Annual Report for 2006 - nzima

RESEARCH BY POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS
The following postdoctoral fellows were engaged on NZIMA thematic programmes in 2006, in
many cases with partial or total support from other sources:
� Dr Pierre Ailliot, on the Hidden Markov Models programme, from January to September
2006, working on HMM space-time daily rainfall models
� Dr Britta Basse, on the Modelling Invasive Species programme, from August to November
2006, with support from the University of Canterbury, working on level-set theory and
metapopulation models of Tussock spread in North Canterbury
� Dr Richard Evans, on the Geometry and 3-Manifolds programmes, working on the ending
lamination conjecture for hyperbolic 3-manifolds and other questions in geometry and
topology
� Dr Takaki Iwata, on the Hidden Markov Models programme, for a short period in 2006,
with support from the Institute of Statistical Mathematics in Tokyo, working on earthquake
models and related issues
� Dr Junko Murakami, on the Hidden Markov Models programme, for all of 2006, and cosponsored
by NIWA, working on estimating the parameters in a HMM model via the
posterior mean, and on particle filter methods as an adjunct to more conventional statistical
routines
� Dr Bart Oldeman completed his 2-year term on the Dynamical Systems programme in July
2006, working on several projects in numerical bifurcation theory, and also installing,
maintaining, and troubleshooting the AUTO software package for numerous students and
other researchers at three NZ Universities and one in Australia
� Dr Charles Tadjeran, on the Modelling Invasive Species programme, from August to
November 2006, working on anomalous diffusion extensions of Fisher's equation
� Dr Elisa Varini, on the Hidden Markov Models programme, for a short period in 2006, with
support from the Italian Institute of Applied Mathematics (Milan), working on HMM
models and particle filters, with applications to earthquakes.
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