Ambitious plans for mathematics

Monash is building a world-class School of Mathematics with Professor Philip Hall at its helm. In the throes of recruiting 15 new academics, and reshaping research areas from the School to other parts of Science, Hall says this is a once in a lifetime chance to create a new vibrant department that can strive for research excellence.

The new staff appointments will primarily be in core areas of Mathematics, enabling the School to have the ability to consolidate existing research strengths.

He is from Imperial College - where as Head of Department and then Director of the Institute of Mathematics – Hall was at the forefront of the Mathematics Department’s expansion to its present position of eminence. Hall points out that it was Imperial’s strength across the core Mathematics research areas, which enabled it to lead the way in collaborative research programs, ranging from Biology and Medicine to quantum information materials. He explains that it is no accident that many research programs are led by Mathematicians, since the deeper one goes into any subject the more mathematical it becomes.

He envisages that the School will recruit the new staff over the next two years, whilst at the same time building new collaborations across the University.

Small investments in maths pay dividends

“Everywhere you look now you see Mathematics unfolding as the key to enter the fundamental structures prevalent from Science, Engineering, Medicine and now even the Social Sciences,” says Professor Hall. “Moreover a small investment can pay dividends way out of proportion to its size.” As an example Hall describes how investing in research programs in quantum information, complexity, turbulence and finance at the Imperial Institute, returned the funding more than ten times over. The investment also led to the generation of independent self-funded centres in those areas.

Hall says the program that gave him the most satisfaction was on atrial fibrillation.   Having had the surgeon who had performed a catheter ablation on him to cure the problem explain that it was a hit or miss procedure, Hall observes that the satisfaction of setting up a team to analyze electrical wave activity in the heart thereby providing an ablation strategy for surgeons, is second to none.

Passion for aerodynamics

Hall’s own research has in recent years been closely linked with aerodynamics and was originally motivated by working with NASA in Virginia on a range of projects associated with hypersonic flight and suppressing the onset of turbulence. That work led to the creation of a Laminar Flow Control Centre directed by Hall and supported by a multi-million pound budget from the research council and AIRBUS. Hall explains that, despite what you might read in the popular press, computers are still not powerful enough to understand the flow physics leading to turbulence and serious brainpower needs to be invested to understand the problem.  The mathematical tools developed in the project are already being used in the design process at AIRBUS and the end product of the mathematics will be 5 per cent drag reductions in the next generation of aircraft. Once again Professor Hall points out the incredible return on the investment on a ‘bunch of Mathematicians’ by pointing out that 5 per cent of the world’s aircraft fuel bill is a rather large sum of money.

Professor Hall is looking forward with great optimism to building a School able to both push back the frontiers on Mathematics and its applications across the myriad of opportunities springing up across Monash.