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2021 ACEMS PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES

The ACEMS Public Lecture Series engages with the broader community and is designed to inspire, challenge and inform the general public by covering a diverse range of topics that include the latest research and findings on new developments in mathematics and statistics.

Following the success of last year’s virtual public lecture program, the Centre continued with the online platform delivery to maximise audience engagement locally, nationally and internationally. Each of the lectures were hosted by ACEMS members and a wonderfully diverse mix of presenters were invited to deliver talks about their areas of expertise. A focus of this year’s programming was to feature ACEMS Chief Investigators to highlight their research and interests. Five of the Centre’s seven nodes presented lectures.

The series enjoyed strong interest for the mathematical sciences community with more than 2490 individual zoom webinar logons across the 13-lecture series, with dynamic discussion and engagement with presenters through the Q & A feature. There were nearly 4000 additional views of the recorded lectures on the ACEMS YouTube channel.

This year’s lecture series focused on celebrating the incredible contribution of women in mathematics and beyond with internationally renowned mathematician and author of the best-selling book ‘X & Y – A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Re-thinking Gender’, Dr Eugenia Cheng providing her insights into how to bridge this gap. We also tackled the issue of female leadership in STEM with our esteemed panellists as they shared their own experience and continue to work to ensure equality in leadership within the higher education sector.

And in honour of Ada Lovelace Day (12 October) we brought together two of Australia’s renowned mathematicians and statisticians – Alison Harcourt AO and ACEMS Chief Investigator, Professor Kate Smith-Miles – who discussed their respective work in optimisation techniques.

The catalogue of recordings of the Centre’s public lecture program is available for the general public to view on the ACEMS website and YouTube channel.

The 2021 ACEMS Public Lecture Series showcased a wide range of topics, the first of which featured Professor Jessica Purcell, who presented her lecture on the history of knot theory. First, she looked at the many cultural uses of knots in ancient times including Chinese decorative arts, Greek jewellery and Tamil threshold design, and then the difference between art and archaeological knots to the symmetry and logic of modern mathematical knot theory. Her talk provided an overview of many possible knots and unknots.

The Lectures

Date Speaker TITLE AND ABSTRACT / SUMMARY
2 April 2021 Jessica Purcell
Professor of Mathematics
Monash University
The Mathematics of Knots
 
We encounter knots in everyday life - for example in phone chargers and shoelaces. A mathematical knot is obtained by fusing together the ends of a phone charger or shoelace.
 
Mathematicians who study knot theory try to classify different ways of knotting: When can that shoelace be unknotted, or moved through space to have no crossings, without cutting it? Knots first appeared in mathematical literature in the 1700s, but knot theory really caught on in the late 1800s, when potential applications arose in physics.
 
In modern times, knots appear in protein folding, in strands of DNA, in quantum entanglement, as well as in the usual phone chargers and shoelaces.
5 May 2021 Eugenia Cheng
Researcher in Residence
School of the Art Institute, Chicago
Inclusion-Exclusion in the Mathematical Sciences: who is kept out and how we can use maths to bring them in
 
Dr Eugenia Cheng probes the question of why women and minorities are under-represented in mathematics; it is complex and there are no simple answers, only many contributing factors. She draws on a combination of precise mathematical reasoning, techniques of abstract mathematical thinking, and her experiences as a woman in the male-dominated field of mathematics. She argues that if we focus on character traits rather than gender we can have a more productive and less divisive conversation, about maths and beyond. She presents a new theory for doing so, showing that we can use abstract mathematical thinking to work towards a more inclusive society in this politically divisive era.
 
She presents the abstract field of Category Theory as a particularly inclusive subject area according to the dimensions of her new theory, and demonstrates its scope for deepening the curiosity and social awareness of high school students, rather than just pushing and evaluating them.
12 May 2021 Panelists:
Professor Ana Deletic Executive Dean, Faculty of Engineering, Queensland University of Technology
Professor Moira O’Bryan Dean, Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne
Professor Asha Rao Associate Dean, Mathematical Sciences, RMIT University
 
Moderator:
Dr Rachael Quill Research Fellow, University of Melbourne, ACEMS Associate Investigator.
The Road Ahead for Women in STEM
 
Celebrating the legacy of Maryam Mirzakhani on International Women in Maths Day.
 
