MEET THE COMMITTEE
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
BRENDA LIU
President
Hi everyone! I'm Brenda (she/her), the president of MUMS! I’m a BSc student who has a deep appreciation for how powerful maths is as it's involved in literally everything nature and humans have ever created. I am excited to be able to help make MUMS a special and accessible place for everyone to share their passion for maths. My background is a drawing of a certain flightless bird (that I spent way too long on) done using the Desmos graphing calculator that should give you a hint of where I’m from. Can you guess?
YADAN XIAO
Secretary
Hello everyone! My name is Yadan Xiao (she/her) and I am the secretary of MUMS this year. I finished my maths degree at unimelb recently and I’m currently doing Master of Information Technology. I have a great passion for maths and I love to describe the world mathematically. It is a great honor for me to serve our lovely MUMS community. My background is a landscape which shows you the beauty when maths and fine art combine.
ANMOL TENDULKAR
Treasurer
Hi everyone! I’m Anmol (he/him) and I’m the Treasurer of MUMS this year. I am a BCom student majoring in Actuarial Studies. My background is the Mandelbrot Set, which is quite a visually pleasing fractal. Lastly, a math joke: why did the chicken cross the road? The answer is trivial and left as an exercise for the reader.
JINGLANG FANG
Education Officer
Hi everyone! I am Luise Fang (he/him) and I am an Education Officer this year. I’m a first-year student majoring in Data Science. I am really passionate about Mathematics and I would like to pass on my passion to everyone in the club. My background makes use of the polar equation: r = (1-sin(x)), which creates a lovely heart shape. Now, a math joke: Why did Pi get its driver's license revoked? Because it didn’t know where to stop.
JAMIE PAPWORTH-DENT
Events Officer
Good Evening, my name is Jamie and I am the Events Officer for MUMS.
I love Mathematics, and so do you!
You can see me here in front of the level sets of some conjugate harmonics.
If I remember correctly I think this is for 1/z^2 or something similar.
ANGELA SOJAN
Diversity and Inclusion Officer
Hey everyone! My name is Angela Sojan (she/her), the Diversity and Inclusion Officer for MUMS. I'm in my first year, majoring in computing. I love maths because it makes me feel smart.
I believe in creating an environment where all people are encouraged to pursue their love for maths and I understand the importance of fostering inclusivity.
I'm super excited to meet you guys at our events!
Behind me is just a bad math joke that I thought was kind of funny.
DOUGAL STEWART
Communications and Publicity Officer
Hello! I'm Dougal (he/him), an undergrad majoring in Computing and Software Systems. I'm the comms & publicity officer this year, and I'd love to see more people interested in mathematics! Personally, I'm drawn to mathematics because it's fun, and it makes me go, "Huh, that's neat". For my background, I chose the Butterworth lowpass filter since it's a pretty handy filter for audio processing. As for a maths joke: What is a dilemma? A lemma that proves two results!
PUZZLE HUNT
ZIHENG ZHOU
Puzzle Hunt Coordinator
Hi, everyone! My name is Ziheng (Harry) Zhou and I'm the puzzle hunt coordinator.
I'm a math student who's looking forward to learning more on pure math in the future.
Behind me is a demonstration of the nine-points circle, which is one of my favourite facts in Euclidean geometry. There's always fun coincidences in maths isn't it?
And here comes the joke: Why I can't type x^2? Because I have no money($).
EPSILONS
First Year Representatives
IAN DONG
Ahoy! I’m Ian (he/him), a first year undergraduate student and epsilon at MUMS. I’m a science student interested in majoring in maths and stats. My background is an optimal solution for the irregularities of distributions problem, with N = 17 being rather arbitrarily the best you can do. The proof is left as an exercise to the reader. Here is a funny joke – Reading a joke book is different from reading a newspaper or a novel, or even a maths textbook. Don’t be discouraged if you have to read a joke more than once in order to understand it.
LAVIE KOLCHINSKY
Hello all. I'm Lavie, an Epsilon (first year undergraduate) at MUMS. I'm studying a Bachelor of Science, currently unsure of what I'll major in. The background depicted in additional to my face is the Hasse diagram of the power set of three elements {x,y,z}, with my face covering the largest set (containing all three elements). A joke: "There is no joke".
MICHAEL NGUYEN
Greetings fellow humans. My name is Michael (he/him), epsilon at MUMS. I'm doing a BSCI intending to major in Computing and Software Systems. My background is a demonstration of the pigeonhole principle. If there are 10 pigeons and 9 holes, then one hole must have at least 2 pigeons!!
RACHEL LEE
Hi – I’m Rachel (she/her), one of the first year epsilons! I’m doing a bachelor of science with an (undecided) major, though I’m leaning towards engineering/maths. I think maths is really interesting, and I’m excited to learn more as the year progresses. Behind me are different models of klein bottles, which I just find pretty nifty creations.
