A Festschrift is a collection of learned papers contributed by a number of people to honour an eminent scholar or a colleague.

"There is no greater honour in a professional career than to be recognised by one's peers," says Peter.

In June 2019, a workshop on ‘Queues, Modelling, and Markov Chains’ was held on Mount Tamborine, Queensland, to celebrate Peter’s 60th birthday. About 60 people attended the workshop, including several who travelled a long way to get there. The Festschrift in his honour came out of that workshop.

“Even though I have spent my entire academic career working in Australian universities, the people who attended the Mt Tambourine workshop and contributed to the Festschrift came from around the world. This indicates that Australian applied probability is very much on the international map,” said Peter.

The authors of the Festschrift made it a point to highlight Peter’s bridge-building ability to work with colleagues worldwide on various topics.

“A striking aspect of Peter’s scientific activity is the breadth of topics it embraces,” write the authors.

“Peter enjoys very much such exchanges of ideas and is always eager to take on new questions.”

The topics presented in the Festschrift are an example of the breadth of that research.

“It’s like the volume was designed for me to read it. The papers deliver a mix of interesting application, modelling insight, analytical development and computational tractability that has always been the attraction of applied probability,” says Peter.

The Festschrift also featured authors who are at different stages of their academic life.

“Peter Glynn, Onno Boxma, Guy Latouche, Masakiyo Miyazawa and Michel Mandjes are amongst the most eminent applied probabilists in the world. Guy Louchard, Bill Moran, Steven Finch, and Mathisca de Gunst are well-known in other mathematical disciplines who were collaborating with applied probabilists. Beatrice Meini, Qi-Ming He, Miklos Telek, and Gabor Horvath are respected and admired mid-career researchers. Giang Nguyen, Jevgenijs Ivanovs, and Sophie Hautphenne are up-and-coming stars. Jing Fu, Chen Chen Xing, Haoran Wu, Salah Al-Deen Almousa, Alexander Infanger, Birgit Sollie, and Mariska Heemskerk are early career researchers or students just starting out,” says Peter.

Peter believes the workshop and Festschrift have provided some good exposure for researchers who are still somewhat early in their careers.

“It was great to see our young researchers exposed to the international community. I know that the international connections made by some of them have already helped their careers,” says Peter.