Our Research

Members of the School are engaged in research across a broad range of areas within mathematics, statistics, and data science. The School hosts the Biomathematics Research Centre as well as the Combinatorics, Geometry, and Number Theory (COGENT) research group. Several members of the School are closely involved with Te Pūnaha Matatini, a national Centre of Research Excellence which was recently refunded. Specific details of individual member’s research interests are highlighted below. An individual’s publications are available as part of the UC Research Profile.

Research Interests

Mathematics

Brendan Creutz

Senior Lecturer Above the Bar

Fields of Research:

- Number Theory
- Algebraic Geometry
- Computational Algebra

Alex Gavryushkin

Associate Professor

Fields of Research:

- Biological Data Science

Alex James

Professor

Fields of Research:

- Biological modelling

Ngin-Tee Koh

Senior Lecturer

Research Interests:

Research interest is complex function theory.

Jeanette McLeod

Senior Lecturer Above the Bar

Research Interests:

Combinatorics; in particular asymptotic enumeration, Latin squares, graph colouring and random graphs

Clemency Montelle

Professor

Head of School

Fields of Research:

- History and philosophy of mathematics
- Preparation, translation and commentary of ancient ...

Miguel Moyers Gonzalez

Associate Professor

Head of Teaching - Mathematics

Fields of Research:

- Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics
- Hydrodynamic stability of complex fluids
- Computational ...

Rua Murray

Associate Dean (Academic)

Fields of Research:

- Dynamical systems and ergodic theory
- Mathematical physiology
- Energy and transport
- Maximum ...

Michael Plank

Professor

Fields of Research:

- Mathematical biology
- Mathematical epidemiology
- Mathematical modelling of complex ...

Christopher Price

Associate Professor

Deputy Head of School

Fields of Research:

- Direct search methods in Optimization
- Global optimisation
- Applications of optimisation in ...

Charles Semple

Distinguished Professor

Research Interests:

Combinatorics, phylogenetics, matroid theory

Mike Steel

Distinguished Professor

Fields of Research:

- Algorithms
- Bioinformatics
- Combinatorics
- Discrete and stochastic models
- Mathematical ...

Gunter Steinke

Associate Professor

Fields of Research:

- Automorphism groups of geometries
- Circle geometries and generalized quadrangles
- Finite ...

Chris Stevens

Lecturer

Fields of Research:

- Black holes and gravitational waves
- Initial boundary value problems for Einstein’s field ...

Rachael Tappenden

Senior Lecturer

Fields of Research:

- Optimization
- Numerical linear algebra

Geertrui Van de Voorde

Senior Lecturer

Fields of Research:

- Finite projective geometry
- Coding theory
- Graph theory

Felipe Voloch

Professor

Fields of Research:

- Number Theory, Algebraic Geometry, applications to Coding Theory, Cryptography

Phillip Wilson

Senior Lecturer Above the Bar

Fields of Research:

- Fluid mechanics
- Public outreach
- Philosophy of mathematics
- Modelling geophysical ...

Statistics and Data Science

Jennifer Brown

Professor

Head of Teaching - Data Science

Fields of Research:

- Animal population assessment
- Ecological statistics
- Environmental monitoring
- Experimental ...

Fabian Dunker

Senior Lecturer

Head of Teaching - Statistics

Fields of Research:

- Statistical Inverse Problems
- Nonparametric Statistics
- Econometrics

Giulio Dalla Riva

Senior Lecturer

Fields of Research:

- Data Scientific approaches to Complex Networks
- Analysis and Modelling of Ecological ...

Gabor Erdelyi

Senior Lecturer

Daniel Gerhard

Associate Professor

Fields of Research:

- Nonlinear models
- Hierarchical models
- Simultaneous inference
- Model selection

Heyang (Thomas) Li

Senior Lecturer

Fields of Research:

- Classification Trees
- Deep Learning
- Image Classification and Regression
- X-ray CT Image ...

Elena Moltchanova

Professor

Head of the Statistics Consulting Unit

Fields of Research:

- Applied Bayesian spatio-temporal modelling
- Epidemiology
- Modelling of extreme ...

Marco Reale

Associate Professor

Financial Engineering Coordinator

Fields of Research:

- Time series analysis
- Statistical learning
- Stochastic optimization
- Econometrics

Blair Robertson

Associate Professor

Fields of Research:

- Numerical Optimization
- Data Mining
- Sampling Theory
- Computational Mathematics and ...

Varvara Vetrova

Senior Lecturer

Fields of Research:

- Applied statistics
- Machine learning
- Deep Learning
- Spatio-temporal data
- Seasonal climate ...

Taylor Winter

Lecturer

Fields of Research:

- Research of resilience factors and disruptors of psychological wellbeing.
- Study of ...

Collaborations

Biomathematics Research Centre

The Centre was established in 1996. Biomathematics is the application of mathematics, statistics and computer science to contemporary problems in biology.

Te Pūnaha Matatini

Our mission is to develop methods and tools for transforming complex data into knowledge. “E tipu, e rea, mo ngā ra o tau ao – grow up and thrive for the days destined to you”

NZ Health and Ageing Research Group

The New Zealand Health and Ageing Research Group was formed in 2014 as a cooperative network of researchers and health professionals.

Spatial And Image Learning (SAIL) Group

The SAIL group researches in collaboration with our partners on image processing and machine learning problems and develops prototypes for deployment.

Gravity and Cosmology Group

Our interdisciplinary group investigates problems in gravity and cosmology such as black holes, gravitational waves and the evolution of the universe.