News
Gabriel Verret has taken up a lectureship at The University of Auckland. We wish Gabriel all the very best and look forward to many future collaborations with him.
Cai-Heng Li will join the South University of Science and Technology of China, Shen Zhen, in July, as Chair Professor in the Department of Mathematics, which was established in 2015. We wish him all the very best and look forward to forming new links with SUSTC.
Binzhou Xia will begin a two-year Research Associate position in July, working on an Australian Research Council Discovery Project held by Michael Giudici, Cai-Heng Li and Gabriel Verret.
Michael Giudici's book, Classical groups, derangements and primes, with Tim Burness, is now available.
Cheryl Praeger represented the Australian Academy of Science at the launch of the Indonesian Science Fund in Jakarta on 31 March, taking part in a talk show, "Promoting Scientific Culture of Excellence". The ISF will provide funding for the first Indonesian competitive scientific research grants program, and was launched by the Indonesian Minister of Finance, Professor Bambang Permadi Soemantri Brodjonegoro.
Cheryl Praeger featured in a special program on The Science Show devoted to Ada Lovelace on 26 March.
Cheryl Praeger was a judge at the FameLab Western Australian semi-final on 14 April. This a competition for scientific communication initiated by the British Council. The Australian winner will compete at the Cheltenham Science Festival against 25 national winners.
Mark Ioppolo talked about his research to students from Peter Moyes Anglican Community School when they visited UWA on 21 March 2016.
Melissa Lee participated in UWA's Rising Stars marketing campaign.
Melissa Lee is a member of the UWA Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics' Equity and Diversity Committee, 2016.
Adrian Petersen participated in Unearthed Perth 2016.
Several CMSC staff and postgraduate students participated in the biannual Staff vs Students Soccer match on 1 April. The match was organised jointly with the UWA Mathematics Union, and played out as an exciting and competitive 1-1 draw.
Visitors
Steven Noble (Brunel University London), 5 March-1 April.
Peter Neumann (Queens College, Oxford), 30 May-4 June.
SymOmega
SymOmega is a mathematical blog run by CMSC members John Bamberg, Michael Giudici and Gordon Royle.
CMSC Retreat
Our largest yet annual retreat was held in February. With seven international visitors, eight students and twelve post-docs/permanent staff, we departed to the Avon Valley, north of Perth. We were warmly hosted at the Moondyne Country Convention Centre, and enjoyed greatly the surroundings, excellent food and pleasant atmosphere. The schedule was packed with problem sessions in a variety of research areas, on which we made some great progress. Joy Morris, this year's Cheryl E. Praeger Visiting Fellow, gave an interesting series of lectures on the CI problem. Dan Hawtin led the student version of our paper reading group, and our students also participated in 'student problem' sessions. There was also some relaxing and social downtime: our fearless bushranger Stephen Glasby led a bush walk in stifling 40 degree heat, while others chose to spend some time in the pool. On our last night we took in the spectacular view of the milky way and had some fun playing an entertaining game of charades.
Conferences
New Directions in Combinatorics, National University of Singapore, 22-27 May 2016. John Bamberg is an invited speaker.
Group Theory, Geometry and the Influence of Jacques Tits - A conference in honour of Richard Weiss, Karlsruhe, Germany, 25-28 May 2016. Luke Morgan is an invited speaker.
Combinatorics 2016, Maratea, Italy, 29 May-4 June 2016. John Bamberg, Joanna Fawcett, Jesse Lansdown, Melissa Lee and Tomasz Popiel will attend.
Second joint Conference of the Belgian, Royal Spanish and Luxembourg Mathematical Societies, Logrono (La Rioja), Spain, 6-8 June 2016. John Bamberg and Jesse Lansdown will attend.
Graph Polynomials: Towards a Comparative Theory, Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany, 12-17 June 2016. Gordon Royle will attend.
Group Theory in Florence: A meeting in honour of Guido Zappa, University of Florence, Italy, 16-17 June 2016. Stephen Glasby will attend.
Workshop on Graphs and Knots, Xiamen University, China, 25-27 June 2016. Gordon Royle will attend.
Algebraic Combinatorics and Group Actions, Herstmonceux Castle, UK, 11-15 July 2016. Joanna Fawcett, Michael Giudici, Luke Morgan and Cheryl Praeger will attend.
