Researchers have discovered a ‘blind spot’ in atomic force microscopy – a powerful tool capable of measuring the force between two atoms, imaging the structure of individual cells and the motion of biomolecules.

It is my pleasure to announce that Professor Ruth Williams from UC San Diego has received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Melbourne. Ruth's award is richly deserved, and I hope you will join me in congratulating Ruth.   Ruth's work has been recognised by many honours such as her election to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Australian Academy of Science as a corresponding member. She is also one of a select few who have been invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians. In 2016, Ruth became the first, and to date only, woman to receive the highly prestigious John von Neumann Theory Prize by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. Since moving to the United States in 1980, Ruth has frequently returned to Australia to visit both her family and the University of Melbourne. During each visit she has made it a point to engage with the staff and students in the School and has been especially supportive of female staff. She is an important role model for women in STEM and plays an active role in the advancement of women in the mathematical sciences through organisation of networking, academic and social events. Since 2016, Ruth has been an active member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the University of Melbourne-based ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS). As continuing member of its Governance Board from 2015, Professor Williams has also been a very strong international advocate of the Australian Mathematical Research Institute, MATRIX. A full citation for Ruth is attached below.Jan De Gier.Citation in support of Ruth Williams’ nomination for an Honorary Doctorate

For the second year running the University of Melbourne was the highest placed Australian university at the prestigious Simon Marais Mathematics Competition for undergaduate students in the Asia-Pacific.

The Australian Mathematical Society (AustMS) has awarded Professor Peter Taylor its highest honour, the George Szekeres Medal, and Dr Nicholas Beaton, Professor Jan De Gier, and Professor Tony Guttmann were awarded the prize for best paper.

Faculty of Science researchers will share in more than $12 million dollars of funding from the latest ARC round of grants.

Dr Roslyn Hickson has been recognised with the Victorian Young Tall Poppy Science Award for her research using mathematical modeling to predict the spread of diseases.

It is with great pleasure that the School of Mathematics and Statistics announces the respective awards for Joyce Zhang and Jennifer Flegg. The School would like to congratulate Joyce Zhang who has been awarded the Lei Xing collaboartive grant and Jennifer Flegg for her award from the William Stone Trust.

We are excited to have Zhen Huan visiting from Sun Yat-Sen University this month. To celebrate this, we are stepping up our elliptic activities, starting with a Mini-Workshop (Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning this coming week) and followed by a lunch-time lecture series by Zhen Huan, on Wednesdays and Fridays in 213 for the next two weeks.

This scholarship supports exceptional students in mathematics and statistics enrolled in the Bachelor of Science and intending to major in Mathematics and Statistics.

It is with great pleasure and delight that I inform you of the decision of the Council of the University of Melbourne to offer the degree of Doctor of Science (honoris causa) to Alison Harcourt. Honorary degrees are the highest honour that the University can bestow on an individual. We are delighted that Alison has been extended this distinction as acknowledgment of her key contribution in the mathematical field of integer linear programming and for her outstanding commitment that has inspired several generations of students and young statisticians. I include here a copy of the citation that will be read at Alison's conferring later this year.  I am sure that you will join me in congratulating Alison on her honorary degree, Jan de GierAlison Harcourt Citation (Honorary Doctorate in Science) Alison Harcourt (nee Doig) is a true pioneer in the mathematical field of optimisation, having co­ authored the seminal paper: A. H. Land and A. G. Doig, "An Automatic Method of Solving Discrete Programming Problems", Econometrica, vol. 28, no. 3, 1960.This ground-breaking paper is well-known to researchers in optimisation since it proposed a method for solving integer programming problems which later became known as the "branch-and-bound" method. It underpins much of modern day optimisation software packages that provide efficient solutions to challenging combinatorial optimisation problems. Applications are diverse and range from logistics and transportation, to scheduling, to telecommunications, and even cancer radiotherapy treatment planning. This seminal paper has almost 3000 Google Scholar citations and has clearly had enormous impact in the academic literature as well as for practical problem solving for economic and social benefits.Most people are not aware that this ground-breaking paper was authored by two women, since their first names are never identified on the paper. Alison co-authored the paper while working in London as a research assistant together with Ailsa Land at the London School of Economics. She was offered the position based on the quality of her University of Melbourne Master's thesis on integer linear programming in the mid-1950s. Alison never enrolled in a PhD and by the mid-1960s returned to the University of Melbourne to take up a position as a Senior Lecturer in Statistics. Her talents were in high demand as a statistical collaborator, and she went on to have a strong career as a statistician, never returning to work in the field of optimisation for which she had provided such important foundations.Alison's statistical analyses have had profound impacts influencing government policy. Examples include the first attempts to estimate poverty in Australia (informing the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Poverty); and statistical analysis of bias that lead to an amendment of the Commonwealth Electoral Act in 1984 which introduced a "double randomisation" method for allocating positions of political parties on ballot papers (still used today). She was also foundation secretary of the Victorian branch of the Statistical Society of Australia (1963-1967), and has authored several books and journal articles. She formally retired in 1994 but continues to share her passion for teaching as a sessional tutor in mathematics and statistics at The University of Melbourne at the age of  eighty-eight.Given the seminal nature of her work that laid the foundations for an entire field with major societal impact, and her additional contributions in the field of applied statistics with significant societal impacts, an Honorary Doctorate from The University of Melbourne is the best way we can honour the achievements of this pioneer.

