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NMSS 2024 concludes

The 56th ANU-AAMT National Mathematics Summer School has now concluded. Thanks to all the students and staff for another successful school!

The 2024 NMSS staff and invited speakers were:

  • Director:
    • A/Prof. Norm Do
  • Deputy Directors:
    • Dr Sean Gardiner
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
  • Welfare Officers:
    • Michael Smith
    • Em Thompson
  • Lecturers:
    • A/Prof. Norm Do
    • Dr Sean Gardiner
    • A/Prof. David Harvey
    • Dr Merryn Horrocks
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
    • Dr Fiona Skerman
    • Dr Katharine Turner
    • Prof. Ian Wanless
  • Tutors:
    • Ell Baldwin
    • Tom Clement
    • Tom Heyworth
    • Jodie Lee
    • Dana Ma
    • Karen Man
    • Dr Brendan McMonigal
    • Dr Ellena Moskovsky
    • Andy Tran
  • Blakers Lecturer:
    • Prof. Kate Smith-Miles
  • Alumni Lecturers:
    • Sophie Johns
    • Danny Pikler

The 57th NMSS will be held in January 2025.

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NMSS 2023 concludes

The 55th ANU-AAMT National Mathematics Summer School has now concluded. This year we were fortunate to return to a full two-week schedule held at ANU for the first time since 2019. Thanks to all the students and staff for another successful school!

The 2023 NMSS staff and invited speakers were:

  • Director:
    • A/Prof. Norm Do
  • Deputy Directors:
    • Dr Sean Gardiner
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
  • Welfare Officers:
    • Michael Smith
    • Em Thompson
  • Lecturers:
    • Dr Asilata Bapat
    • A/Prof. Norm Do
    • Dr Ty Ghaswala
    • A/Prof. David Harvey
    • Dr Merryn Horrocks
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
    • Prof. Ian Wanless
  • Tutors:
    • Ell Baldwin
    • Tom Clement
    • Dr Sean Gardiner
    • Tom Heyworth
    • Jodie Lee
    • Dana Ma
    • Karen Man
    • Dr Brendan McMonigal
    • Dr Ellena Moskovsky
    • Andy Tran
  • Blakers Lecturer:
    • Distinguished Prof. Susan Scott
  • Alumni Lecturers:
    • Dr Justin Koonin
    • Dr Olivia Smith

The 56th NMSS will be held in January 2024.

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NMSS 2022 concludes

The 54th ANU-AAMT National Mathematics Summer School has now concluded. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 School was held virtually based on a similar model to the 2021 School. Thanks to all the students and staff for making this online NMSS as successful as any other!

The 2022 NMSS staff and invited speakers were:

  • Director:
    • Dr Norm Do
  • Deputy Directors:
    • Dr Sean Gardiner
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
  • Academic Support Officers:
    • Siksha Sivaramakrishnan
    • Em Thompson
  • Lecturers:
    • Dr Norm Do
    • Dr Merryn Horrocks
    • A/Prof. Jonathan Kress
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
  • Tutors:
    • Ell Baldwin
    • Jack Brand
    • Yudhi Bunjamin
    • Tom Clement
    • Dr Sean Gardiner
    • Tom Heyworth
    • Jodie Lee
    • Dr Mel Lee
    • Isabel Longbottom
    • Dana Ma
    • Dr Brendan McMonigal
    • Ellena Moskovsky
    • Lachy Potter
    • Andy Tran
  • Blakers Lecturer:
    • Prof. Rob Hyndman FAA FASSA
  • Alumni Lecturers:
    • Sarah Barker
    • Dr Robbie Gates

The 55th NMSS will be held in January 2023.

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NMSS 2021 concludes

The 53rd ANU-AAMT National Mathematics Summer School has now concluded. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 School was held virtually. Thanks to all the students and staff for making the first online NMSS as successful as any other!

The 2021 NMSS staff and invited speakers were:

  • Director:
    • Dr Norm Do
  • Deputy Directors:
    • Dr Sean Gardiner
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
  • Academic Support Officer:
    • Emily Thompson
  • Welfare Officer:
    • Michael Smith
  • Manager:
    • Damien Hoban
  • Lecturers:
    • Dr Norm Do
    • Dr Merryn Horrocks
    • A/Prof. Jonathan Kress
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
  • Tutors:
    • Ell Baldwin
    • Mike Bammann
    • Yudhi Bunjamin
    • Tom Clement
    • Sean Gardiner
    • Rachel Hauenschild
    • Dr Mel Lee
    • Isabel Longbottom
    • Dr Brendan McMonigal
    • Ellena Moskovsky
    • Lachy Potter
    • Dr Olivia Smith
    • Edwin Spark
    • Andy Tran
  • Blakers Lecturer:
    • Prof. Robyn Owens
  • Alumni Lecturer:
    • Dr Alex Heath

The 54th NMSS will be held on 9-22 January 2022.

