Enrichment Series
The Enrichment Series is a new program aimed at students studying a senior mathematics subject. The seminars aim to demonstrate that mathematics and statistics are not only creative and engaging but are essential as they underpin the society and world in which we live.
The series will run throughout the year. In 2022 we are running on-campus with a live stream.
The Mathematics of Knots
Date: Wednesday 24 August 2022
Time: 5 – 6PM AEST (Melbourne time)
Dual mode delivery: Zoom and Parkville campus
Do your headphones keep getting tangled in your bag? Shoelaces come undone? You may think that knots are something only sailors think about, but there is rich mathematics behind the theory of knots, with implications as far-reaching as your DNA.
The presenter Nicholas Beaton will introduce you to this tangly topic. There will definitely knot be any not-knot puns.
We need reinforcements!
Date: Wednesday 18 May 2022, 5–6 PM AEST in hybrid mode
There are many real-world phenomena involving reinforcement processes, such as neuronal reinforcement, and popularity of people or products.
Together with Mark Holmes, we will look at some weird and wonderful mathematical models involving randomness and reinforcement, starting with selecting balls from an urn, and ending with some current research problems.
Finding Matchings for Marriage: Can Mathematics Help to Find Your Soul Mate?
Date: Tuesday 7 December 2021, 5–6 PM AEDT on Zoom
By taking marriage matching as an example, presenter Binzhou Xia will give an introduction to matching problems in graph theory.
Making Good Decisions: An Introduction to Mathematical Optimisation
Date: Tuesday 23 November 2021, 5–6 PM AEDT on Zoom
In this workshop, presenter Joyce Zhang will introduce mathematical optimisation and some applications in real life. She will show how to develop a mathematical model and use a graphical method to solve a simple linear optimisation problem arising in flight allocation. Then she will demonstrate how to use Excel and its add-in solver to solve the same problem. Students will be given opportunities to use Excel to solve some classic optimisation problems as well as Sudoku games.
Thousands of Molecules and Trillions of Cells: How Do We Understand All This Data?
Date: Tuesday 28 September 2021, 5–6 PM AEST on Zoom
What makes us ‘us’? We still do not fully understand how living beings function, what makes an individual sick or healthy, or what are the biological mechanisms that drive the evolution of species. In recent years, we have made enormous technological progress to measure all sorts of things in living organisms, from proteins, to genes, to bacteria in our gut. We now need to combine all this information to fully understand our biology.
The information we need to process is gigantic. For each individual, we can measure hundreds of thousands of these molecules. Recent sequencing technologies now allow us to measure hundreds of thousands of molecules per cell– we have approximately 37 trillion cells in our bodies.
Learn how computational biologists make sense of all of this information with presenter Kim-Ahn Le Cao. See how visualisations and innovative methods to simplify complexity, combined with software, help to understand and analyse data. Find out how researchers aim to identify key molecules that can give us deep insight into the biological mechanisms happening in our bodies, ultimately leading to efficient treatments for disease and a better understand on how to live a healthy life.
Click here to join our mailing list and you'll be notified about new and upcoming outreach offerings relevant to you.