Mark McGuinness appointed Emeritus Professor
Congratulations to Professor Mark McGuinness who has been awarded the status of Emeritus Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics.
Professor McGuinness joined the School in 1991 as a senior lecturer in Mathematics, and was appointed Professor in 2016.
The award was given in recognition of Professor McGuinness’ distinguished and extremely valuable service to the Faculty of Engineering and the University.
His academic career began with a PhD in Physics and his interest in solving puzzles and problems led him to applied and industrial mathematics. He says he enjoys using differential equations to model and explain the behaviour of heat and mass transport problems.
“I derive particular pleasure from using mathematics to take something that appears to be very complicated, and to reduce that problem to the point that it is essentially understood and solved.”
During his more than 40-year career, Professor McGuinness’ research areas have spanned various geophysical, industrial, and biological applications, including steaming Surtseyan volcanic ejecta, modelling the freezing of sea ice, chaotic dynamics, fragmentation of volcanic rock, cooking crispy cereals, the use of microwaves to measure moisture content, and coal volatilisation. He is co-author of the book Chaos, published by Springer in 2019, and has 150 publications to his name.
As an Adjunct Professor with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Limerick (UL), Professor McGuinness has also regularly visited UL and the University of Oxford for research collaborations. He was convenor and remains a member of the Mathematics in Industry New Zealand (MINZ) Reference Group, with responsibility for organising the annual MINZ Study Group that brings together selected industrial problems with academics and students to solve problems arising in New Zealand.
Professor McGuinness has recently served as Chair of ANZIAM, the over-arching group of industrial and applied mathematicians in Australia and New Zealand that also oversees the Mathematics in Industry Study Group held each year in Australia. He is a Fellow of the New Zealand Mathematical Society and has undertaken roles as Treasurer and Council Member for the Society.
Professor McGuinness retired in 2021. Since then, he has been involved in a number of international conferences, giving invited and regular talks at the AustMS conference in Sydney in 2022, the Australian and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ANZIAM) conference in Cairns in February this year, European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry (ECMI) Conference on Industrial and Applied Mathematics in Poland in June, and will be speaking at the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) conference in Tokyo later this year.
Professor McGuinness says he is delighted to be appointed Emeritus Professor, as he is keen to continue researching, learning, and sharing his results in industrial applied mathematics, and he really values the support that the University continues to offer.
He is currently working on modelling moisture detection in bauxite ore using microwaves, and has plans to further develop and improve the simulation of two-phase boiling flows in geothermal wells. He continues to enjoy mentoring thesis students in Wellington and in Fiji, and encouraging those who are interested in the subject to consider a degree in the subject.
“A degree in mathematics or physics is like a box of chocolates – you don’t quite know what you are going to get – as a subsequent career – but it will be delicious and interesting.”