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NMSS 2020 concludes

The 52nd ANU-AAMT National Mathematics Summer School concluded on Saturday 18 January 2020. Due to exceptional emergency circumstances in Canberra at the time, the School was held for just eight days this year, at Melbourne University. Thanks to all the students and staff for contributing towards an unusual but invigorating week of distilled mathematics!

The 2020 NMSS staff and invited speakers were:

  • Director:
    • Prof. Ben Burton
  • Deputy Directors:
    • Sean Gardiner
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
  • Welfare Officers:
    • Michael Smith
    • Emily Thompson
  • Lecturers:
    • Dr Norm Do
    • Sean Gardiner
    • Dr Merryn Horrocks
    • A/Prof. Jonathan Kress
  • Tutors:
    • Ell Baldwin
    • Yudhi Bunjamin
    • Tom Clement
    • Sean Gardiner
    • Isabel Longbottom
    • Dr Brendan McMonigal
    • Ellena Moskovsky
    • Dr Olivia Smith
    • Andy Tran
  • Blakers Lecturer:
    • Prof. Kerry Landman
  • Alumni Lecturer:
    • Prof. Jean Yang

The 53rd NMSS will be held on 10-23 January 2021.

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The Poladian Project: Celebrating the life of Leon Poladian

The Poladian Project is an event that has been put together by organisers at The University of Sydney to celebrate the late Leon Poladian. Leon was the previous Director of the National Mathematics Summer School from 2013-2017, and a long-time friend of the School having attended twice as a student and 26 times as a staff member.

Leon’s research and interests spanned a vast range of areas and disciplines, and the Poladian Project is focussed on educating people in and celebrating interdisciplinary thinking.

The completely free event consists of presentations and workshops between 14-21 February which are intended for a general audience. These include workshops covering Origami, The Science of Food, and Astronomy through Movement and Music, and seminars about topics spanning how bees make drones safer, brain atlases, and making robots out of DNA. The keynote lecture by guest speaker Dr Robert Lang, titled “Flapping Birds to Space Telescopes: The Modern World of Origami”, will be given at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday 20 February at the University of Sydney.

All information can be found at the website: https://thepoladianproject.com/

A document highlighting those events most suitable for high-school students can be read by clicking here.

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NMSS 2019 concludes

The 51st ANU-AAMT National Mathematics Summer School concluded on Saturday 19 January 2019. Thanks to all the students and staff for contributing towards such an enjoyable and satisfying two weeks.

The 2019 NMSS staff and invited speakers were:

  • Director:
    • Prof. Ben Burton
  • Deputy Directors:
    • Sean Gardiner
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
  • Welfare Officers:
    • Michael Smith
    • Zaiga Thomann
  • Lecturers:
    • Prof. Ben Burton
    • Dr Norm Do
    • Sean Gardiner
    • A/Prof. David Harvey
    • Dr Merryn Horrocks
    • A/Prof. Jonathan Kress
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
    • Dr Kate Turner
  • Tutors:
    • Tom Clement
    • Sean Gardiner
    • Ellena Moskovsky
    • Dr Olivia Smith
    • Edwin Spark
    • Bryce Stansfield
    • Emily Thompson
    • Finn Thompson
    • Dr Yinan Zhang
  • Blakers Lecturer:
    • Prof. Ole Warnaar
  • Alumni Lecturers:
    • Dr Karen Dancer
    • Dr Lara Ford
  • Travel Coordinator:
    • Garry Webb

The 52nd NMSS will be held on 5-18 January 2020.

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Professor Ole Warnaar is the 2019 NMSS Blakers Lecturer

NMSS is excited to announce that the 2019 Blakers Lecturer will be Professor Ole Warnaar. The Blakers Lecture is delivered by a member of the Australian Academy of Science exclusively to students and staff of the School, held at the Shine Dome. The lecture is named after the founder of the National Mathematics Summer School, Professor A.L. (Larry) Blakers AM.

Ole Warnaar is a pure mathematician from the School of Mathematics and Physics at The University of Queensland. He grew up in The Netherlands, where he completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Leiden and Doctorate at the University of Amsterdam.

In 1993 he moved to Australia for a postdoctoral position at The University of Melbourne. After a brief stint back in The Netherlands, he returned to Australia on a more permanent basis in 2000, and has been Professor and Chair in Pure Mathematics at The University of Queensland since 2008. Ole is a past Vice President of the Australian Mathematical Society and past deputy chair of the National Committee for Mathematical Sciences. In 2008 he was elected as Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science for his contributions to algebraic combinatorics, integrable systems and number theory.

Since 2006 Ole writes the competition questions for years 7 and 8 of the University of Melbourne School Mathematics Competition, poking mathematical fun at politicians, celebrities and popular culture.

