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Dr Lesley Ward

Position: Senior Lecturer Dr Lesley Ward
Division/Portfolio: Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment
School/Unit: School of Mathematics and Statistics
Campus: Mawson Lakes Campus
Office: OC1-19
Telephone: +61 8 830 23038
Fax: +61 8 830 25785
Email: Lesley_dot_Ward_at_unisa_dot_edu_dot_au
URL for Business Card: http://people.unisa.edu.au/Lesley.Ward


G.C. Evans Instructor of Mathematics, Rice University, 1994--7. Assistant Professor, Harvey Mudd College, 1997--2003. Associate Professor, Harvey Mudd College, 2003--6. Senior Lecturer, School of Mathematics and Statistics, UniSA, 2006--.

Selected awards and distinctions

Chair of Local Organising Committee, Member of Programme Committee, and Treasurer, Jan 2008--June 2009, 53rd Annual Conference of the Australian Mathematical Society, held 28 Sep--1 Oct 2009, City West Campus, UniSA.

Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Beginning College or University Mathematics Faculty Member. One of three awarded in the US and Canada, 2006.

My former department (Department of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College) received the 2006 American Mathematical Society (AMS) Award for an Exemplary Program or Achievement in a Mathematics Department. All departments of mathematical sciences in the US and Canada that offer at least a bachelor's degree in mathematical sciences are eligible.

WEIS Visiting Fellowship for a Senior Academic Woman in Engineering and Information Sciences, National Institute of Engineering and Information Sciences (NIEIS), Australian National University, 2004.

Gave course with Cristina Pereyra on Harmonic Analysis: From Fourier to Haar, IAS/Princeton Program for Women in Mathematics, Analysis and Nonlinear PDEs, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, May 2004.

Gave course on Wavelets, IAS/Park City Mathematics Institute, Harmonic Analysis and Partial Differential Equations, Park City, Utah, July 2003.

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), Berkeley, California, Program in Complex Dynamics and Hyperbolic Geometry, 1995.

Yale Prize Teaching Fellowship. Awarded for `excellence in performance as a Teaching Fellow', to eight PhD students chosen from all departments at Yale University, 1991--2.

Tillyard Prize and Hanna Neumann Prize, Australian National University, 1986.


Teaching interests

  • differential equations, linear algebra, calculus
  • engineering mathematics
  • real analysis, complex analysis
  • mathematics communication
  • Mathematics Clinic

I teach the following courses

MATH 1005Honours Mathematical Studies 2
MATH 3021Mathematics Clinic 1
MATH 3022Mathematics Clinic 2
MATH 2025Real and Complex Analysis
MATH 2024Mathematical Communication
MATH 2009Engineering Modelling
MATH 1063Mathematical Methods for Engineers 1
MATH 1064Mathematical Methods for Engineers 2
MATH 1048Engineering Mathematics 1
(This course is not currently being taught)


Professional associations

Chair of Local Organising Committee, Member of Programme Committee, and Treasurer, Jan 2008--June 2009, for the Australian Mathematical Society's 2009 Annual Conference.

Member, Australian Mathematical Society (AustMS)

Member, American Mathematical Society (AMS)

Member, Mathematical Association of America (MAA)

Member, Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM)

Member, Women in Science Enquiry Network (WISENET)


Qualifications

Ph.D. in mathematics, Yale University, 1994

M.Phil. in mathematics, Yale University, 1992

M.Sc. in mathematics, Yale University, 1989

B.Sc.(Hons) in pure mathematics, Australian National University, 1987


Research interests

  • Complex analysis, harmonic analysis, Internet search algorithms, industrial mathematics
  • Research collaborations with: Ariel Barton (Univ. of Chicago), Ayman Farahat (PriceWaterhouseCoopers), Peter Jones (Yale Univ.), Tom LoFaro (Gustavus Adolphus College), Gaven Martin (Massey Univ.), Joel Miller (Cambridge Univ.), Cristina Pereyra (Univ. of New Mexico), Jill Pipher (Brown Univ.), Greg Rae (Google), Fred Schaefer (Oregon State Univ.), Marie Snipes (Univ. of Michigan), Susan Staples (Texas Christian Univ.), Byron Walden (Santa Clara Univ.), Xiao Xiao (Brown Univ.)

Research publications

Book in progress with M. C. Pereyra: Harmonic Analysis: From Fourier to Haar, 270 pages. Version of 12 September 2008.

Notes on dyadic multiparameter harmonic analysis. In preparation. 33 pages.

Realizing functions as harmonic-measure distribution functions of simply connected planar domains, with A. Barton. In preparation. 13 pages.

Results on Stephenson's g-function, with B.L. Walden. In preparation. 9 pages.

Geometric-arithmetic averaging of dyadic weights, with J. Pipher and X. Xiao. Submitted December 2009. 23 pages.

Convergence properties of harmonic measure distribution functions for planar domains, with M.A. Snipes. Complex Variables and Elliptic Equations, Vol. 53 (2008), pp.897--913.

BMO from dyadic BMO on the bidisc, with J. Pipher. J. London Math. Soc. Vol. 77 (2008), pp.524--544.

A harmonic measure interpretation of the arithmetic-geometric mean, with B.L. Walden. Amer. Math. Monthly Vol. 114, No. 7, 2007, pp.610--622.

Authority rankings from HITS, PageRank, and SALSA: Existence, uniqueness, and effect of initialization, with A. Farahat, T. LoFaro, J.C. Miller and G. Rae. SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (SISC) Vol. 27, No. 4, 2006, pp.1181--1201.

Realising step functions as harmonic measure distributions of planar domains, with M.A. Snipes. Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. Math. Vol. 30, 2005, pp.353--360.

Translation averages of dyadic weights are not always good weights. Rev. Mat. Iberoamericana Vol. 18, No. 2, 2002, pp.379--407.

Modifications of Kleinberg's HITS algorithm, using matrix exponentiation and web log records, with A. Farahat, T. LoFaro, J.C. Miller, G. Rae and F. Schaefer. Proceedings of the ACM SIGIR2001 Conference, New Orleans, September 2001, pp.444--445.

Asymptotic behaviour of distributions of harmonic measure for planar domains, with B.L. Walden. Complex Variables: Theory and Applications, Vol. 46, 2001, pp.157--177.

Fuchsian groups, quasiconformal groups, and conical limit sets, with P.W. Jones. Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. Vol. 352, 2000, pp.311--362.

Quasisymmetrically thick sets, with S.G. Staples. Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. Ser. A I Math., Vol. 23 (1998), pp.151--168.

Paraexponentials, Muckenhoupt weights, and resolvents of paraproducts, with M.C. Pereyra. Proc. Amer. Math. Soc., Vol. 126, 1998, pp.135--144.

Distributions of harmonic measure for planar domains, with B.L. Walden. Proceedings of the 16th Nevanlinna Colloquium, Joensuu, Finland, 1995. Eds. Laine and Martio, Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1996, pp.289--299.

On the conical limit set of a complex hyperbolic group, with G.J. Martin. Mathematics Research Report No. MRR 046-95, Centre for Mathematics and its Applications, ANU, Canberra, 1995. 26 pages.

Patent pending

United States Patent Application (US 2003/0044826 A1): Automatic Threshold Setting for Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction, filed 23 May 2003. With A. Jensen, J. Lyon, C. McLeman and B. Tysinger. 33 pages.


Expertise for Media Contact

I am able to provide media comment in the following areas of expertise:

Discipline: Mathematics

  • Mathematical Analysis
  • Women in Mathematics, Science and Engineering




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