NEWS AND RESEARCH UNIKEN August 2003 • 8
Weapons of
maths
destruction
by Louisa Wright

 It’s all systems go at the UNSW school of mathematics. Not only is it the top maths school in Australia in terms of the number of publications, but on the quality index – as measured by the impact of its publications – it has been ranked one of the leading maths schools in the world.
    In recently published rankings of mathematics departments internationally, UNSW’s school of mathematics was ranked 14th on the quality index, as measured by citations.  It was the only university outside North America and Europe to make this list. Head of school, Scientia Professor Michael Cowling, is proud to point out that this puts UNSW ahead of Oxford, Berkeley and MIT.
    UNSW mathematics also leads Australian		 maths departments on the quantity index – although no Australian university is large enough to compete on a numerical basis with huge international universities.
    In keeping with this trend, biostatistician Matt Wand, recently appointed to a professorship in the school, has been named among the 25 most frequently cited mathematical scientists of the past 10 years by the American Statistical Association.
    Quality can also be measured in other ways – UNSW’s maths academics are prolific authors not only of scholarly papers but also books.  Visiting fellow Dr Clio Cresswell has a new book, Mathematics and Sex, coming out next month.  Professor Wand’s book Semiparametric Regression was published recently and Dr Jim Franklin’s latest book, The Science of Conjecture, was published in 2001.
    Professor Garth Gaudry is director of the recently established Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute. The fifth International Congress of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, held in Sydney last month, was the biggest		 mathematical meeting ever held in the southern hemisphere and UNSW played an important role in its success.  UNSW mathematician Professor Ian Sloan will shortly become the president of ICIAM, the international scientific organisation behind the congress.


Beautiful minds... members of the school of maths, with Michael Cowling (front, second from left).
Law students push for disabilities treaty
by Denise Knight


Rosemary Kayess and Darren Fittler.
Final-year law students Darren Fittler and Rosemary Kayess have just returned from their first foray into international law at the UN in New York.
    They were there as part of an Australian NGO delegation to lobby for a new international treaty to protect and promote the rights of people with disabilities.
    “We knew that previous attempts to bring about an international convention had been unsuccessful,“ says Kayess, who spoke at the UN meeting on behalf of the Australian National Association of Community Legal Centres. “Getting change at this level is a long and slow process, but there were some reasonably strong outcomes at the end of the two-week meeting.”
    The meeting resolved to establish a 40- member working party, which will look at all the submissions and start drafting a treaty.
    “The Australian government came out and said it didn’t want a treaty but wanted a protocol instead, which was extremely disappointing,” says Kayess, who was appointed to the meeting’s steering committee. “Towards the end of the process, the US and Canada		 made similar noises – that the issue should be dealt with at the domestic level with no need for another international treaty.”
     Fittler says he was struck by how unprepared the UN was to deal with the large number of NGOs at the meeting.  “They also weren’t geared up for people with disabilities, which we all found frustrating.”
     Despite these setbacks, the experience was a positive one, he says.  “I felt that I made a valuable contribution and had many opportunities to use my legal and disability knowledge.”
     Fittler hopes to use his law degree to work for an international organisation. “While I was in New York I was encouraged to apply for an internship at UNICEF. Disability is what I know personally and professionally and I’d love the challenge of bringing my expertise into the workings of the UN system.”
     For Kayess, successfully chairing the disability caucus for the last two days of the meeting was a highlight. “It was crunch time, hard decisions had to be made. Diplomatic language was put to one side and it was very volatile.”