Annual AMSI Lecturer

2007-2008

Professor Petzold is currently Professor and Chair in the Department of Computer Science, Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Director of the Computational Science and Engineering Program at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Professor Petzold is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the AAAS. She was awarded the Wilkinson prize for Numerical Software in 1991, the Dahlquist Prize in 1999, and the AWM/SIAM Sonia Kovalevski Prize in 2003. She served as as SIAM Vice President at Large from 2000-2001, and before that was Vice President for Publications and Editor in Chief of the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing.

Professor Petzold is a co-auther of the well-known book in the SIAM Classics series The Numerical Solution of Initial Value Problems in Differential-Algebraic Equations. She will visit Australia for a week in February 2008 and for about 2 weeks in the second half of July 2008. If any members wish to arrange a seminar in these periods, please contact Phil Broadbridge.

AMSI sponsors an eminent overseas-based mathematical scientist to come to Australia to give a keynote presentation at a major conference. They then tour member universities to speak and to support local researchers. AMSI Lecturers have included Prof. Wayne Getz (UC Berkeley), Prof. John Dennis (Rice University) and Prof. Xiao-Li Meng (Harvard University).

Professor Linda Petzold's itinerary is yet to be finalised but currently is as follows:

	Date	Time	Institution	Details
	16th Jul 08	13:55-14:55	CTAC	Computational Methods for Phase Response Analysis of Circadian Clocks
	17th Jul 08	12:30-14:00	CSIRO/University of Canberra	Multiscale Simulation of Biochemical Systems
	18th Jul 08	15:10	University of Adelaide, G04, Napier Building	Multiscale Simulation of Biochemical Systems
	22nd Jul 08	14:00	La Trobe University	SEMS meeting room
	22nd Jul 08	16:30	The University of Melbourne, Russell Love Theatre	Computational Methods for Phase Response Analysis of Circadian Clocks
	24th Jul 08	14:00	Charles Sturt University	TBA
	25th Jul 08	14:00	University of Sydney	Carslaw Lecture Theatre 275

2006

Professor Xiao-Li Meng, Department Chair of Statistics, Harvard University. Professor Meng lists his interests as:

• Statistical inference under complex settings, such as partially observed data, pre-processed data, and simulated data.
• Quantifying statistical information and efficiency in scientific studies, particularly for scientific computation, genetic studies, and environmental problems.
• Statistical principles and foundational issues, especially regarding the theory of multi-party inferences, the theory of ignorance, and the interplay between Bayesian and frequentist perspectives.
• Effective deterministic and stochastic algorithms for Bayesian and likelihood computation.
• Bayesian model constructions and diagnoses.
• Elegant mathematical statistics.

2005

Professor John E. Dennis Jr, Research Professor and Noah Harding Emeritus Professor at the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics, Rice University, Houston, Texas.

Mahler Lecturer

The Mahler Lectureship is awarded every two years to a distinguished mathematician who works in an area of mathematics associated with the work of the late Professor Kurt Mahler. It is co-sponsored by the Australian Mathematical Society and AMSI.

The 2005 Mahler Lecturer was Professor Bruce E. Berndt from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He lists his specialisations as:

• Number Theory
• Ramanujan's Notebooks
• Special Functions
• Elliptic (especially Theta) Functions
• q-series
• Continued Fractions

He spoke at the Australian Mathematical Society's Annual Conference and other places on the topic of Ramanujan's Lost Notebook.

Annual AMSI/MASCOS Lecturer

AMSI and MASCOS may jointly sponsor a distinguished visitor in the general area of complex systems.

The AMSI/MASCOS Lecturer for 2007 is Emeritus Professor Dr. Ingo Müller of the Technical University of Berlin. Professor Müller is a world leader in the area of extended thermodynamics and nonlinear continuum mechanics.

Prof Müller spoke at several AMSI institutions between November 13 and November 25: University of Adelaide, University of South Australia, University of Ballarat, Charles Sturt University, University of New South Wales, Australian National University, La Trobe University and the University of Wollongong.

He then attended the AMSI-MASCOS theme program, "Concepts of Entropy and their Applications" and gave two keynote lectures Entropy: a subtle concept in thermodynamics and Entropy in non-equilibrium.

Brief CV