20th Canberra International Physics Summer School and Workshop on Granular Materials
The conference dinner at the Axis Restaurant, National Museum of Australia.
Steve, Nana and I were lucky enough to attend the Granular matter summer school and workshop in our nation's capital, Canberra at ANU. The weather was stinking hot outside, the air conditioning equally freezing inside, grass parched and brown - but despite these conditions, the conference managed to be fun, informative and educational. Who would have thought that the famous authors who we'd only previously known from reading their papers would be such an ... interesting crowd - from the Pole to the Greek to the Colombian to the Englishman. Indeed, these 'personalities' ensured that talks were as far from boring as you could get: ranging from studying the mating patterns of barkan sand dunes to modelling the flow of beer being poured to simulations of bouncing cows! Outside official conference house, a highlight was an excursion to the botanical gardens which proved very fruitful, as delegates met a deadly brown snake, a troop of kangaroos, a flight of water dragons and flocks of native birds.
Maya Muthuswamy
From left, Bob Behringer, Nana Liu, Maya Muthuswamy, Antoinette Tordesillas and Stephen Mc Ateer.
ANZIAM conference 2006
Having been invited as a speaker at ANZIAM for the first time, I was slightly apprehensive. I had never presented work to such a large audience, let alone an audience full of mathematicians. However, after attending several talks prior to mine my nerves began to settle, and I realised that people were genuinely interested in the research that us students had been conducting. All in all I feel that the ANZIAM conference was a great learning experience. Not only was I given the opportunity to meet a number of interesting people, but I also gained valuable experience at presenting my research.
Maya MuthuswamyBeing a student involved with the MGM group certainly has its perks. The culmination of my year long research project was a fantastic opportunity to present my work to fellow mathematicians at ANZIAM 06, an Australia and New Zealand industrial and applied maths conference. This year it was held in beautiful Mansfield in country Victoria.
During the conference, I've gotten a good taste of the flavour of maths research being undertaken in Australia and New Zealand. The latest findings in the fields of fluid mechanics, biological system modelling (from cellular to ecosystem level), operations research and of course granular materials were all presented. In all there were over 100 delegates and 35 students - a significant slice from top level maths research in our region.
After sessions, everyone in MGM got a chance to muck around either lazing by the pool or playing Pictionary, Taboo and some card game, the rules of which are only known by Stuart!
Noam OlshinaThe atmosphere was very friendly, open and relaxed, which made it easy to mix and meet people (students and academics alike). Also, it was nice to have a large number of students present (unlike other conferences) and to find out about their research. It was interesting to see the broad range of problems and applications that mathematics is currently being used to help solve - from modelling cells, frogs and termites to buoys, telecommunication networks, cranes and the more traditional fluids. A few (non-scientific) highlights of the conference: experiencing the 80 degree slopes (at least!!!!) of a mountain we decided to hike up (and down!), "team bonding" in the form of Taboo and Pictionary (Madonna, anyone?), and of course the table-top dancing at the conference banquet.
Shaun ColeCommunication does not only present illustrious merit to society in general, but also to the scientific community, where its undiluted vitality is continuously being keenly recognized. I was very fortunate to possess ample opportunity to be a witness of this at the annual ANZIAM conference of 2006.
Although ANZIAM represented a congregation of applied mathematical researchers from a myriad of research worldlines, the expansive connectivity of mathematical investigations allowed the stimulation of highly engaging discussions of both a philosophical and technical nature. Furthermore, attending this conference led to my exposure of numerous innovating techniques in the application of present mathematical advances to enigmas outside human abstraction.
I am greatly indebted to Dr. Antoinette Tordesillas for this unprecedented chance for me to gain this unique insight.
Nana Liu