Grant Keady

Subsections

• PERSONAL
• RESEARCH INTERESTS
• QUALIFICATIONS
• EMPLOYMENT RECORD
• UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING INTERESTS
• PUBLICATIONS
• REPORTS
• COMPUTING KNOWLEDGE/EXPERIENCE
• UWA HONOURS AND POSTGRADUATE PROJECT WORK, SINCE 1994
• INVITED TALKS AT CONFERENCES, SINCE 1988
• ORGANISATION AT CONFERENCES, SINCE 1990

PERSONAL

Date and Place of Birth 20 October 1946, Subiaco (Perth), Western Australia
Nationality Australian
I have unrestricted entry into U.K., and can work there without work permits. (The unrestricted entry comes from two places. I have UK Patriality via paternal grandparents from Galway. My wife is English: she and I were married in England in 1971.)

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Fluid mechanics, partial differential equations, applied Computer Algebra systems

QUALIFICATIONS

    1967    Bachelor of Science (1st class Hons, Maths)
               University of Western Australia
    1972    Doctor of Philosophy (DAMTP  - Maths)
               University of Cambridge

EMPLOYMENT RECORD

Prior to current appointment

summer 1967-68: programming, CSIRO Computing Research, Melbourne
1968: part-time tutoring at UWA
1972: S.R.C. Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, U. of Essex
1973: Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, U. of Melbourne

Current Position Maths, UWA. Senior Lecturer (from 1982) Lecturer (from 1974)

Visiting appointments

After 1974 these were support during leaves without pay from UWA
Jul2001-Jun2002: Visiting Appointment, Computer Aided Assessment at University of Birmingham
Jan-Jun 1997: E.P.S.R.C. Research Fellow, Uni. Bath
Aug-Dec 1996: Lecturer, Queen Mary and Westfield College, Uni. London
1992-3: Programmer, AXIOM Computer Algebra project, NAG-Oxford
1989-1991: Programmer, Mathematical Software Project (Macsyma-NAG), University of Waikato, New Zealand
May-Aug 1988: Secondment, CMA, ANU, Canberra
May-Aug 1984: Secondment, CMA, ANU, Canberra
1982: S.E.R.C. Research Fellowship, Oxford
1977: S.R.C. Research Fellowship, U. of Sussex

UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING INTERESTS

I have a strong interest in the use of Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) at sufficiently high levels of undergraduate teaching. Although it depends on staff interest in the particular institution, my judgement is that, for departments which don't have a strong commitment to just one package, 2nd year undergraduate is soon enough. I believe that once students are inducted into a package it is very desirable that lecturers in subsequent courses continue in the use of that package when appropriate uses arise in their course.

At present UWA has several packages in use:

• Matlab - very much favoured by most engineers. However, most engineering academics don't use the Symbolic Toolbox as in Student Matlab, and as needed in Engineering Maths teaching.
• Mathematica - very much favoured by Physics.
• Maple has lots of Maths staff and postgrad users. However it has not spread outside the Maths School.
• Mathcad has users in Civil Engineering, but has no users in the Maths Dept.

I have a (light-weight) conference paper, ACEC95 which collects some of my thoughts in this area. The file contains some updates and isn't just old 1995 materials.
During a period when Electrical and Electronic Engineering had requested that Eng. Maths to their 2nd year classes be switched from Maple to Mathematica, I had a visiting scholar appointment for 6 weeks at Wolfram Research, partly to develop Mathematica equivalents to my older Maple materials. (EEE have switched out of Mathematica into Matlab.)

I also have an interest in Computer Aided Assessment -CAA- packages with CAS algebra engines when the CAS are ones I know. In 2000 I wrote the 2nd year linear algebra for engineers questions for CalMaeth which is a system, written by Kevin Judd at UWA, with Mathematica as its algebra engine. (In 2001/2, I implemented questions for University of Birmingham's main 1st year course, in a different CAA system - Alice/AIM.) My courseware was successful, with students learning well from it. AiM has been in use in some units at UWA between 2004 and 2007, and I re-wrote my early calmaeth (2nd year linear algebra) questions into AiM along with adapting them to the (linear systems and probability and stats) syllabus. Sadly, the maple vendor priced the maple licence for AiM too high and tried to get us to change to mapleTA (and, we did try mapleTA in 2008 but it wasn't good enough.) My judgement is that CAA authoring is only worthwhile when the class sizes are quite large.

