Benjamin Burton's research interests include computational geometry and topology, combinatorics, and information security. He also maintains an active role in gifted-and-talented programmes for secondary school students.
Benjamin Burton's research involves a blend of techniques from pure mathematics and computer science. His main interest is in computational geometry and topology in three and four dimensions, looking at problems such as how a computer can recognise whether a loop of string is knotted, or how it can identify large-scale geometric structures in a three-dimensional space. He is the primary author of the open source software package Regina, which implements state-of-the-art algorithms in this field.
His multi-disciplinary background includes a PhD in geometry and topology, an honours degree in combinatorics, research experience in information security, and three years as a research analyst in the finance industry. He has worked at several universities in Australia and overseas.
He maintains a strong interest in enrichment programmes for gifted and talented high school students, including the Mathematics and Informatics Olympiads and the National Mathematics Summer School. From 1999 until 2008 he directed the Australian training programme for the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), and from 2009 to 2014 he holds a seat on the international IOI Scientific Committee.
Benjamin is an active member of the UQ Ally Network, an award-winning program that supports and celebrates diversity of sexuality, gender and sex at UQ and in the broader community.
Adrian grew up in Perth and double majored in Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Australia. Soonafter, he ventured to Canberra to undertake a PhD, focussing on analytic number theory: an enchanting area where one perplexingly uses calculus and analysis to study discrete structures such as the set of prime numbers.
After this, he worked as a derivatives trader at Optiver APAC for five years and stayed on there as Head of Academic Partnerships. He currently straddles both industry and academia and believes they both have much to offer mathematicians.
Adrian is available (and invariably keen) to supervise honours, masters and PhD projects in analytic number theory.
Professor Joseph Grotowski completed his Bachelor of Science with Honours in Mathematics at the Australian National University in 1985. He then moved to New York for postgraduate studies in Mathematics, and completed an MS in 1987 and a PhD in 1990 at the Courant Institute, NYU.
He held a number of positions in Germany, and completed his Habilitation at the Friedrich-Alexander Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg in 2001. He took up a position as an Associate Professor at the City College of New York of the City University of New York in 2003, and returned to Australia to take up a position as a Senior Lecturer at UQ in 2005. He was promoted to Associate Professor from 2010, and Full Professor from 2013.
His main research area is geometric and nonlinear partial differential equations.
He served as Head of the Mathematics Discipline from 1 January 2010 until 30 April 2014. From 1 May 2014 he has been Head of the School of Mathematics and Physics. As Head of School, he is responsible for ensuring that the School delivers a high standard of research and teaching, as well as engagement with the broader community, across our disciplines of mathematics, physics and statistics. He is also responsible for providing and fostering strategic leadership within the School, as well as for financial management of the School’s budget and management of the School’s resources.
He is a former Board Member of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, and serves on the advisory Board of the MATRIX Research Insitute. He has been active in CSIRO Mathematicians in Schools for a number of years.
Veronika Kuchta received her Diploma degree in Mathematics at the Heidelberg University in Germany in 2010. She reseived her PhD in applied cryptography at the University of Surrey, United Kingdom in 2016. She worked as a postdoc at the Universite libre de Bruxelles in Belgium from 2016-2018. From 2018 till 2020 she has been a Research Fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. FromDecember 2020 to July 2022 she was employed by The University of Queensland, School of Mathematics and Physics as a lecturer in mathematical cryptography. From November 2022 she is Assistant Professor at Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton, USA), department of mathematical sciences. Her research interst focus on the different areas of mathematical cryptography, post-quantum cryptography and its applications to the real-world.
I obtained my PhD in Pure Mathematics from the University of Adelaide in the area of Convex Sets with Lattice Point Constraints. Following my PhD, I was a mathematics lecturer at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. In 2012, I joined UQ as a teaching focused academic in the School of Mathematics and Physics.
I have extensive teaching and administrative experience at the secondary-tertiary interface. Prior to my PhD, I taught senior high school mathematics in Singapore, where, as head of the mathematics department, I oversaw the delivery of the senior high school mathematics curriculum for over 2000 students. In my current role as Director of First Year Mathematics, I have led and implemented course improvements. These include the development of a comprehensive range of graded learning resources for key first year mathematics courses and specific initiatives to address the secondary-tertiary mathematics transition. One such initiative that has been especially rewarding is the Support Learning Tutorial (SLT), an intervention program that I designed and implemented to support at-risk first year students. SLT students have consistently outperformed the general cohort in pass rates and quality of results. Another significant initiative which I led is the MATH1051 (Calculus and Linear Algebra I) UQ2U Blended Learning Project. This project introduced changes to the delivery of MATH1051 in 2019, through the integration of online and high-value on-campus activities. A key innovation is the creation of a complete set of videos for MATH1051 and the implementation of collaborative workshops. The success of the MATH1051 project has led to the subsequent redesign of several large first year mathematics courses.
The impact of my teaching and research has been recognised through eight teaching awards (five UQ and three national awards). I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Fellowship (SFHEA) and 2022 Australian University Teacher of the Year.