Associate Professor Stephen Leslie, Dr Damjan Vukcevic and Dr Allan Motyer are part of the team that has published the world’s largest genetic study on humans.

Ms Alison Harcourt, an 88 year-old statistician who works at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, was featured on the ABC 7.30 program on Monday night.

Pick a card, any card! The immortal phrase of the magician. Anthony Mays and Jennifer Palisse presented a public talk about some mathematical magic tricks.

The ever popular Maths Arcade returned to the Peter Hall building. Insert coin to continue.

Seven University of Melbourne staff members and associates have been selected to participate in the Homeward Bound global leadership initiative for women in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine).

Professor Antoinette Tordesillas teams up with former Chief Scientist of Australia and Group Chief Scientist of Rio Tinto Ltd. Professor Robin Batterham to develop a new software tool that can predict landslide boundaries two weeks in advance.

Dr Kim-Anh Lê Cao has been awarded a prestigious Career Development Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

Professor Hyam Rubinstein from the School of Mathematics and Statistics is currently seeking funding to develop and commercialise a new tool for optimising the design of open cut mines.

If you're mathematically minded, come along on Open Day to meet with us and see the many places mathematics and statistics can take you. Some of them might surprise you.

Alison Harcourt, a pioneer of linear programming and a University of Melbourne statistics tutor for nearly 40 years, has been profiled in The Australian.

On Thursday 26 April, The School of Mathematics and Statistics’ Student Awards was held at the Open Stage.

Dr Kim-Anh Lê Cao (Melbourne Integrative Genomics, School of Mathematics and Statistics) and Dr Matt Ritchie (WEHI) are developing software that could help to advance the world-first effort to map every cell in the human body.

Professor James McCaw was recently featured on ABC Radio National discussing the importance of mathematical modelling of infectious diseases.

Dr Binzhou Xia, from the School of Mathematics and Statistics, has been awarded the 2017 Kirkman Medal of the Institute of Combinatorics and Its Applications (ICA).

New software based on statistical probability principles is helping forecast our flu season, and could also identify the level of threat of a bioterrorist attack

Science alumnus Jonathan Ling, now a Digital Analyst at Accenture, took to Linked In to share his advice for science undergraduates on life after university.

Over the recent summer holidays, four maths students from the Faculty of Science undertook a Trading internship at Optiver, a leading technology driven trading firm based in Sydney.

The ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science was officially launched on 13 December by the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Research Council, Professor Sue Thomas.

ARC Laureate Fellow and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor Peter Taylor from the School of Mathematics and Statistics at The University of Melbourne has been awarded The Australian Society for Operations Research’s 2017 Ren Potts Medal.

MS Walkers is an informal mentoring program for female academics and PhD students within the School of Mathematics and Statistics at The University of Melbourne.

Volunteer and mentor Adriana Zanca explains how her work can help budding young indigenous scientists understand the careers available to them.

University of Melbourne mathematics students have recorded a strong showing in the international Simon Marais Mathematics Competition.

Professor Kate Smith-Miles will make history this month when she becomes the first woman, and the first Australian, to give the annual Alan Tayler lecture in its 31-year history at Oxford University.

Australia’s commitment to biosecurity makes us one of the few countries to remain free from the world’s most severe pests, weeds and diseases. But the price we pay is eternal vigilance.

We are currently recruiting for a range of roles at the School of Mathematics and Statistics.

A new way of presenting Y chromosome evidence in court clarifies the sometimes misleading DNA arguments used in sexual assault cases.

Mapping the massive network of tunnels that give miners underground access to mineral ores is an expensive and time-consuming process, but new optimisation software, inspired by the complexity of the microchip, could save the industry millions.

In a breakthrough in our understanding of hydrodynamics, researchers have demonstrated the seemingly impossible: a ball that sinks in water with almost zero drag.

PhD student Ada Wing Chi Yan has successfully completed the requirements of her PhD degree. Her thesis, entitled Influenza viral dynamics models to explore the roles of innate and adaptive immunity was supervised by Associate Professor James McCaw, Professor Jodie McVernon and Doctor Sophie Zaloumis. The School of Mathematics and Statistics congratulates Ada, James, Jodie and Sophie on their efforts.

For PhD students working on a project which combines advances in a theoretical area in mathematics (including probability and statistics) with their applications in other fields including, but not limited to, biology, information technology, engineering and medicine.

Professor Aurore Delaigle from the School of Mathematics and Statistics has received the distinguished George W. Snedecor Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS).

RPM has acquired the University of Melbourne spin-off company MineOptima, in which Prof. Hyam Rubinstein, A/Prof. Marcus Brazil and Prof. Doreen Thomas from The School of Mathematics & Statistics were significantly involved.