An engaging panel discussion that brings together some top leaders in higher education in Australia.
 
The aim of the discussion is to be forward-looking and to explore how we can get more women in higher-level positions in universities, as well as more women in STEM and, specifically, the mathematical sciences. The panellists examine why this is so important and look at the benefits of having more diversity in these different areas.
26 May 2021 Brodie Lawson
Research Fellow
ACEMS Associate Investigator
Queensland University of Technology
Playing God with Virtual Hearts
 
In this lecture, Brodie demonstrates how mathematical models and computer simulations help us better understand the complexities of the heart.
 
Underlying the heartbeat is in fact a rich signalling process, in which cells receive electrical stimulus that triggers them to beat. In the normal heartbeat, these stimuli are waves of excitation that travel through the heart, causing each cell to contract in turn and together produce a coordinated pumping motion. The body then controls the heartbeat by choosing how quickly to initiate these waves ー for example, more rapidly during exercise.
 
Unfortunately, it's surprisingly easy for this to go wrong. Each heart cell waits for a signal, but can't tell if a signal was legitimately initiated by the body. When this causes coordination to be lost, the result is arrhythmia, in which heart function is impaired or even lost entirely (ventricular fibrillation). Worse, our treatments for these issues remain unacceptably inconsistent. Understanding why antiarrhythmic medicines or surgeries work for some and not others remains a key question in cardiac physiology.
9 June 2021 Lewis Mitchell
Associate Professor
ACEMS Chief Investigator
University of Adelaide
(Mis)(Dis)information, online social networks and mathematics
 
In recent years there has been an explosion of concern around terms like 'fake news', 'misinformation', and 'disinformation'. And online social networks such as Twitter and Facebook are often implicated (with good reason) in their spread.
 
But what do each of these terms mean, how do they differ, and what role do the online social networks really play?
 
In this lecture Lewis explores mis/disinformation online, and in particular, some of the underlying mathematics governing how all kinds of information spread over social networks.
14 July 2021 Rachael Quill
Research Fellow
ACEMS Associate Investigator
University of Melbourne
A Song of Wind & Fire: a statistical journey through an uncertain world
 
In this lecture, Rachael explores how shedding light on the uncertainties of wind flow across the environment can support informed decision-making in bushfire management and renewable energy generation.
 
The weather and its uncertainties influence our decisions every day. In many scenarios, being unprepared for the unknown might only mean a dampening of our pride. But in others, the cost of not understanding uncertainty can be catastrophic.
 
Extreme fire behaviours are being witnessed at an increasing rate across Australia and the world. Nearly two decades of scientific research has pushed the boundaries of our understanding in fire dynamics, bushfire prediction and emergency management.
24 August 2021 Rob Hyndman
Professor of Statistics and Head of the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics
ACEMS Chief Investigator
Monash University
Uncertain futures: what can we forecast and when should we give up?
 
In this public lecture, Rob discusses the conditions we need for predictability, how to measure the uncertainty of our forecasts, and how to evaluate whether we are uncertain enough.
 
Rob discusses his work in forecasting Australia’s health budget for the next few years, forecasting peak electricity demand in 20 years’ time, producing weekly forecasts of daily COVID-19 cases for all Australian states since March 2020, and forecasting the post-pandemic recovery of Australia's tourism industry.
2 September 2021 Kerrie Mengersen
Distinguished Professor
ACEMS Deputy Director and Chief Investigator
Queensland University of Technology
The Origami of Data Science
 
In this lecture, Kerrie discusses her attempts at the ‘origami of data science’ - whereby a data analysis method or computational algorithm is folded into a software product that inspires interpretation and implementation. These include folding new methods and computational approaches into products such as an online atlas of cancer, a virtual Great Barrier Reef, an ethical social discourse platform, and a personalised learning program.
 
