Applying high-level mathematics to the worlds of finance and engineering is the business of Mathematics Department researcher Dr Xian-Zhi (George) Yuan.
He said he was very happy to win one of the University of Queensland Foundation Research Excellence Awards worth $55,000.
Dr Yuan is developing more effective mathematical models for extracting informantion from economic data.
"The techniques, in the form of computer models, will provide people such as brokers and risk mangers with more effective mathematical tools on which to base their decisions," he said.
Dr Yuan said he had received considerable support and encouragement since he began working at the University five years ago.
"I have made big progress in my research career with a number of research papers published in leading international journals as well as two books - one was in the series of Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society in 1998 and the other in the series of Pure and Applied Mathematics (Monographs and Textbooks) published by Marcel Dekker, Inc. (USA) in 1999."
Dr Yuan said the award would enhance his academic links with leading world researchers from Stanford University and California University at Santa Barbara in the United States; Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences and the University of Toronto in Canada; University of Paris IX in France; and similar research groups in Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, China, and within Australia.
"My research concerns the new and exciting topics of mathematical finance and wavelet analysis with my prime research area in non-linear functional analysis," he said.
"Mathematical finance encompasses elements of advanced mathematics, stochastic analysis and modern finance and it is very important in today's financial industry for risk management and effective usage of different kinds of financial instruments (derivatives) with reasonably high returns.
"Wavelet analysis is also a new research subject from the mathematical sciences with applications in statistics, engineering, and many other fields to deal with non-stationary signals, image analysis and many others.
"Non-linear functional analysis is one of the key research areas in mathematics dealing with non-linear problems, in which a large number of questions are still to be answered."
Dr Yuan joined the University in 1994 and became an Australian Research Council (ARC) Research Fellow in the Department in 1997.
He is an honorary full professor in mathematics at Sichuan University - one of China's leading universities - and an honorary full professor in mathematics at Guizhou University of Technology.
He is also a visiting professor or fellow in mathematics at around eight Australian or international universities.
His research has attracted nearly $375,000 in grant monies from a variety of sources including the ARC large and small grant schemes and the ARC International Research Exchange Program.
The editor of two international journals, the Mathematical Sciences Research Hotline and the Nonlinear Analysis Forum, he has also published two books as sole author and nine refereed papers. As a joint author, he has had 75 papers published. He is also author or joint author of eight refereed conference papers.
.jpg)
