Awards

Every year the NZMS hands out awards for mathematics research and contributions to mathematics in NZ.

NZMS Early Career Research Award

The 2024 Early Career Research Award went to Marie Graff

This award was instituted in 2006 to foster mathematical research in New Zealand and to recognise excellent research carried out by early-career New Zealand mathematicians.
Marie Graff (right) with NZMS president Melissa Tacy

Candidates will be judged on their best three published research outputs and a brief CV. Research outputs could include publications in books, journals, other peer-reviewed venues, or other types of high quality mathematical research.

Eligibility. Candidates may contact the NZMS President Bernd Krauskopf in confidence for clarification of how the following eligibility criteria apply to their particular circumstances.

  • Candidates should be within ten years of confirmation of PhD.
  • Candidates must have been residing in NZ during two of the previous three years. In the case where a candidate has been prevented from entering New Zealand by COVID restrictions the candidate will be treated as if they entered New Zealand at the time their job/course of study commenced.
  • Candidates must be current members of the NZMS.
  • No person can receive the award more than once.
  • An appropriate adjustment to eligibility conditions can be made to take into account career breaks or periods of reduced workload.

Nominations and applications should include the following:

  • name and affiliation of candidate;
  • statement of general area of research;
  • a brief CV which illustrates the nominee’s standing in the community, including: any distinctions awarded, list of any graduate students supervised, list of any grants received (including names of co-investigators), full list of publications (including names of coauthors);
  • if the candidate chooses a short (no more than half page) statement detailing the effect of COVID related disruption on their research output;
  • if appropriate, a justification for an adjustment of time since confirmation of PhD;
  • an electronic copy (pdf) of each of their three best papers (the papers must be published or in press);
  • a clear statement of the mathematical contribution of the candidate in cases of joint authorship;
  • a citation, of maximum 40 words, summarising the mathematical research underlying the application (it is recommended that self-applicants approach a colleague to write this citation);
  • names of two persons willing to act as referees, though the judging panel may approach referees other than those nominated. Referees should be carefully chosen; in particular, they should not have a conflict of interest and they should be able to give scientific insight into the work to be assessed. It may be easier to avoid a conflict of interest by choosing international referees.

Unsuccessful applicants from 2024 who are still eligible in 2025 will be invited to update their application so that it can be reconsidered in 2025.

Nominations should be sent by email to the NZMS President, Bernd Krauskopf by 31 August 2025. Submissions should state clearly that they are for the NZMS Early Career Award. Applicants may nominate themselves.

A judging panel will be appointed by the NZMS President, and makes recommendations to the President for the Award. No person shall receive the Award more than once. The Award consists of a certificate including an appropriate citation of the awardee’s work, and will be announced and presented at the New Zealand Mathematics Colloquium Dinner in December.

The Early Career Research Award for 2024 was presented at the Joint Meeting of the NZMS, AustMS, and AMS to Marie Graff  (University of Auckland) “For her outstanding contributions to wave propagation phenomena and insights in inverse problem theory, specifically convergence properties of Adaptive Eigenspace Inversion and its relation to other regularisation methods, as well as her superior algorithm that reconstructs images with quantifiable confidence”.

Recipients of the NZMS Early Career Research Award
Year Name Location Award Details
2023 Brendan Harding For significant contributions to a broad range of fields including fluid dynamics, numerical analysis and fractal geometry. Recent work on inertial particle focusing in curved duct geometries exemplifies his ability to tackle complex problems and extract far-reaching results.
2023 Rachelle Binny For a blend of application-driven modelling and theoretical advances in spatial moment dynamics. Her work has driven advances in applied mathematics, as well as having impact in real-world applications including New Zealand’s COVID-19 response.
2022 Priya Subramanian For her insightful contributions to the analysis of pattern-forming systems via the development of models, theory and numerical methods for the characterisation and classification of emerging complex spatiotemporal patterns, including in thermoacoustics and soft matter crystallisation.
2021 Martino Lupini Dr Lupini pursues research in disparate areas of mathematics including functional analysis, dynamical systems, algebraic topology, combinatorics, and mathematical logic. He has made unique contributions to many fields by making connections between them.
2020 Geertrui Van de Voorde For profound contributions to finite geometry, particularly creative and foundational analyses of linear sets and their applications to coding theory.
2020 Gabriel Verret For contributions to discrete mathematics and group theory, including the introduction of new approaches that have led to many new discoveries and the answers to long-standing questions.
2019 No award.
2018 Fabien Montiel For outstanding contributions to the development of mathematical and computational methods in wave scattering theory and his innovative approach to modelling the propagation of ocean waves in ice-covered seas.
2017 Brendan Creutz For his outstanding work on local-global questions on diophantine equations, in particular his resolution of a 50 year old question of Cassels and the development of novel computational techniques to study the arithmetic of algebraic curves and surfaces.
2016 Alexander Melnikov For highly original contributions to the theory of computability in algebra and topology.
2015 Adam Day For fundamental contributions to the theory of algorithmic randomness and computability including the solution of the random covering problem.
2014 David Simpson For his contributions to the analysis of the effects of randomness and uncertainties in nonsmooth dynamical systems.
2013 Florian Beyer For his contributions to the understanding of the global structure of cosmological solutions of Einstein’s equations using numerical and analytical methods, and, in particular, for the proof of the wellposedness of the singular initial-value-problem for Fuchsian PDEs.
2012 Mark Holmes For rapidly becoming a world expert in the theory of random walks, and in the analysis of high-dimensional models in statistical physics.
2011 Claire Postlethwaite The award recognises Claire's enormous progress in applying mathematics to the study of animal movement, and for her development of fundamental ideas in applied dynamical systems.
2010 Mihály Kovács For his innovative research in the field of stochastic partial differential equations, particularly their numerical approximation.
2009 Stephen Marsland For outstanding work in many areas of computational and applied mathematics, including self-organizing networks, machine learning, image registration, and generalized Euler equations.
2008 Barbara Holland For her groundbreaking work in interpreting information of historical and biological importance in comparisons of genetic sequence data, and for her pioneering development of phylogenetic networks that succeeded where simple optimisation models failed in identifying conflicts and in unmasking the more interesting biological evidence.
2007 Noam Greenberg For his discovery of new natural definable classes which capture the dynamics of constructions arising from computability theory, his studies of real-valued measures on the continuum and his use of delicate inductive arguments to exhibit links between high compressibility and low computational power.
2007 Catherine McCartin For her fundamental contributions to the development of efficient algorithms for computational problems in a variety of areas, and for her development of theoretical frameworks for parameterized counting problems and for parameterized approximation problems.