News

Colin Macdonald has been awarded the 2010 SIAM Richard C. DiPrima Prize, making him the 11th recepient of the award.

Jon Chapman, currently the Professor of Mathematics and its Applications and Director of the departmental research group OCIAM, is a former winner, being awarded the DiPrima prize in 1994.

The SIAM Richard C. DiPrima Prize is awarded every other year to a junior scientist for outstanding research in applied mathematics based on the doctoral dissertation.

Oxford DPhil student Muhammad Imran Qureshi received one of 4 prizes "for best talks given by students" at the Maths 2010 meeting (combined BMC/BAMC), held 6-9 April 2010 in Edinburgh. There was a total of 90 talks given by students at the meeting. Mr Qureshi is a student of Balazs Szendroi; his talk was entitled Some new families of Calabi-Yau 3-folds in weighted flag varieties.

Dr David Acheson has been elected President of the Mathematical Association for 2010-11.

We are currently recruiting a Departmental Lecturer in Mathematical Finance.

This year's Nomura Lecture will be given by John Campbell, Harvard College Professor, Harvard University, on Thursday 20th May, 2010. The lecture will begin at 5pm (with refreshments before hand at 4.30pm) and the venue is The Nelson Mandela Lecture Theatre, Said Business School.
All are welcome.

Title: The Changing Risks of Government Bonds

Abstract: The covariance between nominal bonds and stocks has varied considerably over recent decades and has even switched sign. It has been predominantly positive in periods such as the late 1970s and early 1980s when the economy has experienced supply shocks and the central bank has lacked credibility. It has been predominantly negative in periods such as the 2000s when investors have feared weak aggregate demand and deflation. This lecture discusses the implications of changing bond risk for the shape of the yield curve, the risk premia on bonds, and the relative pricing of nominal and inflation-indexed bonds.

On Thursday, March 11, 2010, two physicists-GP-B Principal Investigator, Francis Everitt, from Stanford and Sir Roger Penrose from Oxford-will jointly be awarded the ninth annual Trotter Prize at Texas A&M University. The annual Trotter event includes both a cash prize to the recipient(s) and an endowed public lecture series.

The Trotter Prize in Information, Complexity and Inference is awarded annually for pioneering contributions to the understanding of the role of information, complexity and inference in illuminating the mechanisms and wonder of nature.

The Trotter Lecture seeks to reveal connections between science and religion, often viewed in academia as non-overlapping, if not rival, worldviews. For this year's Trotter Lecture, both Everitt and Penrose will speak on this topic. Everitt's talk, entitled "Mystery in Science, Reason is Religion," will explore how mystery and moral discipline permeate both science and religion and how reason affects each in the context of Christian faith. Penrose's talk, entitled " Did the Universe Have a Beginning?" will explore the philosophical implications of conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC), which Penrose offers as an alternative scheme to the prevailing Big Bang theory.

Tom Bridgeland elected to Senior Research Fellowship at All Souls.

Tyrone Rees, a graduate student in the Numerical Analysis Group, has just won a 1st prize in the student paper competition of the Copper Mountain Conference on Iterative Methods (Colorado, USA).

This year the British Topology Meeting will take place in Merton College, Oxford, from Monday 6th to Wednesday 8th of September 2010. We hope that the meeting will be an opportunity to reinforce the strengths of the community of British topology and we aim to represent many of the facets of current topology. For more information please see the BTM webpage.

The event is being supported by the London Mathematical Society and Merton College.

Organisers: Jeffrey Giansiracusa ( @email ) and Oscar Randal-Williams ( @email )

Nomura International plc has recently renewed its sponsorship with an uplifted funding for the Nomura Centre for Mathematical Finance (NCMF) at the Mathematical Institute, for another five years, starting from April 2010. Xunyu Zhou, Nomura Professor of Mathematical Finance and the Director of NCMF, says, We are very pleased with the continuing partnership between Oxford and Nomura, which has become exemplary for academic-industry collaborations. It is also a great vote of confidence from Nomura in the rapidly expanding Mathematical Finance group in Oxford. The new funding will support among others the Nomura Chair, 2 Nomura Research Fellows, the annual Nomura Lecture, the weekly Nomura Seminar series, and academic visitors to the Centre.