CMSA E-Newsletter 3

COMBINATORIAL MATHEMATICS SOCIETY OF AUSTRALASIA (INC)

CMSA E-Newsletter Number 3 (June 2000)

INTRODUCTION: Many thanks to the members who have sent information for this newsletter.

CLOSING DATE for Issue 4: 30 September 2000. Email ejb@maths.uq.edu.au with all your news and information.

AIMS of the newsletter:

   * to promote combinatorics within Australasia
   * to provide a forum for sharing combinatorial and related information
   * to keep CMSA Members informed and in touch with combinatorial and related matters

RECENT CONFERENCE REPORTS:

The University of Adelaide Institute for Geometry and its Applications Workshop -- Finite and Topological Geometries 17 - 21 January 2000

The Institute for Geometry and its Applications again sponsored a workshop in January of 2000, organised by Christine O'Keefe. There was a relatively small number of talks of varying lengths, leaving plenty of time for informal discussions and research meetings. A feature was that on Monday particpants presented research problems or proposals and progress was reported on Friday. The brand new Engineering and Mathematics Building provided an excellent venue, with the nearby Gate One Cafe a welcome change (Coopers on tap). The social programme included dinner at the famous Jasmin Indian Restaurant, Breakfast at Tiffany's at the Botanic Gardens outdoor cinema and a walk/run around the beautiful Morialta reserve in the Adelaide foothills. After the workshop several participants stayed on to visit the Flinders Ranges, dodging kangaroos and low cloud to climb Saint Mary Peak. Burkard Polster provided excellent workshop tshirts, once again.

The participants were Sue Barwick, Peter Cameron, Rey Casse, Frank De Clerck, Mario Delanote, Nicholas Hamilton, Michel Lavrauw, Maska Law, Robert Maddock, Rudi Mathon, Christine O'Keefe, Tim Penttila, Burkard Polster, Catherine Quinn, Andreas Schroth and Hendrik Van Maldeghem.

Christine O'Keefe Organiser cokeefe@maths.adelaide.edu.au

FUTURE WORKSHOP AND CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENTS :

Too late for attendance, but the Conference COMBINATORICS 2000 is on right now (28 May - 3 June) in Gaeta, Italy. You can check out talk abstracts, speakers etc., via the web page http://www.mat.uniroma1.it/combinatorics2000/

The 44th AUSTRALIAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY CONFERENCE will include a special session on combinatorics. This will be held at the University of Queensland from 2 - 5 July 2000, starting at 11am on the SUNDAY. See the web page http://AustMS2000.maths.uq.edu.au/ Contact Christine O'Keefe cokeefe@maths.adelaide.edu.au or Elizabeth Billington ejb@maths.uq.edu.au for further information on the combinatorics special session.

From 10-12 July 2000, QUT is hosting ACISP 2000, AUSTRALASIAN CONFERENCE ON INFORMATION SECURITY AND PRIVACY. This is the fifth annual ACISP conference. Further information can be found at www.isrc.qut.edu.au/acisp2K

The 25th ACCMCC will be held in Christchurch, New Zealand, from 4 - 8 December 2000. Invited Speakers include

   * Joan Hutchinson, Macalester College
   * Chris Rodger, Auburn University
   * Ralph Stanton, University of Manitoba
   * Robin Thomas (to be confirmed), Georgia Institute of Technology
   * Geoff Whittle, Victoria University of Wellington
   * Nick Wormald, University of Melbourne

For more details contact the Conference Organisers: Charles Semple at C.Semple@math.canterbury.ac.nz Mike Steel at M.Steel@math.canterbury.ac.nz and see the web page http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/accmcc.shtml. This web page will be upgraded in June, with further information on registration and accommodation.