PUBLICATIONS

Click here.

REPORTS

Click here.

COMPUTING KNOWLEDGE/EXPERIENCE

I prefer to work on Unix/linux machines with an X-windows environment.

AXIOM, Aldor:        Thorough knowledge.
C:                   Have had good knowledge 
                     (but declining from lack of use).
C++:                 Could learn: familiar with some OOP ideas.
Fortran77:           Good knowledge.
GAP:                 Interest in it.
                     (used it in an Hons Project in 2008)
html:                Good knowledge.
Java:                Some knowledge.
LaTeX:               Thorough knowledge.
linux:               Good knowledge.
LISP:                Some knowledge (but last use 1992).
Macsyma:             Good knowledge (but last use 1991).
Magma:               Interest in its domain category structure.
Maple:               Good knowledge.
Mathematica:         Good knowledge. 
Matlab and Octave:   Good knowledge. 
MuPAD:               Some knowledge.
                     Interest in its domain category structure.
Pascal:              Good knowledge (but last use 1989).
Perl:                Some knowledge.
Python:              A little knowledge.
Reduce:              Good knowledge (but rarely use now).
UNIX:                Good knowledge.

UWA HONOURS AND POSTGRADUATE PROJECT WORK, SINCE 1994

Lots of examining work, but a lot less supervision work. Supervision items listed below.

• 2008: D. Hawtin, Maths Hons project (joint with Alan Woods)
• Helping Nev Fowkes with supervisions
  • 2006- :Ibrahim Almanjahie, MSc. (Some details)
  • 2003-2004: I.Khoo, MSc
  • 1999-2001: M. Anderson, (including a long period as sole supervisor when Nev Fowkes was away) on Ph.D. work on capillarity problems.
• 1995: E. Hawkes, informal assistance - one joint paper - civil engineering honours
  
• 1994: P. Neame, Maths Hons project (joint with C.J. Goh)
  

INVITED TALKS AT CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS, SINCE 1988

• 2001, Dec.: "Support for service course teaching". LTSN-Math Birmingham, England.
  
• 1997, Jan.: "Software for Applied Maths Teaching", CTI-Math Birmingham, England.
  
• 1995, May: IMACS Applied Computer Algebra Conf., University of New Mexico, USA.
  
• 1995, July: Australian Mathematica Conf., Hobart.
  
• 1993, May: Workshop on Symbolic and Numeric Computing, Helsinki, Finland.
  
• 1992, Dec.: "Maple - its scope in teaching", CTI-Math Birmingham, England.
  
• 1988, May.: Bicentenial Meeting of the Australian Math. Soc., ANU, Canberra.
  
• 1988, Aug.: Differential Equations Meeting, Massey University, New Zealand.
  

ORGANISATION AT CONFERENCES, SINCE 1990

• 2007. On the organizing committee of the ANZIAM 07 Conference.
• 2005. Within the "Teaching" Special Session, "Sub-session on Computer Aided Assessment in Mathematics"
  Within the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Australian Mathematical Society, AMS05 in WA
  I was on the local committee.
• BAIL2002 (convener was Song Wang, and my role was just one of several on local committee, some refereeing, etc..)
• Maple-in-teaching displays,
  "Perth Workshop on Maple-in-teaching", 30 Jan 98, Curtin University
  ATCM97, Penang, June 97
  IMA Conf on Teaching of Maths to Engineers, Loughborough, Apr 97
• CAS-in-teaching display, ANZIAM95 , Feb 1995, Busselton, Western Australia.
  
• CA-in-WA events, Jul 92, UWA. Add-on to July 92 Australian Math. Soc. meeting.
  
• "Workshop on Symbolic Computing in Applied Maths", Univ. of Canterbury, NZ. Add-on to Feb 91, Australian Applied Maths meeting.
  

MORE?

For more, see G.Keady's homepage.

Created: 1995
Updated intermittently

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