News from ACEMS

MATRIX, Australia’s residential research institute for the mathematical sciences, is pleased to announce the award of US $600,000 over three years in funding from the US based Simons Foundation through its Targeted Grants to Institutes program to support fundamental research

As last summer’s horrific bushfires raged, so too did debate about what caused them. Despite the prolonged drought and ever worsening climate change, some people sought to blame the fires largely on arson. Using open data, ACEMS analysis shows that arson is to blame for only four per cent of the fires.

Science and Technology Australia (STA) selects Dr Nicole White as one of its new Superstars of STEM.

Nicole is a statistician and Research Fellow with the Australian Centre for Health Services Innovation at QUT and an Associate Investigator with ACEMS.

An Adelaide man has just set a new Guinness World Record for the world's 'tallest free-standing soap bubble'. ACEMS Chief Investigator Matt Roughan then did the mathematical modelling and calculations to prove it.

The Academy of Social Sciences in Australia recognises the growing importance of statistics and forecasting with the election of Professors Rob Hyndman and Gael Martin as two of its newest Fellows.

The Australian Research Council released its Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards for 2020, and two ACEMS researchers from The University of Melbourne are on that list. They are Dr Jesper Ipsen and Dr Sasha Garbali.

Here is a look at their projects:

Large-scale testing is key to controlling COVID-19 and statistical modelling shows that analysing grouped samples can give a better and more efficient indication of the prevalence of disease

There are limited drug treatments for COVID-19 patients. And if those patients get critically ill and end up in the intensive care unit, doctors and nurses are faced with very difficult decisions.