ALGEBRAIC AND TOPOLOGICAL METHODS IN GRAPH THEORY, ATMGT2000 will be held from December 11-15, 2000 in the Department of Mathematics, University of Auckland, New Zealand. See http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/atmgt2000 and email: atmgt2000@math.auckland.ac.nz

This is a conference devoted to all aspects of Graph Theory with a particular emphasis on Algebraic and Topological methods. It follows the 25th ACCMCC which is the week beforehand in Christchurch. Additionally, an international conference on Technology in Mathematics Education will be taking place at the same location as ATMGT2000 during the same week. See http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/TIME2000

INVITED SPEAKERS

   * Bruce Richter, Waterloo, Canada
   * Joan Hutchinson, St Paul, Minnesota
   * Dragan Marusic, Ljubljana, Slovenia
   * Tomaz Pisanski, Ljubljana, Slovenia
   * Cheryl Praeger, Perth, Australia
   * Jozef Siran, Bratislava, Slovakia
   * Robin Thomas, Atlanta, Georgia
   * Tom Tucker, Hamilton, New York
   * Mark Watkins, Syracuse, New York

Please see the web page at http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/atmgt2000/ for the PROGRAM, and details on PARTICIPATION, ACCOMMODATION, and information about New Zealand and Auckland, travel and visas etc.

The CONFERENCE COMMITTEE is: Dr Paul Bonnington (p.bonnington@auckland.ac.nz), Prof Marston Conder (conder@math.auckland.ac.nz), Dr Margaret Morton (morton@math.auckland.ac.nz), Jamie Sneddon (sneddon@math.auckland.ac.nz), Dr Michael Dinneen (mjd@cs.auckland.ac.nz).

BRAZILIAN SYMPOSIUM ON GRAPHS, ALGORITHMS AND COMBINATORICS (GRACO 2001) will be held from March 17-19, 2001 in Fortaleza, Ceara State, Brazil. See http://www.lia.ufc.br/symp2001

Ceara is a state in the northeastern region of Brazil. Fortaleza has a great tourism infra-structure and good hotels, pleasant weather and beautiful landscapes, which make it an ideal place for scientific exchange among the participants of the symposium. GRACO 2001 is open to faculty members, researchers, specialists and graduate students from around the world, and will take place in conjunction with the Brazilian Summer School on Combinatorics and Algorithms (see http://www.lia.ufc.br/scho2001 ).

Extended abstracts presenting original contributions to algorithms and combinatorics are being sought. The list of topics of interest includes: approximation/randomized algorithms, combinatorial biology, combinatorial optimization, cryptography, data structures, discrete algorithms, enumerative combinatorics, graph theory, ordered sets, parallel/distributed algorithms and polyhedral combinatorics.

Submissions: Authors are invited to submit an extended abstract not exceeding 4 pages, including figures and bibliography, and using 11pt or larger font, before October 25, 2000. This deadline is firm. The cover page of the extended abstract must contain the authors' full names, addresses, fax numbers, e-mail addresses and keywords. A detailed description of the electronic submission process will be available soon at http://www.lia.ufc.br/symp2001.

Notification: Authors will be sent notification of acceptance or rejection by e-mail before December 16, 2000. A final version of the extended abstract is required by January 13, 2001. Accepted papers are supposed to be presented at the symposium.

Publication: Selected full papers from the symposium will appear as a special issue of a journal to be announced shortly. The submission of the full texts for the special issue is encouraged, but not compulsory. The deadline for submission is April 21, 2001.

For the Program Committee please see http://www.lia.ufc.br/symp2001. The preliminary list of Invited Speakers includes:

   * Gerard Cornuijols, Carnegie Mellon University, USA;

   * Luc Devroye, McGill University, Canada;

   * Laszlo Lovasz, Microsoft Corporation, USA;

   * Bruce Reed, Univ. Paris VI and CNRS, France.

Organizing Committee: Manoel Campelo Neto, Fortaleza (Co-Chair); Ricardo Correa, Fortaleza (Chair); Fernando Gomes, UFC, Fortaleza (Co-Chair).

Important dates: Submissions: October 25, 2000 Notification: December 16, 2000 Final version due: January 13, 2001 Journal submission: April 21, 2001

The next BRITISH COMBINATORIAL CONFERENCE, 18BCC, will be at the University of Sussex, Brighton, from 1 - 6 July 2001. See web page available from http://www.maths.sussex.ac.uk/TAGG/Confs/BCC/index.html

(Plan ahead for that overseas trip now! These are large conferences held each odd-numbered year in early July, although they are not as large as the Southeastern conferences in Boca Raton or Baton Rouge each March.)