Although the foundations are statistical, the sculptures require a broad team of experts from the mathematical, statistical, and computer sciences, and they need to be appreciated, interpreted, imagined, and implemented by domain experts and users.
15 September 2021 Krzysztof Burdzy
Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
Hypocrisy++: on the clash between the philosophy and the science of probability
 
What does it really mean when we discuss the 'probability' of an event?
 
There are two popular, but competing, philosophical theories which attempt to answer this question, usually referred to as the 'subjective' and the 'frequency' approaches. These theories are often claimed to form the foundations, respectively, of the Bayesian and frequentist interpretations of statistics.
 
In this public lecture, Chris explains why this is not actually the case, and outlined logical contradictions with both these philosophical theories.
 
The notion of 'hypocrisy++' arose out of his attempt to understand the popularity of these flawed philosophical theories.
12 October 2021 Kate Smith-Miles
Professor of Applied Mathematics
ACEMS Chief Investigator
OPTIMA Centre Director
 
Alison Harcourt AO
University of Melbourne
Optimal Decision Making: female ingenuity
 
In this lecture, Professor Kate Smith-Miles and Alison Harcourt AO discuss how everyday decisions – made by governments and corporations, and everyday people when using apps like Google Maps - are powered by optimisation techniques. They showcase some of the breakthrough ideas that have enabled optimisation techniques to help us make decisions faster, better and cheaper.
 
Some of these breakthrough ideas have been due to female ingenuity, and on this Ada Lovelace Day we pay tribute to the game-changing contributions of two more remarkable women – Ailsa Land and Alison Harcourt (née Doig).
 
Their idea changed the course of optimisation technique development, and paved the way for optimisation to have the impact we see in the world today. Alison tells the tale of their idea and what happened next.
 
They also look at the future challenges of optimisation, and the opportunities for new ideas to continue to create impact in the world.
28 October 2021 Matt Wand
Professor of Statistical Methodology
ACEMS Chief Investigator
University of Technology, Sydney
Statistical Methodology Development and Software Dissemination
 
In this public lecture, Matt discusses statistical methodology development in the context of this relatively new era of organised software dissemination. He looks at specific questions like: are traditional reward systems concerning promotion, grants, and other awards compatible with the organised software dissemination sea-change? who are the heroes and role models? and what is it really like to produce and disseminate polished user-ready software after you have developed a new statistical method?
4 November 2021 Ivan Corwin
Professor of Mathematics
Columbia University
Extreme Diffusion
 
Diffusion is pervasive in the natural world. Over one hundred years ago Einstein created a remarkably simple and powerful theory describing the behavior of a single diffusing particle. That theory has since been applied countless times to successfully model widely disparate systems.
 
In this talk, Ivan explains a failure of this theory when applied to systems with many particles diffusing in the same environment. In particular, in such systems, the particles that move the furthest (the extremes of the diffusion) are governed by behaviors much different than would follow from Einstein's theory. Ivan demonstrates this through analysis of a mathematical model for random walks in a random environment, and discusses ongoing numerical and experimental works to confirm the conclusion that we draw from this model. Ivan also discusses why studying extreme diffusion is important in some physical, biological, epidemiological, and social applications.
25 November 2021 Professor Peter Taylor
ACEMS Centre Director
Chair of Operations Research
University of Melbourne
The PageRank Algorithm
 
The success of Google is widely attributed to its initial use of the PageRank Algorithm developed in the late 1990s by Stanford University PhD students Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page. Although its primary purpose was to rank web pages, the PageRank Algorithm can be used to rank nodes on any directed graph and, in particular, it can be applied to social networks of all kinds.
 
In this talk, Peter discusses the mathematical ideas in the 1999 paper `The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web’ by Lawrence Page, Sergey Brin, Rajeev Motwani and Terry Winograd. This is the paper in which the authors first published the ideas that turned into the PageRank algorithm.