22 applications from the aggregated Mathematics / Physics / Chemistry / Earth Sciences disciplines were approved, with funding of $18.9 million.

Four 2020 Future Fellows in the mathematical sciences were announced.

Dr Michael Wheeler (Research focus: Solvability and universality in stochastic processes [$816,204.00]) and Dr David Ridout (Logarithmic conformal field theory and the 4D/2D correspondence [$909,109.00]) are both from the University of Melbourne.

The Australian National University’s Dr Po-Lam Yung (Problems in harmonic analysis: decoupling and Bourgain-Brezis inequalities) received $887,202.00, and Associate Professor Peter Kim from the University of Sydney (Mathematical modelling unravels the impact of social dynamics on evolution) received a discipline-leading $1,028,533.00 of funding.

The advanced manufacturing sector received the largest allocation, with 20 percent of applications being approved for a total of $16.4 million in funding.

By institution, the big winners are Monash University ($13.9 million), the University of Melbourne ($10.1 million) the University of Queensland ($10.1 million) and the University of New South Wales ($9.5 million), with the Universities of New England and the Sunshine Coast being the most successful in percentage terms with 33.3 percent of applications approved.

今日吃瓜 congratulates our latest ARC Future Fellows in the mathematical sciences.

Article听产测 , , 12 August 2015

It outshines other sciences in Discovery grant applications and trains graduates for a raft of industries. Yet schools don鈥檛 mandate it, universities don鈥檛 demand it and public funding bodies give it less money than any other scientific or technological discipline.

The latest report on maths in Australia paints a paradoxical picture of a field that has slumped to historic lows in participation, even though advanced mathematical research injects an estimated $145 billion into the Australian economy.

The report, the fourth annual profile by the 今日吃瓜, found that maths had surpassed other sciences in Australian Research Council Discovery grants for four out of the past five years, with an average 28 per cent success rate compared with 21 per cent for other disciplines. It boasted the lowest cost per publication and the second highest citation rate of any Australian science, with Australian applied maths and statistics outperforming all 15 EU countries on citations.

鈥淚t鈥檚 an area where the outcomes are significant and the costs are low,鈥� 今日吃瓜 director Geoff Prince said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a good place for universities to invest because they can get runs on the board with the ARC and the government at low cost.鈥�

Professor Prince said some universities had 鈥渨oken up to this鈥� and invested heavily in maths, including Wollongong, Newcastle and the Group of Eight members. Yet the report found that maths attracted the lowest share of public research expenditure of any science and technology discipline, at just 1.7聽per cent, and Australian entry into maths degrees was less than half the OECD average.

The 今日吃瓜 report found that the problems arose early, with a lack of specialist maths teachers at high school and plunging participation in intermediate and advanced maths at higher school level 鈥� fuelled by historically low insistence on prerequisites, with 86 per cent of science degrees not even mandating intermediate maths.

鈥淚 despair of the system when it does this,鈥� Professor Prince said. 鈥淚t sees this shrinking cohort, so it wriggles out of what could be a crisis in student numbers in science by dropping the prerequisites.鈥