The SRS Experience

By Max Carter, SRS 2018/19 (University of Newcastle)

My project for the AMSI SRS in the summer of 2018–19 was based around doing work on a manuscript that was somewhat in its `early days’. This ended up being fairly successful and with a lot of help from my supervisors I was able to make good progress on what we had planned to complete by the end of the summer. This gave us a good foundation for more work to be completed on the manuscript and the possibility to submit it for publication in the near future.

My summer research work led to me being employed as a casual research assistant and casual academic at the University of Newcastle. This casual academic work has involved teaching workshops for first-year mathematics courses at the University. I have learnt a lot from being able to start teaching at the University of Newcastle and have enjoyed the experience.

This casual research assistant job has involved continuing work throughout the second half of 2019 on the manuscript we were working on over the 2018–19 summer. The manuscript is nearing publication, however as the work progressed there has been lots more to say about the topic than we anticipated, so we are delaying the submission a bit to allow us to do more work on it over 2020. We expect to have something ready for publication in the coming months.

UPDATE: Max’s work with his SRS supervisors, Professor George Willis and Dr Stephan Tornier, was published in the Australasian Journal of Combinatorics in August 2020. Article link: ajc.maths.uq.edu.au/pdf/78/ajc_v78_p154.pdf

I finished my third year of undergraduate in 2019 (I did the SRS as a second-year student) and will be completing honours at Newcastle by the end of 2020. My current studies continue work in the same area and with the same supervisor who supervised my SRS project. I am excited to pursue further studies once finished.

The biggest take-out I got from completing my AMSI SRS project was being able to work alongside one of the post-doctoral researchers in the group theory research group that we have here at Newcastle. During the summer project and throughout 2019, I would meet with this post-doc, often for hours on end, and we would work on problems or discuss research related work. He has taught me a lot about mathematics, problem-solving and research in general.

As a result, my problem-solving and general mathematical ability has been light years ahead of where it was at the beginning of the summer of 2018.

My coursework results and research have taken a big step forward and I feel like I’m in a good position to pursue a career in research mathematics as a result of this AMSI SRS opportunity!

Max also attended AMSI Summer School 2020 thanks to an AMSI Travel Grant. To find out more about Summer School 2021, join the mailing list here.