UNDERGRADUATE REPRESENTATIVES
FINIAN JOHNSON
Sup nerds! My name is Finian (he/him) and I'm an undergrad rep, I'm in my second year majoring in statistics and diploma of languages in Mandarin. What I'm pointing to here is the "data-saurus dozen" a collection of data sets that while exhibiting the same descriptive statistics (mean, variance, correlation) are clearly all very different visually showing the dangers of misused mathamatics.
GANGOTRI MITRA
Hello all!
My name is Gangotri or you can just call me ‘G’ (she/her). I am one of the undergrad reps at MUMS:) I am currently a second year bachelor of biomedicine student but planning on studying master of biomedical engineering after. My background is a sandwich, which reminds me of the sandwich theorem that is used to calculate limits!
JONATHAN PURCELL
Hey guys,
My name is Jonathan and I’m an undergraduate rep on the MUMS committee this year!
I’m a second year science student looking forward to seeing where life will take me next.
Behind me (and totally not badly photoshopped in) are some beautiful real-life Desmos graphs I was lucky enough to go see a few years ago.
What beauty does maths bring to your life?
KEVIN PHAN
Hi everyone! I am Kevin Phan (he/him) and I am so excited to be an undergraduate representative this year. I am really into math (intend to major in pure mathematics) and want to share that love with you. Behind me is the demonstration of the four-color theorem. Who says math is boring? Math is colorful!
KIERAN MURPHY
Hey everyone! I'm Kieran (he/him) and an undergraduate representative for MUMS, studying physics and pure maths. Shown behind me is a proof by desmos that |x-y|^(1/3) and |x-y| are not equivalent metrics.
LUCAS PEDERSSON
Hi! My name is Lucas (he/him) and I'm one of your MUMS undergraduate representatives. I'm a second year student studying a confused mixture of mathematics, computer science and philosophy, and MUMS enables me to explore all of these in a stimulating environment. Mathematics inspires me to understand my world systematically and rigorously but without sacrificing resolution and complexity. I've thus chosen to stand before an image of a bifurcation diagram, which more viscerally depicts the way structure and complexity dance within one another in mathematics and the world more generally.
MITCH CHANG
Hi everybody! I'm Mitch (he/him) and I'm one of the MUMS undergrad representatives this year. I'm a second year BCom and diploma of Maths student and I'm really interested in exploring what university-level maths has to offer. Behind me is the classic game Tower of Hanoi, which served as my first introduction to the lovely world of mathematical induction!
QUANG ONG
Hi everyone! I'm Quang Ong (he/him) and I am an undergraduate representative this year. I'm majoring in pure mathematics purely for the memes- I actually also really like coding and algorithms.
I'm already doing like our math lecturers do, by reusing a photogenic photo from over 2 3 years ago and presenting a misleadingly youthful image of myself.
My background is of a de-brujin sequence, so every contiguous section of 8 characters is unique (including wrap around) and contains all 256 8-bit binary numbers. It is also the lexicographically smallest such sequence. It is quite satisfying, wouldn't you say?
STACEY YE
Hi! I’m Stacey (she/her) and I’m one of MUMS’ undergraduate representatives. I’m in my fourth year of a Bachelor of Science, majoring in stats. My background is a throwback to a website that I used a lot in primary school, where I committed hours and hours to “learn” about various areas of “maths”. I also think the name of the website represents me perfectly: I’m cool (ice cold extremities), I math (very good at one digit arithmetic), and I game (does Wordle count?)
VERONIKA SEVASTYANOVA
Hi Everyone, my name is Veronika (he/she/they). I am an undergrad rep studying statistics and computing! My background is Unimelb’s Polya’s Urn simulator, which shows what happens when balls of two colours are drawn from an urn with reinforcement! I have also included a maths joke that never fails to make me smile :)
POSTGRADUATE REPRESENTATIVES
ELIZABETH IVORY
Hi! I'm Elizabeth (she/her), studying my Masters in maths. You'll notice my background is my favourite place on campus: the MUMS room! I love learning about new mathematical topics, especially applications of it to areas I haven't studied, and sometimes haven't even heard of. The silver lining to lockdown is the sheer number of these fascinating online seminars that I've been able to attend. I look forward to working with the rest of the committee to keep learning and sharing the beauty of mathematics.
SHIYING ZHUANG
Hiii my name is Shiying (Emily) Zhuang, with my preferred pronouns being she/her. I’m a postgrad representative for MUMS this year. My major is Actuarial Science and I really appreciate the beauty of maths. Behind me is a landscape showing the combination of mathematics and geography.
Interested to join the committee?
A new committee is elected our Annual General Meeting (AGM) each year. This is where you can run for positions too!
Make sure you have signed up to be a member, so that you can receive the AGM notice closer to the date.
In the meantime, you can find out more about the different committee roles here.