Awards and Fellowships
Australian Awards for University Teaching, Australian University Teacher of the Year, 2022
Australian Awards for University Teaching, Award for Teaching Excellence, 2022
UQ Faculty of Science Sustained Teaching Excellence Award, 2021
UQ Award for Teaching Excellence, 2021
Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), 2020
UQ Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology Special Teaching Excellence Award, 2018
Australian Awards for University Teaching Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, 2017
UQ Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning, 2016
UQ Faculty of Science Award for Teaching Excellence, 2014
Dr Jodie Miller is an Associate Professor in mathematics education, in the School of Education at The University of Queensland. Her research focuses on improving the educational outcomes of students most at risk of marginalisation in school, particularly in the fields of Mathematics and Indigenous education.
Jodie is internationally recognised for her research in early algebraic thinking and evidenced based strategies to support engagement in mathematics in primary school settings. She leads research projects with a focus on classroom and mathematical practices, teacher professional development, culturally responsive teaching, and examining student understanding. This research has been conducted in countries including Australia, New Zealand, and Germany.
In addition to this, Jodie’s recent research collaborations focus on examining excellence in Indigenous education. This work is led by Associate Professor Marnee Shay, where the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are brought to the forefront to re-imagine the notion of excellence in Indigenous education.
I was born in Argentina and found an early passion for mathematics as a high school student by participating in the Math and Programming Olympiads. I obtained an undergraduate degree from La Plata University in 2009, and a PhD in mathematics from Cordoba University under the supervision of Prof. Jorge Lauret in 2013. After that I was a postdoc in the Differential Geometry group at the University of Münster in Germany (first as a Humboldt fellow, and then as Prof. Wilking's assistant). I also spent three months at MSRI in Berkeley, California during 2016. Since mid 2018, I am a Lecturer at the School of Maths and Physics in UQ.
I am a Senior Lecturer in Logic in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland, Australia. From 2022-2025, my work was supported by the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE220100544 (383,975 AUD in funds) given by the Australian Research Council. I serve on the editorial boards of Archive for Mathematical Logic and Journal of Multiple-Valued Logic and Soft Computing. According to the Mathematics Genealogy Project, I am one of the many academic descendants of G. H. Hardy through the path G. H. Hardy - R. Rado - K. Gravett - John N. Crossley - John L. Bell - G. Priest - Z. Weber - me. Jointly with John Crossley and John Stillwell, I have written a book entitled What is Mathematical Logic? (2ed.) to be published by Oxford University Press.
Artem Pulemotov holds a Bachelor's degree from Kyiv University and a PhD from Cornell University. His research is primarily in the field of geometric analysis. He had been a Dickson Instructor at the University of Chicago before joining the School of Mathematics and Physics at UQ as a lecturer in 2012.
Affiliate of Centre for Digital Cultures & Societies
Centre for Digital Cultures & Societies
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Professor
School of Education
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Availability:
Not available for supervision
Key research areas: Inquiry-based teaching practices in mathematics education; statistical reasoning and informal inference; data science education in schools
Dr Katie Makar is a Professor in Mathematics and Statistics Education at The University of Queensland and President of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA). Her award-winning research focuses on mathematics teachers’ learning of pedagogies that support complex problem solving and children’s statistical reasoning in an era of data science. Funded by over $1.6 million in grants and consultancies, Katie’s classroom-based research collaborates with practicing teachers to seek pragmatic solutions to improving teaching and learning.
Her most recent ARC Discovery Project (2017-2020, $370 000) Developing classroom norms of inquiry based learning in mathematics collaborated with Associate Professor Jill Fielding to investigate how primary teachers initiate, build and sustain a productive classroom culture and mathematical practices conducive to addressing complex problems that rely on mathematical evidence. Her four previous ARC projects studied teachers’ adoption of inquiry-based practices (ARC Linkage Projects 2007-2009, 2009-2012), development of positive learning environments and data-based argumentation (ARC Discovery Projects 2012-2014, 2014-2017).
The quality and impact of Katie’s highly-cited research is evidenced by both university and national awards. A Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA) Research Award (2017) recently acknowledged the international impact of her work on children’s statistical reasoning, particularly her development of informal statistical inference. Katie had previously won MERGA’s Early Career (2007) and Practical Implications (2011) Awards, providing national recognition of the quality and impact of her research on teachers’ adoption of mathematical inquiry. Social and Behavioural Science Faculty Award for Research Impact and Innovation (2010) and UQ Promoting Women Fellowship (2010) further showcased her research within the university.
Katie is the former deputy and acting Head of the School of Education (2016-2018) and has been consultant to the Queensland Department of Education, Queensland College of Teachers, Wireless Generation (New York), Cognition Education (New Zealand) and the Australian Centre for Educational Research. She led a project team for the Australian Academy of Science’s reSolve: Mathematics by Inquiry initiative to design innovative mathematics curriculum units for teachers that utilised mathematical inquiry.
