Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment
School of Mathematics and Statistics
School of Mathematics and Statistics
I grew up in the small South Australian country town of Loxton. I attended Loxton High and was always interested in mathematics.
1997
Applied for (and received) the Hypatia Scholarship in it's inaugural year.
1998
Began LBIM (Computing and Mathematics) with Honours.
1998 - 2001
Included on Deans Merit List and Chancellors Merit List.
1998 - 2000
Did summer vacation work at DSTO, working on different
projects including surveillance systems for the north of Australia.
2001- Semester 2
I travelled to the University of Twente in the Netherlands as part of the International Student Exchange program. For my honours project I worked on assigning magistrates to the criminal court system in the Netherlands. I also took part in one of the masters courses with other international students.
During my undergraduate degree I worked as a tutor and practical supervisor in a few different courses - including Engineering Mathematics and Mathematics for Computing.
In 2002 I began my PhD entitled 'On the integration of railway track maintenance and train timetabling' with the assistance of an APA scholarship and in conjunction with the Rail CRC (Cooperative Research Centre). In brief, railways in Australia are predominantly single-line track. This means that if two trains travelling in opposite directions wish to use the same track at the same time, one train will have to wait for the other to finish on that section of rail before they can cross at a loop. This can result in significant delays if trains are poorly scheduled so that they arrive at crossing loops and must wait. Finding schedules which allow trains to meet deadlines at stations, or incur minimum waiting time at crossing loops, or meet any other objective, is a challenging problem in Operations Research. Compounding this difficulty is the fact that railway tracks often require repair or maintenance. This may involve slowing, delaying or stopping train services in order to conduct track maintenance. Finding a solution which integrates the scheduling of track maintenance and train timetabling in a cost-effective manner had not been researched in great detail so it was and ideal topic for my PhD.
During the course of my PhD I have also been co-responsible for the delivery of Introductory Mathematics as part of the Applied Science and Engineering Bridging Program. I am the external coordinator for Mathematics and Computing as well as an internal tutor. I've taught Maths for Computing for SAIBT (South Australian Institute of Business & Technology), and SACE at the Lakes, which is a program for gifted Year 11 students from the northern schools area.
I've attended several interesting conferences - the Maths in Industry Study Group in Adelaide, as well as the one coming in January 2004. ICIAM03 (International Congress of Industrial and Applied Mathematics) was held in Sydney in July 2003, and was a meeting involving 2,500 mathematicians from all over the world.
Probably the most interesting thing is since having my photograph used for promotional purposes in the university, I've been referred to as 'the maths train pin-up girl' on more than one occasion - just the thing for your image!!