Winter of Disconnectedness: AMSI Workshop, University of Newcastle, 25 July-5 August 2016. Michael Giudici will attend.
The Second Malta Conference in Graph Theory and Combinatorics, Qawra, Malta, 26-30 June 2017. Stephen Glasby will attend.
Papers
Published papers
J. A. Al-bar, A. N. Al-kenani, N. M. Muthana, C. E. Praeger and P. Spiga, Finite edge-transitive oriented graphs of valency four: a global approach, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics 23 (2016) #P1.10.
J. Bamberg, S.P. Glasby, T. Popiel and C. E. Praeger, Generalised quadrangles and transitive pseudo-hyperovals, Journal of Combinatorial Designs 24 (2016) 151-164.
M. DeVos, J. McDonald and I. Pivotto, Packing Steiner trees, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B 119 (2016) 178-213.
J. B. Fawcett, E. A. O'Brien and J. Saxl, Regular orbits of symmetric and alternating groups, Journal of Algebra 458 (2016) 21-52.
J. B. Fawcett and C. E. Praeger, Base sizes of imprimitive linear groups and orbits of general linear groups on spanning tuples, Archiv der Mathematik 106 (2016) 305-314.
M. Giudici, M. W. Liebeck, C. E. Praeger, J. Saxl and P. H. Tiep, Arithmetic results on orbits of linear groups, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society 368 (2016) 2415-2467.
B. Guenin, I. Pivotto and P. Wollan, Stabilizer theorems for even cycle matroids, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B 118 (2016) 44-75.
S. Guest, J. Morris, C. E. Praeger and P. Spiga, Finite primitive permutation groups containing a permutation having at most four cycles, Journal of Algebra 454 (2016) 233-251.
L. Morgan and T. Popiel, Generalised polygons admitting a point-primitive almost simple group of Suzuki or Ree type, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics 23 (2016) #P1.34.
Accepted papers
J. Bamberg, J. De Beule and F. Ihringer, New non-existence proofs for ovoids of Hermitian polar spaces and hyperbolic quadrics, to appear in Annals of Combinatorics.
J. Bamberg, M. Lee, K. Momihara and Q. Xiang, A new infinite family of hemisystems of the Hermitian surface, to appear in Combinatorica.
M. Giudici, A. A. Ivanov, L. Morgan and C. E Praeger, A characterisation of weakly locally projective amalgams related to A16 and the sporadic simple groups M24 and He, to appear in Journal of Algebra.
M. Giudici and B. Kuzma, Realizability problem for commuting graphs, to appear in Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society.
C.-H. Li, C. E. Praeger and C. Schneider, Inclusions of innately transitive groups into wreath products in product action with applications to 2-arc transitive graphs, to appear in Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra.
M. W. Liebeck, C. E. Praeger and J. Saxl, The classification of 3/2-transitive permutation groups and 1/2-transitive linear groups, to appear in Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society.
P. M. Neumann, C. E. Praeger and S. M. Smith, Some infinite permutation groups and related finite linear groups, to appear in Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society.
Submitted papers
C. Amarra, M. Giudici and C. E. Praeger, Affine primitive symmetric graphs of diameter two.
J. Bamberg, J. B. Fawcett, J. Lansdown, Bruck nets and partial Sherk planes.
J. Bamberg, S. P. Glasby, L. Morgan and A. C. Niemeyer, Maximal linear groups induced on the Frattini quotient of a p-group.
T. C. Burness and M. Giudici, Permutation groups and derangements of odd prime order.
N. Gill, N. I. Gillespie, C. E. Praeger and J. Semeraro, Conway's groupoid and its relatives.
M. Giudici, S .P. Glasby, C. H. Li and G. Verret, The number of composition factors of order p in completely reducible groups of characteristic p.
M. Giudici, I. Kovacs, C.-H. Li and G. Verret, Cubic arc-transitive k-circulants.
D. W. Morris, J. Morris and G. Verret, Isomorphisms of Cayley graphs on nilpotent groups.
A. C. Niemeyer, G. Pfeiffer and C. E. Praeger, On the complexity of multiplication in the Iwahori-Hecke algebra of the symmetric group.
F. G. Woodhouse, A. Forrow, J. B. Fawcett and J. Dunkel, Stochastic cycle selection in active flow networks.