The Neumann Talk

Professor Jacqui Ramagge is the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science at Durham University. We spoke to her about why her Neumann Prize is attributed to UNSW, what leadership in the mathematics community looks like and how we empower people to do mathematics.

Maureen Edwards is an Associate Professor and Head of the School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics at the University of Wollongong. We spoke to her about how she came back to university years after leaving, where her research sits on the spectrum between pure and applied mathematics and what the phrase “mathematics is all around us” means to her.

Eamonn O'Brien is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Auckland. We spoke to him about the technical issue that interfered with his Neumann talk, what it was like growing up in Ireland and the significance of the number 256 in his PhD thesis.

Dr Benjamin Wilson the Chief Scientist at Lateral GmbH. We chat with him about what his work in Representation Theory and in Machine Learning have in common, how his mathematical background has influenced how he runs his company and the move that unexpectedly led him into mathematics.

Vinesha Peiris is a PhD student at the Swinburne University of Technology. In her final moments as a reigning Neumann winner, we talked about what it was like giving her Neumann talk online, how the Sri Lankan education system pushed her into mathematics and how her research interacts with other areas of mathematics.

Xuan Thinh Duong is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Macquarie University. We talk to him about where problems in pure mathematics come from, what Harmonic Analysis is and how PhD students get their research topics.

Marcel Jackson is an Associate Professor at La Trobe University. We spoke to him about the challenges of picking a Neumann winner, how his research relates to computer science in ways we don't usually expect and why climbing is a common hobby amongst mathematicians.

Dr Adrian Dudek is a Derivatives Trader at Optiver. We talk to him about some of the problems in number theory that he worked on, the extent to which a PhD in pure mathematics has helped him as a trader and finding a mathematics-related job in industry.

Dr Adrianne Jenner is a lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology. We chat with her about how she got into mathematical biology, what modelling really is and her experience talking about her research at a music festival.

Dr Liam Hodgkinson is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. We chat with him about winning the Neumann Prize when he least expected it, the role of mathematical rigour in machine learning and what probability really is.

Dr Matthew Tam is a Lecturer at the University of Melbourne. He tells us about what it was like to work with the late Jon Borwein, different perceptions of applied mathematics and what optimisation is all about.

Ben Burton is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Queensland. We talk to him about how he got into computational topology, his involvement in the International Olympiad of Informatics and how to encourage algorithmic thinking without a computer.

Dr Trang Thi Thien Nguyen just recently completed her PhD from the University of South Australia. In her final moments as a reigning Neumann winner, we chat with her about our shared experience of winning the prize in 2019, moving to Australia from Vietnam and how she used mathematics to help the Australian army.

Ian Wanless is a Professor of Mathematics at Monash University. We talk to him about his upbringing in Canberra, how he does his research and his passion for mathematics communication.

In this introductory episode, host Yudhi Bunjamin talks about the B.H. Neumann Prize and explains the motivation behind starting this podcast series.