AAECC-14, the 14th INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON APPLIED ALGEBRA, ALGEBRAIC ALGORITHMS AND ERROR-CORRECTING CODES, will be held for the first time in Australia: from November 26-30, 2001, in Melbourne at RMIT.

RECENT NEWS OF CMSA MEMBERS :

MANLEY PERKEL has been appointed Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio.

SANPEI KAGEYAMA says that his mailing address and e-mail are now: Sanpei Kageyama, D.Sc. Department of Mathematics Faculty of Education Hiroshima University 1-1-1 Kagamiyama 739-8524 Japan E-mail: ksanpei@hiroshima-u.ac.jp

In some email from CURT LINDNER: "A football coach at Florida State University reportedly told his players to pair up in groups of three then line up in a circle. THEY DID!"

JIM MACDOUGALL writes: In 1999 ROGER EGGLETON was appointed a Conjoint Professor (an honorary position) in the Mathematics Department at the University of Newcastle. He is still employed at Illinois State University and is spending the first half of 2000 on sabbatical in Newcastle.

NICHOLAS HAMILTON has been awarded a prestigious Kirkman medal by the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications. "The Kirkman Medal recognises outstanding work by members of the ICA in the early stages of their research careers. ... The medal recognizes a significant body of research work of high quality; it is not an award for an excellent PhD thesis." The ICA is a world-wide organisation (incorporated in Canada). Previous Kirkman medallists are: 1994 Robert Craigen, Jonathan Jedwab 1995 Darryn Bryant 1996 Greg Gutin, Patric Ostergard 1997 Makoto Matsumoto, Bernhard Schmidt 1998 Peter Adams, Cai Heng Li So the Department of Mathematics at UQ now has three Kirkman medallists, Darryn Bryant, Peter Adams and Nicholas Hamilton!

Nicholas has just moved to the University of Gent, Belgium, where he has taken up a two year postdoctoral fellowship, working with members of the computer algebra group in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Computer Algebra at Gent. He emailed to say that Gent also has a "chain" of ICA medallists: Kirkman (Nicholas Hamilton); Hall (Hendrik van Maldeghem); Euler (Jef Thas).

Check out Nicholas' home page at http://cage.rug.ac.be/~nick/ and note the "NAME THE BABY" competition! Congratulations to Nick and Jillian. Quote from Nick, after he heard about the Kirkman medal: "Had a celebratory Chinese takeaway last night, but didn't enjoy it much as I was still traumatised by the images of childbirth in Jillians baby classes. UUgggghhhh. The only good news in the class was that "all the husbands have a belt of the gas when they think no-one is loooking". So one thing to look forward to at least."

CHRIS RODGER writes with news from Auburn University: Chris will be visiting Newcastle (and UQ too at some point) from mid August to early December 2000. [Note from Ed: coincidentally, the Olympics are on during that time, and Chris' parents live in Sydney!] JAMES McGEE has his PhD on Path-covering designs. ATIF ABUEIDA is about to finish, having polished off the n to 2n idempotent embedding problem. DAVID ASHE is about to finish, finding 6-cycle systems of Kn-G for any admissable forest or 2-regular graph G.

FRANK RUSKEY writes from the University of Victoria, BC: Frank will be visiting Peter Eades and Mirka Miller at the University of Newcastle from July 2000 - June 2001 on a sabbatical leave. He looks forward also to travelling around the country and meeting with other CSMA members during that time.

BOB SULLIVAN (ex UWA, Perth) has been HOD for Maths and Stats at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman (in the Middle East) since September 1998. Oman is very attractive scenically and very stable politically and, provided 4 weeks notice is given, SQU will arrange a visa and accommodation for visiting academics. CMSA members are invited to contact Bob at if they are passing over the region. Sometimes it is also possible to arrange teaching positions for one semester (ie, Feb-May or Sept-Dec); and next July, 2-year contracts will be advertised in the Australian newspaper's HES for commencement in September 2001. Members interested in such positions are welcome to contact Bob to discuss the possibilities.

