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Professor Cheryl Praeger of the School of Mathematics and Statistics has just been awarded one of Australia’s Federation Fellowships to pursue her examination of symmetry, for her project Group actions: Combinatorics, geometry and computation.

The Australian Research Council (ARC) Federation Fellowships are the most prestigious research awards in the nation. Federal Education, Science and Training Minister Julie Bishop said 20 outstanding Australian researchers would share in the 2007 round of ARC Federation Fellowships, worth more than $35 million over five years. The awards to Professor Praeger and UWA applied economist Professor David Pannell were the only two to come to Western Australia, and in the six years since the Federation Fellowships were established, Praeger’s award is the first to go to a Pure Mathematician.

Professor Praeger said “I am really happy about it - for me, my research group, the university - and also enormously pleased for Mathematics. I was not at all sure that an award in theoretical mathematics would be considered”. This sentiment was echoed by many mathematicians across Australia.

Head of School, Associate Professor Les Jennings, said “This well deserved award marks an outstanding career in service to Mathematics as well as an outstanding academic contribution in Pure Mathematics”.

Professor Praeger was Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics for four years until March this year when she relinquished the post to take up her ARC Professorial Fellowship.