newsletter - New Zealand Mathematical Society

on being awarded a personal chair. Our society's fellowship scheme is a means by which we can
recognize those that have made a substantial contribution to the objectives of the society, and hence to
New Zealand mathematics. Its rules are enshrined in the constitution, so any change needs to be put to the
membership. You will find a ballot paper for a wording change elsewhere in this issue. Further details of
the scheme, and of the application process may be found on the Society's website. I would encourage our
members who are not fellows to consider the criteria, and whether they should be applying for this
recognition from the NZMS.
LOCAL NEWS
AGRESEARCH
Mick Roberts
Massey University, Auckland
Professor John Casti from the Santa Fe Institute and Technical University of Vienna visited the Ruakura
campus on an AgResearch Senior Fellowship from February 17th to March 15th. Whilst here, he gave
two seminars "Concepts and Problems of Complex Systems" on February 27th and "(M, R) Metabolism-
Repair Systems" on March 1st. He also visited our Grasslands campus in Palmerston North, giving a
seminar on "The Geometry of Data" on March 3rd. John also begun some collaborative work with our
social researchers during a four day retreat at Whitianga, looking at introducing mathematical techniques
into their research, particularly those areas involving issues of trust. Whilst there, he and Tanya Soboleva
were introduced to the joys of beach cricket, though apparently theoretical knowledge of the perfect
strategy did not translate into a practical victory!
Ken Louie (Ruakura) has received the Humphry M. Russell Award for 2004. This award is for research
conducted on the Ruakura campus in the area of animal health, and will allow him to complete extra case
studies using modelling to examine the effect of nematode parasites on sheep productivity.
THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND
Department of Computer Science
Peter Fenwick has been promoted to Associate-Professor.
Ken Louie
In February Dr Richard Lobb and Dr Robert Berks were farewelled, when they resigned from the
Department. In 1979, The University of Auckland appointed Richard Lobb as the first Lecturer in
Computer Science—in the Department of Mathematics! In February 1980 the Department of Computer
Science was founded and Richard became a Lecturer in that new department, and then a Senior Lecturer.
He made Image Processing a significant topic within the Department. After 25 years here, he has decided
that it is now time for him to apply his expertise to commercial computing. The University of Auckland
hosted the first New Zealand Software Engineering Subject Conference on 1 –2 December 2003. It was
attended by 37 academics from tertiary institutions in New Zealand. The aim of the conference was to
establish and strengthen links between tertiary Software Engineering educators. Day 1 of the conference
addressed Software Engineering teaching, and day 2 focused on Software Engineering research. Dr David
Socha, a staff member of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of
Washington, Seattle, gave the keynote address on Teaching. He is also involved in project management of
the UrbanSim project. Professor Leon Sterling, who holds the Adacel Chair of Software Innovation and
Engineering at the University of Melbourne, delivered the keynote address on Research.
The first batch of graduate students in Software Engineering have now commenced study.
Seminars
Professor Ralf Reulke, "Multi-sensor data fusion for traffic applications."
Professor Moshe Y. Vardi (Rice University), (Jointly with Mathematics) "Logic begat computer science:
when giants roamed the Earth."
Professor Barbara Kitchenham, "Lessons learnt from 20 years of software cost estimation."
Hal Berghel, "Internet forensics."
Bodo Rosenhahn, "Pose estimation of free-form objects."
Ian Munro, "On the competitiveness of linear search."