
2024
New Zealand Mathematics and Statistics Postgraduate Conference
25 Nov. – 28 Nov. 2024 in Christchurch
Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha – University of Canterbury
Website development in progress v1 19/06/24
This year the conference is being planned by students from University of Canterbury.
The New Zealand Mathematics and Statistics Postgraduate society organizes an annual conference for students from around Aotearoa. While maintaining a high standard of excellence, with superb plenary speakers, the NZMASP conference is a more relaxed and social student conference which emphasizes networking and developing friendships alongside the sharing of knowledge. Most of New Zealand’s universities are separated from each other by a considerable distance. For the last two decades, the NZMASP conference has been instrumental in creating friendships and connections between mathematics and statistics postgraduate students from these different universities which last well beyond their studies. The conference serves as a platform for students to deliver their research to a general mathematics audience, and many cherish this event for the constructive feedback they receive in preparation for international conferences and provisional year reviews. We welcome anyone with special considerations (e.g. disabilities, bringing children, dietary, cultural) attending the conference. Please contact us if you have any questions or would like to discuss how we can assist you.
Invited Speakers (PLACEHOLDER)

Geertrui Van de Voorde
Geertrui Van de Voorde is a pure mathematician. Her primary research interests lie in finite geometry, an area within combinatorics. Her research mostly deals with interesting substructures within finite projective spaces. What makes these point sets interesting is their intersection properties, the groups acting on them, and/or their links with problems from finite field theory, coding theory, or graph theory.
She got her PhD at Ghent University, Belgium, in 2010. In 2017, after taking up postdoctoral positions at VUB (Free University Brussels) and Ghent University, she moved to New Zealand in 2017 to start as a lecturer at University of Canterbury.
Lauren Smith
Lauren Smith completed her BSc, MSc and PhD at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. From there she held postdoc positions at Northwestern University and the University of Sydney as well as working briefly at the CSIRO (the Australian Government Research Organisation). Her first postdoc used piecewise isometry theory to study mixing in granular flows. In her second postdoc she developed model reduction methods for networks of coupled oscillators. She joined the Department of Mathematics at the University of Auckland in 2021


Charlotte Jones-Todd
I am a statistician by trade and spend my working days researching and teaching statistics. My research focus is on spatial statistics; modelling the patterns and movements of events in space and over time. When teaching I love finding new ways to get everybody as enthusiastic about stats as I am!
Outside of work, I spend most of my time running around after my pets. I have a Hungarian Vizsla puppy called Cai. I am also an avid horse lover. I have a horse, Nymph, who I enjoy trail riding and a Shetland pony called Norna, who is her best friend.
Sinapi Taeao
Sinapi hails from the beautiful island of Samoa. She is a Deputy Principal at Sacred Heart College, Lower Hutt. She teaches Mathematics and Statistics, Religious Studies, Gagana Samoa and Japanese to all year levels. She is part of the NZQA Taupulega Pacific advisory group, established to progress and achieve the goals of the NZQA action plan for pacific learner success, Takiala Pasifika 2020-2023. Sinapi holds a Master of Education from Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, and is co-author of an article titled “‘Tu’utu’u le upega i le loloto – cast the net into deeper waters’: using research and practice to rethink mathematics pedagogy”


Robin Averill
Associate Professor Robin Averill works in mathematics education and initial teacher education at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington. Robin is an experienced secondary school mathematics teacher who has worked with academics, postgraduate students, student teachers, and teachers. She has carried out research in culturally sustaining education and mathematics education and published extensively . Robin is particularly keen on people having enticing, energising, and powerful experiences of learning and achievement in mathematics and statistics.
Michell Shamu
I graduated in Economics and a minor in Actuarial Science from Victoria University of Wellington and currently work at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand as a Statistical Analyst in the Data, Statistics and Analytics Department. I enjoy working with numbers and providing insights in a way that is intriguing and engaging, communication is also one of my interests. Outside of work, I spend my time learning new African dances as a way to keep in touch with my culture and enjoy being in nature which is very abundant in New Zealand.


Gabriel Pan
I am a graduate analyst at Te Pūtea Matua, working in the Deposit Taker Statistics team. I primarily work with mortgage statistics – in particular, we look at the amount of risky lending a bank is doing as a proportion of its mortgage commitments and compare various borrower groups during a given reference time period. We also work with the Data Development and Policy teams to develop frameworks for banks around this higher risk lending.
I’m a relative newbie at the bank (and to Wellington!) – I only joined in February, having just completed my masters at the start of 2023 at the University of Canterbury.”
Agenda
Tuesday 28th Nov. | Evening | Casual Math Crafts feat. Hexaflexagons by Grace |
Wednesday 29th Nov. | Daytime | Conference Meeting |
Evening | Main social event at Counter Culture | |
Thursday 30th Nov. | Daytime | Conference Meeting |
Evening | Round table meeting open to everyone to discuss the present and future of the NZMASP conference | |
Friday 1st Dec. | Daytime | Conference Meeting |
Evening | Prize-giving (and then going to the pub for whoever is keen and still in town) |
Venue

The conference will be held in Wellington at the Royal Society of New Zealand.
Address: 11 Turnbull Street, Thorndon, Wellington 6011
Accommodation

Accommodation will be provided at Trek Global Backpacker.
Address: 9 O’Reily Avenue, Te Aro, Wellington 6141
Group Photos
Prize
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) prize for the best overall student presentation
Stuart Teisseire | Conformal geometry and the Lichnerowicz conjecture
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Runner up best overall student presentation
Ðorđe Mitrović | Some conditions implying stability of graphs
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Best Honours student presentation
Breanna Camden | Colliding non-linear gravitational and electromagnetic plane waves in plane symmetry
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Best Masters student presentation
Merlyn Barrer | The asymptotic initial value problem for gravitational wave scattering
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The New Zealand Mathematical Society (NZMS) prize for the best student presentation in pure mathematics
Sophia Witham | Mathematics of Poetry in Ancient India
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The Australian and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ANZIAM) prize for the best student
presentation in applied mathematics
Jago Edyvean | The Effect of Scale Separation on Plasma Turbulence Simulations
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The New Zealand Statistical Association (NZSA) prize for the best student presentation in statistics
Angeline Xiao | Parallel Queues with Time Delay
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Dragonfly Data Science prize for the best student presentation in data science
Reza Siar | LDA Topic Modelling: Uncovering Coherent Topics of Hazara Genocide Campaign on Twitter
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Sponsors
Contact
Email: nzmasp2023@vuw.ac.nz
Committee:
Samuel Bastida, Sapir Ben-Shahar, Mark Bishop, Laia Egea Cortes, Ellen Hammatt, Malcolm Jones, Diamant Pireva, Shonaugh Wright, Ruofei Xie