University of Primorska Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technologies
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Thursday, 29 June 2023 Record attendance at the 11th PhD Summer School in Discrete Mathematics in Koper

The last week of June is marked by the successful implementation of the 11th international Doctoral Summer School in Discrete Mathematics, jointly organized by UP FAMNIT, UP IAM, SDAMS and IMFM. A record number of 92 mathematicians registered for this scientific meeting, which had been held in Rogla in the previous years, but was organized at UP FAMNIT in Koper for the first time this year. So far, more than 700 professors, researchers and students from all over the world have attended the summer school.

Dr. Cheryl E Praeger, invited lecturer and honorary doctor of UP, who has been working with our university since 2003, summed up her impression of this year's summer school as follows: »I am very happy to be here. It's such a wonderful environment for math, especially for students. Two students from my university in Australia are here and say they are having a great time meeting other students and attending all the lectures. Such experiences broaden their minds and help them connect with other colleagues. It's so exciting for them to know that all this math is happening all over the world. It is an excellent initiative and I am glad that Slovenia supports it. People from the University of Primorska contributed so much to the development of mathematics in this area.«


Dr. Cheryl E Praeger

Two mini-courses were lectured by:

  • Karen Meagher, University of Regina, Canada: »Algebraic Graph Theory: an introduction to eigenvalues and the ratio bound with a focus on examples« and
  • Ted Dobson (University of Primorska, Slovenia): »Wreath products and double coset graphs«.

While invited speakers were:

  • Simeon Ball, Polytechnic University of Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain: »The geometry of error-correcting codes«,
  • Marston Conder, University of Auckland, New Zealand: »Some helpful things I have learnt over my career«,
  • Misha Muzychuk, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel: »On Jordan schemes«
  • Cheryl E Praeger, The University of Western Australia, Australia: »Edge-transitive Cayley graphs and graph quotients«,
  • Gabriel Verret, University of Auckland, New Zealand: »(k, t)-regular graphs« and
  • Jinxin Zhou, Beijing Jiaotong University, China: »On mixed dihedral groups and 2-arc-transitive normal covers of $K_{2^n,2^n}$«.

Among the students, who had the opportunity to give a 15-minute presentation this year, were also three UP FAMNIT alumni. Eda Kaja and Đorđe Mitrović (both graduates of Master's study programme Mathematical Sciences at UP FAMNIT) as well as Todor Antić (graduate of undergraduate study programme Mathematics at UP FAMNIT) like to return to our faculty, as they continued their journey at universities abroad: Eda at TU Darmstadt in Germany, Đorđe at University of Auckland, New Zealand, and Todor at Charles University in the Czech Republic. Đorđe and Eda, who attended the summer school in Rogla in 2019 as well, noticed that the group of participants is much larger this year: »There are many more people and the group is also more international. The competition for the prize, which is awarded for student presentations, is very strong.«


Left to right: Todor Antić, Đorđe Mitrović, Eda Kaja

Also this year, the students competed for the Best Student Talk Award. The winner was decided by the committee members Michel Lavrauw, Aleksander Malnič and Cheryl Praeger, and the award was given to Kamilla Rekvenyi for the talk entitled »The Orbital Diameter of Primitive Permutation Groups«. She received free participation at the next year’s 12th PhD Summer School in Discrete Mathematics.

The winner, Kamilla Rekvenyi, a mathematician from Hungary who is currently a PhD student at Imperial College London, praised the organization of the event and the climate she felt at our faculty: »I think the courses are very well done and it is very nice that there are so many connections, that we can explore. Everything is organized very well. So many social events, that bring everybody together, makes it such a nice thing. We have been having ideal days: meeting up, doing maths, having some chats, going to the beach and having social time. I really like the building as well and how everybody is so open and friendly. I can see how this would be a very nice place to also work. I am really enjoying it.«


Left to right: Aleksander Malnič, Cheryl Praeger, Kamilla Rekvenyi and Michel Lavrauw




Read more about this year's program and participants here.