Overview
News
Touching the moon lightly
John Curtin Disinguished Professor Kok Lay Teo and his Department of Mathematics and Statistics colleague Dr Jingyang Zhou say they have developed a practical guidance law to land a lunar module upright and very close to zero velocity.
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Solving the world’s problems, one puzzle
Curtin University’s Professor Louis Caccetta’s Maths Enrichment Program is helping demystify preconceived attitudes towards maths for school-aged students all over Western Australia.
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Young tall poppy science awards
Dr Lorenzo Ntogramatzidis, was honoured at the 2011 WA Young Tall Poppy Science Awards for excellence in research and commitment to community engagement. His research involved designing controllers to influence the behaviour of such apparatus as washing machines, heating and cooling systems, aircraft and satellites.
Mathematics and Statistics offers a range of courses which will equip students with the necessary mathematical expertise to deal with problems encountered in an increasingly technological world.
The department currently has 14 full-time academic staff, 4 part time academic staff and 3 administration staff. Students in the Department are mainly studying towards Bachelor of Science degrees in Mathematical Science and Actuarial Science, both 3-year programmes.
Staff in the department have been very successful in attracting competitive research and equipment grants, which totalled $1.9 million over the last five years. Consultancy research projects over the same period was around $200,000. Research is a very important component of the Department’s activities and this has resulted in a healthy number of PhD students, averaging between 25 to 30 annually over the last five years. A substantial number of these postgraduate students are from overseas. The Department has maintained good links with a number of overseas institutions. This year, we have run several workshops in Thailand and Indonesia. The academic exchanges are very important to the Department and we are always keen to forge new links. The Department’s income from international students has steadily increased over the past years and now constitutes over 20% of the annual budget.
The Department is the home of the West Australian Centre of Excellence in Industrial Optimisation (WACEIO), which specialises in industry-focused research and training. Furthermore, it offers consulting services in applying optimisation, operations research and statistics to key Western Australian industries, including agriculture, fishery, environment, mining and petroleum, defence, telecommunications and transport.
The Department has a vibrant Statistical Consulting Unit that provides statistical consultation to industries, government agencies and academia. The SCU also presents short courses on statistical methods throughout the year and can develop customised software solutions. The focus is to promote statistical thinking and correct use of statistical methods. For Curtin's Postgraduate students an initial free consultation is offered.