 

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Celebrating Leon Poladian

Leon Poladian

21 March 1964 – 13 February 2018

This year, on February 13th we lost Leon to brain cancer. Leon had a long history with NMSS. Leon attended NMSS in 1981 as a student when he was 16, at the end of his year 11 at Fort Street Boys High School and again in 1982. No one will be surprised to hear that he was an outstanding student. Ten years later, Leon was back at NMSS, this time as staff. He had completed a BSc with first class honours in physics and a PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Sydney. He was an incredibly talented mathematician and physicist. Leon was a part of NMSS every year from 1992, except for this year. In all, for 28 of his Januarys (almost 52%) he was in Canberra for NMSS.

As a NMSS staff member, Leon was a tutor several times and 22 times he lectured week-long courses that he had developed, often about chaos theory. Leon also designed and taught courses on game theory and geometric construction. In 2001 and 2002 he lectured one week of the number theory course.

At NMSS Leon twice gave lectures on his career, which included his work on optical fibres and iridescence in butterflies. From 2013-2017 Leon was director. He had planned to be the director of NMSS until long after he retired from university. Leon clearly loved mathematics, he loved sharing it with others, including both students and staff at NMSS. Leon’s teaching was inspiring.

Leon cared about education beyond NMSS. He published at least 16 papers about tertiary mathematics education including “Thinking deeply of simple things: 45 years of the National Mathematics Summer School”, and was involved in several funded projects.

Leon was hugely positive, enthusiastic and energetic about many things, including all aspects of NMSS. Some of his non-mathematical interests appeared in his NMSS biography: “Leon Poladian … has a special interest in foreign languages and linguistics and can be misunderstood in several languages. He is addicted to euro-style board games, created his first iPad game recently and hopes to design a game that will win Spiel des Jahres.”

Each year for the last few years Leon invited Nobel Prize winner and ANU vice chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt to be the NMSS academy of science lecturer. Professor Schmidt finally said yes for January 2018. It would have been wonderful to have Leon there for our first Nobel Prize winning speaker and for the 50 th NMSS, but it was not possible. In fact, there was concern that Leon might not be able to attend NMSS in 2017 as in the weeks up to NMSS he was undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy. He insisted that he would be able to attend and run NMSS and said that any staff member could have something at the last minute that could stop them attending, so why worry just about him? In the few days before NMSS another staff member was forced to drop out, but Leon made it to Canberra, just as he said he would.

In July last year Leon received a AAMT Distinguished Service Award, the first such award since 2008. The citation noted that Leon “has been an important part of the fabric of NMSS for half of its life”. Actually, at that time Leon had attended just over 57% (28 of 49) NMSSs.

Leon loved games of all kinds. As with mathematics, his enthusiasm was particularly contagious at NMSS. “The staff often stayed up into the early hours with some of the most complex board games we had ever encountered – I still don’t understand what the point of the Battle Star Galactica game was, but it was always filled with fun and laughter” (a tutor). Leon developed a game app; he intended to sell it and use the income for NMSS. The aim was to get a martian to its spaceship.

In April 2017, NMSS staff presented Leon with a board-game-inspired plaque. It listed some of his attributes: chaotic (referring to his lectures on chaos), creative, compassionate, inspirational, mentor, fun, devoted and educator. The plaque read “A simple thank you for a deeply thoughtful director”.

Leon worked on NMSS 2018 for much of 2017 with the same care and enthusiasm as usual, knowing that someone else would take over and knowing that he might not get there in 2018. Leon’s work with, and contribution to, NMSS over so many years will not be forgotten.

Leanne Rylands
L.Rylands@westernsydney.edu.au
Western Sydney University

If you have pictures of Leon at NMSS that you would like to share in the above slideshow, please feel free to forward them on to us. 

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NMSS 2018 concludes

The 50th ANU-AAMT National Mathematics Summer School has officially concluded! Thanks to all the students and staff for contributing towards such an enjoyable and satisfying two weeks.

The 2018 NMSS staff and invited speakers were:

  • Director:
    • A/Prof. Terry Gagen
  • Deputy Director:
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
  • Welfare Officers:
    • Mr Mike Bammann
    • Ms Thanom Shaw
  • Health and Safety Officer:
    • Mr Michael Smith
  • Lecturers:
    • Dr Zoltán Bácskai
    • Prof. Ben Burton
    • Dr Norm Do
    • A/Prof. Terry Gagen
    • Dr Merryn Horrocks
    • A/Prof. Jonathan Kress
    • A/Prof. Leanne Rylands
  • Tutors:
    • Mr Dan Altman
    • Mr Mike Bammann
    • Mr Tom Clement
    • Mr Sean Gardiner
    • Dr David Gruenewald
    • Mr Max Jolley
    • Ms Thanom Shaw
    • Dr Olivia Smith
    • Mr Edwin Spark
    • Ms Zaiga Thomann
  • Academy Lecturer:
    • Prof. Brian Schmidt
  • Alumni Lecturer:
    • Dr Julian Gibbons
  • Travel Coordinator:
    • Mr Garry Webb

The 51st NMSS will be held on 6-19 January 2019.