriely also wrote an entire mathematical lecture that Moriarty gives around Europe. The lecture entitled "Singularity, Collisions and Blow-ups in the N-Body Problem" is based on Moriarty's second book 'The Dynamics of An Asteroid' and was road- tested by Prof. Goriely at the Oxford Centre for Collaborative Applied Mathematics a year ago behind closed doors: "Celestial mechanics was a hot topic by the end of the nineteenth- century and Moriarty could see the benefit of computing ballistic trajectories and collision events for his own machiavellian plans. Do not be surprised if there are a lot of big guns in the movie. Mathematics has done so much good for mankind, but this was a reminder of what happens when it falls into the wrong hands" says Prof. Goriely, "But, without revealing too much, by the end it is mathematics itself that defeats Moriarty."

Further information is available in a new scientist article.

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM, USA) awards the SIAG/Analysis of Partial Differential Equations Prize (one prize every two years) to the authors of the most outstanding paper, as determined by the committee, on a topic in Partial Differential Equations published in English in a peer-reviewed journal in the four calendar years preceding the year of the award.

The committee wishes to recognize Gui-Qiang G. Chen and Mikhail Feldman for their paper, "Global Solutions of Shock Reflection by Large-Angle Wedges for Potential Flow," Annals of Mathematics, Volume 171, Issue 2 (2010), 1067-1182, "in which they proved the existence and stability of a solution for the equations of two-dimensional compressible gas dynamics, for the case of a shock reflection from a wedge. This problem, originating with work of Ernst Mach, has long defied careful mathematical analysis."

Ongoing Works

Steel Propping:- Large steel props are largely installed to the north and south of the site. These brace at ground level along the capping beam in order to restrain the ground pressure from the surrounding sides of the building while digging continues.

The Big Dig:- Excavation of the soil within the footprint of the building started ahead of programme and is expected to continue until Christmas 2011. There will be over 47,000m3 of soil to be removed. The gravel will be recycled and the clay used locally as fill material. As the excavation proceeds the props and capping beam will be closely monitored to ensure there is no movement.

Cleaning of Piles:- As piles continue to be exposed piles (concrete “wall” below ground level) they are being cleaned and inspected.

Future works for December

The Big Dig:- The excavation overall is now just over two thirds complete. The north is down to the correct level, the south will have another week for main dig excavation, and the central section will continue into the new year. The removal of soil will change from loading the lorries at the base of the ramps to loading from ground level as the excavation diminishes.

GSHP:- The pipes that were sunk at the start of the project will now be cropped and joined to header connection pipes that will terminate in access ducts in the plant rooms. The 1st section of the north is complete and the 2nd section of the north is due on Tuesday 6/12/2011. The south will then be progressed from Wednesday 7/12/2011.

Drainage & Slab:- By mid December the drainage will be ongoing and the 1st basement slab will be formed in the north of the site.

Hoarding:- Hoarding works adjacent to the main access road is continuing towards Gate 7 and is expected to be complete by 5/12/2011.

Tower Cranes:- Crane bases are concreted. The 1st tower crane is planned to be erected by use of a mobile crane on the weekend of 7th and 8th January 2012.

Recent Site Photos

Professor Martin Bridson will give the 2011 Erwin Schroedinger Lecture in Vienna on 13 December.

His title is Finitely presented groups: geometry, decision problems, finite quotients, and monsters

Further details are available.