News

On the 12th of April Marcus du Sautoy will be receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the Open University at the Barbican "for services to the Arts & Science and exceptional contribution to education and culture."

Congratulations to Sam Howison on the award of the title of Professor.

Prof. Dr. Ulrike Luise Tillmann, has been elected the recipient of a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award.

This award is conferred in recognition of lifetime achievements in research. The awardee is invited to carry out research projects of her own choice in cooperation with specialist colleagues in Germany, promoting international scientific cooperation.

See the letter written by Frances Kirwan introducing herself to the EWM.

An article in the January 5th issue (number 2637) of the New Scientist highlights the recent paper Triadophilia, A Special Corner of the Landscape by Philip Candelas, Xenia de la Ossa, Yang-Hui He, and Balazs Szendroi.

Peter Neumann has been awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours list.

Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, has awarded Mason Porter the 2008 Young Investigator Award in the physical sciences and engineering. The award is to be accepted at the 2008 Sigma Xi Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference that will take place November 20-23, 2008 in Washington, D.C..

The Award includes an honorarium of $5,000, a Certificate of Recognition, and the opportunity to present the 2008 Young Investigator Award Lecture at the Society’s Annual Meeting to an audience of distinguished scientists and engineers as well as 200-250 undergraduate and graduate students participating in the Student Research Conference.

This selection marks the eleventh presentation of the Young Investigator Award. The Society’s Board of Directors established the Award in 1996 “to recognize researchers in the early stages of their careers whose outstanding contributions best exemplify the ideals of Sigma Xi.” The Award recognizes individuals within 10 years of earning their highest graduate degree for their scientific achievements, interdisciplinary research, and the ability to communicate the significance of their achievements to the public. The Award recognizes the physical sciences and engineering in even numbered years and the life and social sciences in odd numbered years.

The national championship of U.S. college football is decided at the end of the season in a climactic game that is supposed to match the top two NCAA Division I (FBS) teams. Year after year, controversy has dogged the selection of those two teams.

Mathematically and computationally inclined football fans have proposed a variety of alternative ranking schemes. One interesting contender is a scheme developed by Thomas Callaghan, now a graduate student at Stanford University, Peter J. Mucha of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Mason A. Porter of the University of Oxford.

In 2005 Mason Porter looked at some interesting issues relating to US politics. Further information can be found in articles in Science Now and New Scientist.

BBC News has published an article on the use of computer graphics cards to rapidly perform calculations. The article includes comments from Mike Giles of the Mathematical Institute on how he uses this new approach to computation for financial modelling.

Courses began at the new graduate taught course centre this week.

The taught course centre is a collaboration between the Mathematics Departments at the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Imperial, Oxford and Warwick. The centre is supported by a grant from the EPSRC.

The Centre aims to offer approximately 25 graduate level courses over the academic year, starting in October 2007. Access Grid technology will be used so that audiences in all five universities can participate in the lectures.