The 31st Applied Maths Conference - ANZIAM'95 was held at Busselton in the south-west of Western Australia, from February 5 to February 9, 1995. Situated on the shores of Geographe Bay, Busselton is a very popular holiday spot within driving distance of many popular tourist attractions such as Karri and Jarrah Forests, the Yallingup Caves and the wineries of the Margaret River region.
The venue for the conference was the Broadwater Beach Resort. Accommodation and facilities were of the very highest standard and many delegates commented on the friendliness and helpfulness of the staff.
The invited speakers produced an excellent range of topics with something for everyone. The Conference began with a talk by Celso Grebogi of the University of Maryland on ``Shadowing in chaotic systems''. Andrew Philpott from The University of Auckland talked on ``Capacity expansion models for telecommunications distribution systems''. Professor Joel Brown of the University of Illinois, Chicago, entertained us on Monday evening with ``Taking a walk on the wild side of frequency dependent selection: Solution concepts in evolutionary game theory''. Tuesday began with some solutions to problems related to ``The effects of surface tension and vorticity on gravity waves'' delivered by Professor Jean-Marc Vanden-Broeck from the University of Wisconsin. On Wednesday, John Patterson (University of WA) spoke on ``Natural convection in differentially heated cavities'', and Sean McElwain (QUT) discussed some applications of mathematics to wound healing in his talk ``Modelling phenomena involving cell migration''. The conference was ended by Professor Henry Abarbanel of University of California, San Diego with some observations on the ``Analysis of observed chaotic data''. The range of subjects and the thoughtfulness and enthusiasm of all of the speakers made all of these talks interesting as well as entertaining. I would like to express my thanks to them for the role they played in the success of the conference.
Because of the long travel times involved the organisers decided to avoid talks on Sunday evening and after the invited speaker on Thursday morning, allowing for a relaxed opening and finale. Despite the distances involved, nearly 140 delegates and 34 accompanying people attended the conference. There were a total of 104 contributed talks. These talks were of 20 minutes duration with 5 minutes for questions and room changes. Three parallel sessions ran throughout the conference. Synchronization was maintained using a soccer-style card system. Only two speakers received red cards - and only one of them was for a time violation (the other was for indecent dealing with a graph).
While the Conference had no official theme, an unofficial theme seemed to be modelling industrial problems. This is to be expected at an Applied Maths Conference, but it was gratifying to see how many talks were directly linked to problems in the commercial sector. Thanks are due to Basil Benjamin of the University of SA for organising an afternoon session of industry talks.
There was a good attendance of students, and 40 talks were given for which the speaker was eligible for the TM Cherry student prize. The selection panel was led by Geoff Aldis from ADFA, to whom I would like to say ``thanks'' for his organisation. Thanks also to the other members of the committee; Larry Forbes (UQ), Peter Blennerhasset (UNSW), Graeme Mills (CSIRO), Peter Taylor (Adelaide), Tony Roberts (USQ) and Roger Hosking (James Cook). This is a big job and members of the committee must sometimes miss talks they would like to see in order to perform their duties.
The winner of the prize was A.V. Buryak for his talk ``Two-wave bright and dark solitons''. Once again, all of the student speakers must be congratulated for the high quality of their talks.
After many years of ``abuse'' the students decided to fight back, and this year instituted the Cherry Ripe prize for the best talk by a non-student. David Marlow and his team (in probably an easier decision than the TM Cherry Prize) selected Natashia Boland for her talk ``A formulation for aircraft rotation''. David's presentation at the Conference dinner will long be remembered.
Undoubtly one of the highlights of the Conference was the presentation of the inaugural ANZIAM medal to Professor Ren Potts of Adelaide University for his outstanding and continuing contribution to Mathematics, ANZIAM and society! Ren was not in Australia during the selection for this Honour and was genuinely surprised, but as always managed a gracious and humourous response.
The usual social events were held at this years conference, and were made even more pleasant by the surroundings. A welcoming barbecue and a tour of the wineries and caves on the rest afternoon proved very popular. Thanks must go to the staff at the Broadwater resort for the success of the Conference Dinner, where supply and distribution were ample and rapid, respectively. The Conference organisers do feel, however, that they are still owed around 100 drinks by delegates!
I must thank the many people who helped me to organise this event. To past conference directors, thanks for your invaluable advice. Thanks to Michele Cornelius and the staff at the Broadwater Resort, and to City Centre Car Rentals for their helpfulness. To Ansett Airlines for providing Sean McElwain's travel expenses from Brisbane, and providing many of the incidental items. Many people provided assistance in minor ways when it was needed, and I would like to thank all of them - they know who they are.
Finally, I would like to thank Jenny Harris and Gill Anderson for helping out during the conference, and Jenny Hopwood for performing the Treasurer's duties. A special thank you is due to Mirko Paskota and Des Hill for their enormous contribution to the organisation of the programme, room allocations, registrations, transport and for handling the flood of email messages in the last few weeks before the conference. Without all of these people and many more, this conference would not have been such a success.
Graeme Hocking, Convenor