Date & Time of the event(s)
-
Description and practical details

We are five women that are organizing a special Webinar in honor to Mirka Miller. 

Mirka Miller (née Koutova, 9 May 1949 – 2 January 2016) was a Czech-Australian mathematician and computer scientist interested in graph theory and data security. She was a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Newcastle

Miller was born on 9 May 1949 in Rumburk, then part of Czechoslovakia, as the oldest in a family of five children. After attempting to escape Czechoslovakia in 1968, stopped because of her companion's illness, she became a student at Charles University before successfully escaping in 1969 and becoming a refugee in Australia.[2] Miller earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Sydney in 1976,[3] both in mathematics and computer science,[2] and as a student also played volleyball for the New South Wales team and then the Australia women's national volleyball team.[4] She married ornithologist Ben Miller, became a computer programmer working with the Sydney Morning Herald and for NSW Parks and Wildlife on Lord Howe Island, and began raising a son with Miller.[1][5]

She separated from her husband and returned to graduate study,[1] earning two master's degrees from the University of New England in 1983 and 1986;[3] her mentors in these degrees were Ernie Bowen and Ivan Friš.[5] She completed a PhD from the University of New South Wales in 1990.[3] Her dissertation, Security of Statistical Databases, was supervised by Jennifer Seberry.[6]

She held academic positions at the University of New England from 1982 to 1991,[3] but after marrying graph theorist Joe Ryan they both moved to the University of Newcastle.[2] She was a faculty member at the University of Newcastle from 1992 to 2004, when she temporarily moved to the University of Ballarat, and returned to Newcastle as a research professor from 2008 until her retirement.[2][3] At Newcastle, she spent many years as the only woman in the Faculty of Engineering. She retired as a professor emeritus in 2014.[2] She also held a position at the University of West Bohemia as Conjoint Professor since 2001.[1]

She died of gastroesophageal cancer on 2 January 2016.[5] A special issue of the Australasian Journal of Combinatorics was published in her honour in 2017,[5] and special issues of the European Journal of Combinatorics[7] and Journal of Discrete Algorithms followed in 2018.[8]

We started with the first edition on March 8th to celebrate the International Women Day. Our first speaker was Camino Balbuena, she is an spanish mathematician friend and colleague of her and newly for this third edition we invited a women mathematician as speaker Dominique Buset, another close friend and colleague of Mirka Miller. 

Mirka was one of the women mathematician that improves the women representation on mathematics, she was advisor of many women mathematicians and she had a lot of women colleagues. Moreover, she was a person who also promote the mathematics around the world. She done an important labor as advisor and research collaboration with people from Indonesia, Australia, China and Cuba among other countries. 

The organizers of the Webinar are: 

• Marién Abreu - Dipartimento di Matematica, Informatica ed Economia - Università degli Studi della Basilicata - Potenza, Italia

• Gabriela Araujo-Pardo - Mathematics Institute-Juriquilla - Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México

• Camino Balbuena - Department of Civil and Enviromental Engineering - Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain

• Cristina Dalfó - Cryptography and Graphs Research Group - Universitat de Lleida, Igualada (Barcelona), Catalonia

• Tatiana Jajcayova - Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics - Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia

Type of event
Address

Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Economics
Università degli Studi della Basilicata
85020 Potenza PZ
Italy

Name of the Organisation
National University of México, Università degli Studi della Basilicata - Potenza, Italia, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain, Universitat de Lleida, Igualada (Barcelona), Catalonia, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia.

Related Feedback