Bob can be reached as follows: Assoc Prof Bob Sullivan Head, Dept of Maths and Stats Sultan Qaboos University PO Box 36, Al Khodh 123 Sultanate of Oman email: bobsull@squ.edu.om Phone: +968+515420; Fax: +968+513415

VISITORS :

EBAD MAHMOODIAN is currently at UQ, on leave from Sharif University in Iran, until October 2000.

HUNG-LIN FU (National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan) and MIWAKO MISHIMA (Gifu University, Japan) will be visiting UQ from 10 - 20 August 2000.

Also MIDORI KOBAYASHI from the University of Shizuoka, Japan, will be visiting UQ from 15 July to 30 September 2000.

See also news of members above: visitors to Newcastle soon include CHRIS RODGER and FRANK RUSKEY.

MEMBERS (OR STUDENTS OF MEMBERS) RECENT RESEARCH DEGREES :

Congratulations to ATHULA PERERA who had his PhD approved in December last year by RMIT. His thesis title is "Orthogonal cocycles: Theory and Applications", and Supervisors were: Kathy Horadam (Senior), Asha Baliga (Second). Dr PERERA has now returned to Sri Lanka and is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.

Congratulations to GARRY HUGHES, who has had his PhD approved in May 2000 by RMIT. His thesis title is "Codes and arrays from cocycles", and Supervisors were: Kathy Horadam (Senior), Serdar Boztas (Second). Dr HUGHES has now taken up a position as Research Scientist with Cryptomathematics Research Group, DSTO, Canberra.

Congratulations to JAMES McGEE of Auburn University, who now has his PhD on Path-covering designs approved; supervisor Chris Rodger.

PREPRINTS/RECENT PUBLICATIONS BY MEMBERS: :

Tim Blackmore and Graham Norton: On Trellis Structures for Reed-Muller Codes. Finite Fields and Their Applications Vol 6, 39-70 (2000). Note from Ed: Since no one else seems to be sending in papers for this section, we might shelve it for later issues. When Graham sent me this one, he said: "I was a little surprised that no one besides you and I gave recent papers. (The British Comb. Bulletin has screeds of them.)" The on-line version of the British Combinatorial Bulletin is available at http://www.cdam.lse.ac.uk/BCB/ and you can also get to it from the British Combinatorial Committee's home page which is at http://www.maths.qmw.ac.uk/~pjc/bcc/ However, I note that even the BCC has not updated their publications list since approximately 1998.

NEW COURSE AT RMIT: :

ASHA BALIGA has sent in the following:

Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma, Master of Applied Science (By Coursework) In INFORMATION SECURITY See http://www.ma.rmit.edu.au/kepler/pgrad/InfoSec.html

The development of the INTERNET, E-Commerce, Electronic Banking, EFTPOS, etc. has resulted in industry demand for trained professionals who can work in technical and managerial roles in addressing security risks in this new and exciting field.

The course will provide a strategic and practical overview of the issues involved in the field of Information Security (IS). Graduates will have the ability to evaluate IS risks in a practical context as well as be able to apply the principles of IS in Information Technology (IT). Along with the ability to critically appraise IS solutions, they will have a sound understanding of the relationship between IS and IT disciplines. A thorough understanding of the mathematical principles which underlie the components of IS will facilitate a practical understanding of the issues in secure electronic commerce.

COURSE STRUCTURE The Master of Applied Science in IS consists of 12 subjects, equivalent to 3 semesters full-time or 6 semesters (3 years) part-time. It is possible to exit the course early with a Graduate Certificate (after two semesters) or a Graduate Diploma (after 4 semesters). The Graduate Certificate and Graduate Diploma are awarded to the Master of Applied Science student as and when they complete the appropriate requirements.

The AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF COMBINATORICS reminds readers that billing is no longer through the University of Queensland, but is to the AJC direct. (The journal now accepts Visa, Mastercard and Bankcard.) Peter Adams is now the Financial Manager of the AJC.

REMINDER: deadline for next issue 30 September 2000. Elizabeth Billington, Dept Maths, UQ, Qld 4072. ejb@maths.uq.edu.au