Katie's leadership is further evident in her engagement with the profession. As President of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA), she leads capacity-building, research quality and outreach initiatives to shape the direction of the field. Her other leadership roles include co-director (with Prof Dani Ben-Zvi, University of Haifa) of the International Collaboration for Research in Statistical Reasoning, Thinking and Literacy (2013-present); Executive Boards for the International Association for Statistical Education (2017-2019) and Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (2009-2012; 2023-2024); current or past editorial board member for three peer-reviewed journals (Mathematics Education Research Journal, Statistics Education Research Journal and Technology Innovations in Statistics Education) and guest editor of three special issues (Mathematical Thinking and Learning and Educational Studies in Mathematics).
A highly-cited author, Katie has published seven authored and edited books, twenty-five peer-reviewed journal articles and sixteen book chapters as well as presenting her research on six continents. Her edited volumes of research include the Handbook of Research in Statistics Education (Springer, 2018), Research in Mathematics Education in Australasia 2012-2015 (Springer, 2016) and The Teaching and Learning of Statistics: International Perspectives (Springer, 2015).
A former classroom teacher for 15 years in USA, Malaysia and Nepal, Katie holds a PhD in Mathematics Education (University of Texas), Master of Arts in Mathematics (Pure Mathematical Logic, University of California, Berkeley) and Bachelor of Arts (with honours) in Mathematics. She is a qualified secondary mathematics teacher (Queensland, California).
Dr Forbes has an extensive background in applying optimisation methods to industrial problems. He spent over 20 years working in industry before returning to academia in 2010. Dr Forbes now focuses on building Mixed Integer Programming models for industrial applications and specialised techniques for solving difficult Mixed Integer Programming models.
Dr Forbes has experience in many application areas including
vehicle routing;
supply chain optimisation;
mine planning;
public transport vehicle and crew scheduling and rostering (buses, trains and planes);
hospital staff scheduling and rostering, including operation scheduling and room allocation;
Dr Min-Chun Hong has solved a number of open problems and conjectures on harmonic maps, liquid crystals and Yang Mills equations in the areas of nonlinear partial differential equations and geometric analysis. He has collaborated with top mathematicians such as Professor Mariano Giaquinta (SNS-Pisa), Professor Jurgen Jost (Germany), Professor Michael Struwe (Zurich), Professor Gang Tian (Princeton) and Professor Zhouping Xin (Hong Kong).
Some highlights of his research after joining UQ in 2004 are:
In the area of harmonic maps, collaborated with Giaquinta and Yin (Calc. Var. PDEs 2011), he developed a new approximation of the Dirichlet energy, yielding a new proof on partial regularity of minimizers of the relax energy for harmonic maps as well as for the Faddeev model. The method leads to solve an open problem on partial regularity in the relax energy of biharmonic maps by him and Hao Yin (J. Funct. Anal. 2012). Based on the well-known result of Sack and Uhlenbeck in 1981 (Uhlenbeck 2019 Abel Award Winner), with collaboration of Hao Yin in 2013, he introduced the Sack-Uhlenbeck flow to prove new existence results of the harmonic map flow in 2D and made new application to homotopy classes.
Collaborated with his PhD student L. Cheng (Calc. Var. PDEs 2018), he settled a conjecture of Hungerbuhler on the n-harmonic map flow.
Bang-Yen Chen in 1991 proposed a well-known conjecture on biharmonic submanifolds: Any biharmonic submanifold in the Euclidean space is minimal. Collaborated with Fu and Zhan (Adv. Math 2021), he confirmed Chen’s conjecture for hypersurfaces in R5 with n=4.
In the area of Yang-Mills equations, with Gang Tian (Math. Ann. 2004), he established asymptotic behaviour of the Yang-Mills flow to prove the existence of singular Hermitian-Yang-Mills connections, which was used to settle a well-known conjecture of Bando and Siu. Collaborated with Tian and Yin (Commun. Math. Helv. 2015), he extended the Sack-Uhlenbeck program to Yang-Mills equations and introduced the Yang-Mills alpha-flow to approximate the Yang-Mills flow in 4D. More recently, collaborated with his PhD student Schabrun (Calc. Var. PDEs 2019), he proved the energy identity for a sequence of Yang-Mills α-connections.
In the area of liquid crystals, he (Calc. Var. PDEs 2011) resolved a long-standing open problem on the global existence of the simplified Ericksen-Leslie system in 2D. Collaborated with Zhouping Xin (Adv. Math. 2012), he solved the global existence problem on the Ericksen-Leslie system with unequal Frank constants in 2D. Collaborated with Li and Xin (CPDE 2014), he resolved a problem on converging of the approximate Ericksen-Leslie system in 3D.
Darryn Bryant's research interests are in combinatorics, specifically in graph theory and design theory.
He received his PhD from The University of Queensland in 1993. His current research projects concern fundamental open problems on graph decompositions and a new design theory-based approach to signal sampling via compressed sensing.
