Matrix 2019

PEOPLE

MATRIX is Australia’s first international research institute for the mathematical sciences through a partnership between The University of Melbourne and Monash University, with seed and ongoing funding from ACEMS. MATRIX provides intensive residential mathematical programs at MATRIX House, Creswick, Victoria.

Guided by a distinguished international advisory board and scientific committee, MATRIX is led by two co-directors and managed by an executive officer. MATRIX research program proposals are selected bi-annually through an independent international scientific committee.

MATRIX has had a highly successful 2019, coordinating and presenting 11 research programs:

1. Topology of Manifolds: Interactions between High and Low Dimensions
2. Australian-German Workshop on Differential Geometry in the Large
3. Aperiodic Order Meets Number Theory
4. Ergodic Theory, Diophantine Approximation and Related Topics
5. Influencing Public Health Policy with Data-Informed Mathematical Models of Infectious Diseases
6. International Workshop on Spatial Statistics
7. Mathematics of Physiological Rhythms
8. Conservation Laws, Interfaces, and Mixing
9. Structural Graph Theory Downunder
10. Statistical Methods in Data Science
11. Tropical Geometry and Mirror Symmetry

The 11 research programs spanned 16 weeks, attracting 308 scientists from 34 countries. In 2019, MATRIX welcomed Professor Maria Chudnovsky and Professor Paul Seymour, both from Princeton University, who attended the Structural Graph Theory Downunder research program.

MATRIX consistently receives positive feedback across all programs, with many participants already scheduled to return to attend programs in 2020 or who are in the process of preparing their own MATRIX programs, because of their collaborations with fellow colleagues at the Institute.

Continuing with the success and popularity of ACEMS’ previous teacher professional development activities, ACEMS ran the fourth annual MathsCraft Immersive Professional Development Workshop for mathematics teacher in November 2019, once again held at MATRIX in Creswick, with 19 teachers attending. The participants committed to five days of intensive study and discussion with each other and with research mathematicians, and feedback indicates that they found the experience extremely worthwhile.

In 2019, MATRIX also released its second book -- 2017 MATRIX Annals -- published by Springer. This book is a scientific record of the eight research programs held at MATRIX in 2017.

MATRIX is supported by a donation from a University of Melbourne alumnus that provides funding for cross-disciplinary research programs with mathematical sciences at the core. MATRIX is close to securing a new major partnership starting in 2020, as the foundations were developed during 2019.

MATRIX looks forward to a busy 2020, with ten programs planned:

1. Early Career Researchers Workshop on Geometric Analysis and PDEs
2. Harmonic Analysis and Dispersive PDEs: Problems and Progress
3. Spatial Structure in Population Models: Bridging Theory and Data
4. Integrability and Combinatorics at Finite Temperature
5. New Developments in Multiple Time-Scale Dynamical Systems
6. Isoperimetric Inequalities in Geometric Partial Differential Equations
7. The Skeleton of Turbulent Shear Flows
8. Frontiers in Representation Theory
9. Groups and Geometries
10. Hyperbolic Differential Equations in Geometry and Physics

Further information on MATRIX programs can be found at: www.matrix-inst.org.au

MATRIX is deeply grateful for the continued support from ACEMS, without which it would not be able to support the mathematical sciences in Australia at the level that it does today.